Roleplaying can be a powerful learning tool. Even life-changing. It just might work with all those members of Congress who voted to keep military-grade AR-15s available to civilians, and even refused to raise the age limit to buy one to 21.
Here’s how it could work: Each congressperson would be taken to a firing range, handed a loaded AR-15, and told to shoot all the bullets at a life-sized dummy that matched the density of a human body — preferably wearing the face of a loved one.
They could experience how those bullets don’t just make a few little holes. This style of weapon tears a target to bits; recall that some children in Uvalde were so pulverized that they couldn’t be visually identified.
Let the searing image of that horrendous destruction come unbidden to mind the next time they cast a vote for or against free, unfettered access to these terrible machines of death.
Fred Reklau
Oak Park
