MAD Magazine Gets Serious as it Advocates for Stricter Gun Laws

Ever since the Sandy Hook School shooting — which took the lives of 20 six and seven-year olds and six adult staff members  six years ago today — more and more Americans have been advocating for stricter gun laws. Still, little has changed due to the powerful NRA’s opposing any call to limit guns, arguing instead that schools should increase the number of armed guards and arm teachers.

MAD Magazine entered the school-hall fray in October with a grisly four-page comic strip  depicting 26 fictional children, one for each letter of the alphabet, who were or would soon become victims of a school shooting.

Credit: MAD Magazine

The four-page spread, “The Ghastlygun Tinies,” is fashioned after “The Gashlycrumb Tinies,” a 1963 alphabet book by American illustrator Edward Gorey, which depicted  grim and strangely comic deaths of children. Gorey’s ill-fated tykes get swept out to sea and thrown out of  sleighs. They fall down stairs or waste away.

Credit: MAD Magazine

“Sadly, times have changed and there’s basically one way most kids seem to die now,” states the introduction to MAD’s graphic tale. The Gorey update “out-macabres” the original as it reports on the deaths of “Eve who’s idealistic … Greg who was caught unawares … Hiro who needs more than prayers …  Julie who’s too young to vote … and Stephen who’s planning for prom,” along with 21 other classmates doomed to die by a bullet shot on their school grounds.

The final victim, Zoe, bears a heart-wrenching epitaph that predicts she “won’t be the last.”

Statistics evidence the sad conclusion: A K-12 school shooting database created by the Naval Postgraduate School’s Center for Homeland Defense and Security  reports:

• There have been 1,300 school shooting incidents since 1970.
• This year had the greatest number of incidents since 1970, with 82 recorded incidents. The next highest year was 2006 with 59 incidents.
• This year also tallied the highest number — 51 — of victims killed (including the shooter.)

The MAD Magazine warning comes at a time when the unsettling increase in school shooting deaths seems to be rallying support for stricter gun laws. Those in favor of what has been described as sensible change spiked in polls after the 17 fatalities suffered at the Margory Stoneham Douglas High School in South Florida earlier this year. Roughly 2 in 3 Americans now say gun control laws should be made more strict, compared with just 1 in 4 who oppose stricter gun laws. According to Marie Claire magazine, 33 pro-gun control lawmakers will support common-sense gun reform in 2019. A time when real life takes a satirical statement made by MAD Magazine seriously may be on the horizon.