On what would have been her 44th wedding anniversary Wednesday, Yoko Ono said, she walked through a park, remembering how much she and her husband, John Lennon, had laughed and smiled on their wedding day. “Then I felt the emptiness more acutely because of the beautiful memory,†she said.
That evening, Ms. Ono, 80, posted on her Twitter account four antigun messages with an image of the blood-splattered glasses that Lennon was wearing when he was gunned down outside their Manhattan apartment building on Dec. 8, 1980.
With the photo, once used on a 1981 album cover and in a 2000 antigun billboard campaign, she wrote: “The death of a loved one is a hollowing experience. After 33 years our son Sean and I still miss him. Yoko Ono Lennon
She posted three other messages to her 3.7 million followers:
From Wednesday night through Friday afternoon, the four posts on Twitter were shared at least 43,000 times around the world, according to a data analysis by Gilad Lotan, vice president of research and development at Social Flow.
President Obama’s @barackobama Twitter account, managed by his former campaign team, retweeted it Thursday night to his 28 million followers.
Mr. Lotan, who created a data visualization of how the post was shared on Twitter, pointed out the tweets were shared by people from places like Ecuador and Australia, with about 11.6 percent of the posts shared in the United Kingdom alone. There was also, he said, a large number of responses from Mexico, plagued by years of gun violence and drug cartel wars.
Gilad Lotan, Social Flow. A data visualization of how Yoko Ono’s posts about gun violence were shared around the world on Twitter.In addition to Twitter, Ms. Ono also posted her message on her Facebook page, where thousands of people shared it. Hundreds of people left comments, with many thanking her for supporting new restrictions on guns and gun owners while others expressed annoyance that she was weighing in on the gun control debate.
In an interview Friday, Ms. Ono said she remained haunted by the shooting of 20 children and six staff members at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Conn., in December. “It was an incredible tragedy, and both my son and I are still suffering,†she said. “It is an emotion that I think I share with other widows and families who have lost their loved ones. â€
With the gun debate taking place around the country and in Washington, she said she thought it was time to speak up. “Many children were shot,†she said. “This is what I can do and I did it. It was painful for me but I did it.â€
Ms. Ono also said that she thought it was important for people to understand what happened to her husband, who was shot four times in the back. “Instead of just enjoying John’s beautiful songs, I wanted everyone to understand the reality of what happened to him,†she said.
Lennon was killed by Mark David Chapman, an obsessed fan, with a concealed .38-caliber handgun that had been purchased for $169 in Hawaii. Lawyers for Mr. Chapman presented an insanity defense, but he instructed them to enter a guilty plea. He is now serving a life sentence.
After Lennon died, Ms. Ono said she wanted to speak out against gun violence. “But I was so devastated,†she said. “It was not a time that I could do it. But maybe I should have,†she said, adding that she was also advised against making statements about guns because it could put her and her family in danger.
In 1981, she took the photograph of the bloodied spectacles resting on a window overlooking Central Park. The image was used for the cover of her 1981 album “Season of Glass.â€
Later, Ms. Ono did become a strong advocate for gun control as part of her overall peace advocacy work, which began when her husband was alive. In 2000, on the anniversary of Lennon’s death, she called for the world to reflect on the horrors of gun violence, comparing living in the United States to living in a war zone.
She also used the image of the bloodied glasses on billboards that she paid for to help carry her message in New York, Los Angeles and Cleveland. She used language similar to what she posted on Twitter this week on some of the billboards: “Over 676,000 people have been killed by guns in the U.S.A. since John Lennon was shot and killed on December 8, 1980.â€
The glasses themselves were also part of various museum exhibits over the years. At one time, she also put on display his belongings, which had been returned to her by the coroner’s office in a plain brown paper bag.
For now, Ms. Ono said she was hoping that social media could help spread the message.
On Friday, she posted a link to the organization that Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg helped start with mayors from around the country working to reduce gun violence.
“We have to all voice together that we need a peaceful world for our children, for our grandchildren,†she said. “This planet could be a beautiful, beautiful plant, and it can be done.â€
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