Some pictures are worth a thousand words. Others are worth 4,000 Facebook comments.
An image of a 3-year-old girl in the bathroom at her Michigan home has gone viral, being shared over 30,000 times since it was posted on June 15. The photo of the girl standing on a toilet seat, resting one hand against a wall to keep her balance, has become an unlikely icon for the support of gun-control laws.
Facebook user Stacey Feeley posted the shot of her daughter, who was purportedly practicing a "lockdown drill" that she was taught by staff members at her preschool. The girl was showing how she could remain hidden and quiet in a bathroom stall if an active-shooter situation happened at school.
In the lengthy Facebook post, Feeley claimed she initially thought her daughter was doing something funny.
"At that moment, all innocense (sic) of what I thought my 3-year-old possessed was gone," Feeley wrote. "Politicians - take a look. this is your child, your children, your grandchildren, your great-grandchildren and future generations to come."
Later in the post, Feeley writes about the need for universal background checks, a universal registration database and other gun-control measures.
"I am not pretending to have all the answers or even a shred of them, but unless you want your children standing on top of a toilet, we need to do something," Feeley concluded.
Clint Davis is a reporter for the Scripps National Desk. Follow him on Twitter @MrClintDavis.
