Filmmaker Michael Moore’s suggestion that showing crime scene photos of the children slain at Sandy Hook will hasten the demise of the National Rifle Association is not getting rave reviews in the shattered Connecticut community.
The left-wing social critic wrote in his blog Wednesday an item titled "America, You Must Not Look Away (How to Finish Off the NRA)," in which he recommended releasing the undoubtedly gruesome photos of the 20 children killed on Dec. 14, 2012, some of whom were shot up to 11 times. Moore said the fact that Americans have “done nothing to revise or repeal” the Second Amendment “makes us responsible.”
“ … and that is why we must look at the pictures of the 20 dead children laying (sic) with what's left of their bodies on the classroom floor in Newtown, Connecticut.”
Moore predicted a parent of a child killed in the horrific elementary school massacre or another high-profile mass shooting would make pictures available, adding “and then nothing about guns in this country will ever be the same again.”
“For the families and the community, we just want to get back to a normal life and that would be a horrendous offense to the families."
- Dorrie Carolan, Newtown Parent Connection
Jeremy Richman, whose 6-year-old daughter Avielle was killed in the attack by gunman Adam Lanza — a 20-year-old, mentally-troubled local man who later killed himself as police responded — said Moore’s idea is off-base.
“I would be very strongly against that,” an incredulous Richman said when being informed of Moore’s idea.
Another parent of a 6-year-old boy killed in the attack, in Newtown, Conn., was upset that such an idea would be proposed.
“You can imagine what my reaction to that is,” the outraged mom said, declining any further comment.
Several other parents of young victims declined to comment when reached by FoxNews.com. Attempts to reach Veronique Pozner, who took Connecticut Gov. Dannel Malloy by the hand to show him her son's body at his open-casket funeral in December, were unsuccessful.
Pozner later told a reporter that she "owed it" to her son, the youngest of the Newtown victims, when asked why she wanted Malloy to see the damage to Noah Pozner's body.
"I owed it to him as his mother — the good, the bad, the ugly," Pozner told the Stamford Advocate. "It is not up to me to say I am only going to look at you and deal with you when you are alive, that I am going to block out the reality of what you look like when you are dead. And as a little boy, you have to go in the ground. If I am going to shut my eyes to that I am not his mother. I had to bear it. I had to do it."
Moore’s proposal would be a “horrendous offense” to relatives of the Sandy Hook tragedy, Dorrie Carolan, co-president of the Newtown Parent Connection, told FoxNews.com.
“For the families and the community, we just want to get back to a normal life and that would be a horrendous offense to the families,” Carolan said. “There’s no need for any of that.”
Carolan, who knows several of the victim’s families, said she could not imagine anyone connected to the mass shooting who would consider Moore’s idea to be a “positive” development.
“It’s going to be a long healing process and to dredge up pictures of the crime scene would not be a good thing,” she told FoxNews.com. “We want to remember the little angels as they were, with their happy expressions and faces and you want to think of the teachers trying to hold them safe and not to see the pictures of their bodies. I think it would be terrible.”
Most of the families in the “very, very close” community have begun participating again in activities in and around Newtown, Carolan said, but the cyclical grief process is far from over.
“When you see the families, you want to acknowledge them, you want to hug them, but you don’t want to pry,” she said. “You don’t want to bring it up to them. So nobody really knows what to do. Nobody really knows what we should be doing … But to dredge up pictures would just take us backwards.”
In the weeks following the attack, several parents spoke out on the gun debate, with many saying the shootings cried out for new gun control laws and others saying such measures were not the answer.
When Neil Heslin, whose son Jesse was among the victims, spoke at a Connecticut legislative hearing on gun control, he challenged those in attendance to explain why citizens should be allowed to own assault weapons.
“Not one person can answer that question,” he said, after beseeching the crowd to reply.
When a member of the audience answered: ”Second Amendment shall not be infringed,” several media outlets reported that the distraught father had been “heckled” by gun rights advocates, though the videotape showed that was not the case.
FoxNews.com's Perry Chiaramonte contributed to this report.
