Over the last two years, a surge in gun violence saw more people killed by assault-style weapons, hindering the propensity of open casket viewings after the recent mass shootings that help ease the healing process, reports NBC News. Morticians said individuals shot in the head from close range with handguns can still have open casket funerals, but not often in cases when the gunman used an assault-style weapon. Additionally, the strains put on morticians to evaluate the bodies of the deceased from assault weapons have become increasingly daunting.
The decline in embalming and rising gun violence propelled one mortician to add lessons on mass trauma reconstruction to his curriculum in Detroit about three years ago. Still, the most recent bipartisan gun legislation does not ban assault-style weapons nor raise the age for individuals who wish to buy one. “As I clean his wounds, I can feel pieces of that bullet in his back,” one individual testified to Congress, who was left with one bullet hole wound in his neck, two in his back and another in his left leg. “Now I want you to picture that exact scenario for one of your children.”