How can we confront the horror of mass shootings when we refuse to look at them?

What happens when a bullet strikes a body?

Yes, we know the basics: it enters and it exits. If the person being shot is a bad guy, it kills them on contact. And if the person is a good guy, they either shrug it off like one would a bug bite or they are able to deliver one last heartfelt soliloquy.

Or at least that how it happens on TV and the big screen.

In reality, a gunshot is much different. On the way in and out of the body, it can tear through flesh and bone, arteries and organs. Sometimes a gunshot is as clean as a Hollywood hit, but with a weapon like the AR-15, it isn’t.

According to the gun reform news organization The Trace, the difference is this: “When a bullet from a high-muzzle velocity weapon hits the intestines, it’s like an explosion, whereas a low-muzzle velocity can be very similar to a knife going through the intestines; there’s bleeding, but it doesn’t destroy the whole area. A high-muzzle bullet, however, destroys whole areas of body.

“With a bone that’s been shot with a standard-issue caliber handgun, you’ll see a break, a hole in the bone, and maybe some displacement. But a high-muzzle weapon shatters that bone into hundreds of microscopic pieces, in a way that cannot be repaired. You need to essentially clean out the bone that has been struck and remove it from the body; it’s now a worthless tissue.”

Now, I want you to imagine that happening to you. Not your spouse. Not your kids. Not your boo. You and only you. Imagine your intestines exploding, your bones shattering into hundreds of tiny, sharp pieces. Imagine the pain, the fear, the helplessness, the inescapable feeling of being utterly alone.

Tell me what you see. Tell me what you feel.

Nothing, right? You imagined all that and you experienced nothing.

It’s just like when you do a guided meditation at one of those Buddha and booze things. You go through the exercise, you try to see what the yoga-pants guru tells you to, but you see nothing, you feel nothing. And yet afterwards you gladly kick back with your friends over a cold one and proclaim that you saw beaches and rainbows and the smiling face of Bob Ross. It’s all bullshit. And right now, that’s something we need a lot less of.

As you know, last Wednesday America witnessed yet another school shooting, this time in Parkland, Fla. A madman opened fire with an AR-15, leaving 17 dead, 15 wounded, and an entire community traumatized.

After the initial shock subsided, the news cycle quickly fell into the formula it always does. Some politicians offered their thoughts and prayers, and others called for a ban on assault rifles.

Some of these words were said with conviction. Some were said with the intent to mislead. Others with a very concerned eye on the November elections.

In the end though, they were just words.

Yes, we all saw what could’ve been now-stock footage shots of children hurriedly leaving the school, police officers engaged in crime scene tasks, and grieving parents falling into the arms of family, friends, and strangers. But we never saw the dead as they were on the grounds of Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School.

Because of the time-honored mores regarding these matters and the need for news organizations to never offend their viewers, readers, or visitors, we didn’t see the end result of that violence on the very people to whom it matters most — the 17 victims.

This inability to face such horrors is odd given that the chief religious image of our culture is of a man nailed to a cross and left there to die. But perhaps even that unbelievable moment of torment and pain is little more than an abstraction to those who bow before it.

The truth is, we simply have no understanding of these violent deaths beyond a few vagaries. And that is why it’s important for newspapers and TV to publish the graphic photos of those who have been killed in a mass shooting.

Years ago, the media showed us the horrors of the war in Vietnam, and it helped change American opinion on that misguided confrontation. But today the media is unwilling to show the horrors of a war occurring right here in our own country.

If we are truly to fight horror, we must actually confront that horror. So far, we have been reluctant to look at little more than a sanitized version of that horror.

And as long as we in the media are complicit in hiding the truth, this nightmare will continue.