Rod Watson: Gelatin demo of ‘assault rifle’ damage is warning shot to gun owners

Not today. Not next week. Probably not even next year.

But eventually it’s going to happen. Or, at the very least, they will stop me and others from buying another one.

And when that happens, I won’t blame just my gun-controlling political enemies.

Instead, I also will blame allies in the gun-rights community who will make it possible by laying the groundwork for the George Floyd-like tipping point that inevitably will come. Just as Floyd’s death inexplicably catalyzed a movement in a way no prior videotaped police murders had done, there will be a large-scale killing with a semi-automatic rifle that will do the same for the gun-ban movement.

Granted, if the mass murders of those we claim to cherish most – senior citizens in a Buffalo supermarket, or babies in Newtown, Uvalde and now Nashville – didn’t spur significant action, it might be hard to imagine what will.

But two possibilities come to mind.

Emergency room doctors have long described the greater damage the typical AR-15 round, with its velocity and tumbling or yawing trajectory, does inside the body. However, the gelatin-block demonstrations that have become a recent staple of TV news coverage are much more dramatic – and visually powerful. 

How long will it be before that gelatin cube is turned into a child-sized gelatin mannequin with blue eyes and blond hair – our preferred standard of innocence – and ripped apart on national television?

Even more impactful, how long will it be before some distraught parent, irate and seeing no other option after years of inaction, does what Emmett Till’s mother did when she reached a similar breaking point in the fight for racial justice? An open casket with the obliterated head or body of a child stuck by a round from an AR-style rifle – or even just the photographs – will unalterably shift the political debate.

Already, Gallup polling over the years has consistently shown large…