Famed “Jack and Diane” singer John Mellencamp reacted to the Kansas City Chiefs parade shooting by calling for more gun control and urging news outlets to “be brave enough” to publish photos of slain children.
Mellencamp used a post to X to say: “Excuse me for stating the obvious truth. I do so out of love for this country and the pain of learning, once again, that children have been killed by gun violence. If we as a country want to find the collective will within ourselves to change our gun laws, let’s stop playing silly political games.”
He then pressed for the crime scene photos of slain children and others: “Show the American people the dead children and others who have been struck down. Show us what guns and bullets can do to the human body.”
Excuse me for stating the obvious truth. I do so out of love for this country and the pain of learning, once again, that children have been killed by gun violence. If we as a country want to find the collective will within ourselves to change our gun laws, let’s stop playing… pic.twitter.com/s0fnlwa14Z
— John Mellencamp (@johnmellencamp) February 16, 2024
Mellencamp then pointed to the way the media began reporting in Vietnam, citing it as an example of what he wants them to do now:
When I was a teenager, there was a war in Vietnam. In the beginning, no one paid much attention to this problem in a foreign land until the media shouldered the responsibility and showed America how our sons were being slaughtered. Once those images were shown on TV, there was overwhelming demand for that war to be ended immediately.
He did not mention that the American media reported as they did because they were working with public relations goals put forward by North Vietnamese leader Ho Chi Minh.
Mellencamp ended his post to X by writing “Show America the carnage. I am not being callous, and I know it will be painful to see. But, sad to say, I think it’s the only way to shock America out of its stupor.”
The singer did not mention that the two individuals charged in the shooting are juveniles who allegedly committed their crime in a state with numerous gun laws in place regarding the legal age for gun purchases and gun possession. For example, Giffords notes that “Missouri prohibits ‘recklessly’ selling, leasing, loaning, giving away or delivering any firearm to a person under age 18 without the consent of the child’s custodial parent or guardian.”
In June 2022, the U.S. Senate passed the Bipartisan Safer Communities Act;, a gun control package that was pushed through after the May 27, 2022, Uvalde school shooting Mellencamp considered the gun control too weak a response to the shooting and used an X post to say, “Just so you know, anyone that’s reading this … politicians don’t give a f— about you, they don’t give a f— about me, and they don’t give a f— about our children.”
AWR Hawkins is an award-winning Second Amendment columnist for Breitbart News and the writer/curator of Down Range with AWR Hawkins, a weekly newsletter focused on all things Second Amendment, also for Breitbart News. He is the political analyst for Armed American Radio and a pro-staffer for Pulsar Night Vision. He was a Visiting Fellow at the Russell Kirk Center for Cultural Renewal in 2010 and holds a Ph.D. in Military History, with a focus on the Vietnam War (brown water navy), U.S. Navy since Inception, the Civil War, and Early Modern Europe. Follow him on Instagram: @awr_hawkins. You can sign up to get Down Range at breitbart.com/downrange. Reach him directly at
