Nearly 700 People In The U.S. Die From Gun Violence Each Week; A Memorial Honors Them
One of the first things visitors see as they walk through the ornate ground floor of Chicago's landmark Cultural Center is a cluster of four glass houses. Each has 700 glass brick openings a stark, physical reminder of the average number of people killed by guns each week in the country. Designers of the Gun Violence Memorial Project say just as the AIDS Memorial Quilt raised awareness about a deadly disease, they want their focus on victims of gunfire to bring widespread attention to what they consider another epidemic.
Each glass house contains some empty bricks, while other bricks are labeled with names, birthdays and the dates people died. The spaces hold small pieces of who they were a hairbrush, pieces of jewelry, a photograph. Pam Bosley stands near the space she filled with a diorama and her face lights up as she talks about her 18-year-old son, Terrell Bosley.
"Terrell loved to go to church so I have a church, and he loved family so it's a picture of us as a family," she says.
Terrell Bosley was a college student who played the bass in church bands and sang in church choirs. In 2006, he was gunned down in a church parking lot while he helped a friend unload drums from a car. Bosley wears pictures of her son on a pendant necklace and a bracelet. She says the diorama also shows how much he loved music.
https://www.npr.org/2020/02/04/802336681/nearly-700-people-die-from-gun-violence-each-week-in-the-u-s-a-memorial-honors-t
Of particular note is the following statement from the article: "
When you understand how many households have guns in them, how many gun violence deaths, how many suicides take place in a household, etc. We wanted to be able to metaphorically bring in that information through the form of the houses," Williams says."
All civil rights are subject to regulation, but the far right-wing gun humpers through their blood-soaked gun lobby, the NRA, have bought and paid for legislation protecting the gun industry and its dealers from even the most basic of logical regulations. Public awareness is growing, and a reversal of asinine gun permissiveness is happening in communities across the nation.