Park City, Utah (CNN)Donald
Trump's recent remarks that he could "shoot somebody" and not lose
political support was an "insult" to communities struck by gun violence,
according to the director of a powerful new documentary about the mass
school shooting in Newtown, Connecticut.
"It
speaks to the insensitivity and the desensitization" surrounding the
issue, Kim Snyder, whose film "Newtown" debuted here at the Sundance
Film Festival, told CNN on Monday.
"Spending
three years in and around Newtown with survivors in that community, you
really do start to really understand the insult," she continued, "and
what it feels like when people are so cavalier in speaking about gun
violence in such an insensitive and cavalier way."
At
a rally in Sioux City, Iowa, on Saturday, Trump said, "I could stand in
the middle of Fifth Avenue and shoot somebody and I wouldn't lose
voters." Trump initially declined to respond to questions about what he
said, but told CNN's Wolf Blitzer on Monday he was "joking."
Hours
after Trump made his initial comment, Snyder and "Newtown" producer
Maria Cuomo Cole dined with former Congresswoman Gabby Giffords and her
husband, Mark Kelly. (Cuomo Cole is the sister of CNN "New Day" co-host
Chris Cuomo.)
Giffords and Kelly were
vocal about their disgust at what Trump said during the rally, Snyder
and Cuomo Cole said. Gabby Giffords survived a gunshot wound to the head
during a constituent event in Tucson, Arizona, in 2011 and now works
with her husband to promote gun safety legislation.
The Trump campaign didn't immediately respond to a request for comment from CNN.
For
Snyder, who arrived in Newtown six weeks after a 20-year-old gunman,
Adam Lanza, had fatally wounded 20 first graders, six educators, and his
mother on December 14, 2012, before turning one of his weapons on
himself, the political nature of the film is inescapable.
"You can't talk about Newtown," she said, "without talking about the conversation of guns and gun reform in the country."
The
documentary, which debuted here on Sunday, weaves elements of that
fight into the more deeply felt personal accounts provided by the
parents of three of the youngest victims.
They
come together in a searing April 2013 scene, following the Senate's
failure to agree on a compromise amendment that would have required
background checks on all commercial gun sales. It is a particular blow
for Mark Barden, whose son Daniel was among the youngest victims.
The
vote, Snyder says, was "incredibly demoralizing and incredibly
disappointing" to people like Barden, Nicole Hockley and David Wheeler.
All
three lost sons and their struggle, both to advance gun safety law and
manage their overwhelming grief, creates a gut-punch of a film.
"I
have this need to know what he experienced," Barden says in "Newtown,"
explaining the dizzying grief that colors his days. He asks parents to
contemplate trying "to interpret what your 7-year-old experienced as
he's being murdered in his first-grade classroom."
"We're all terrified of forgetting what he looked like or sounded like," Wheeler confesses, speaking about his son Ben.
Like
many of the parents interviewed, Wheeler's thoughts drift toward the
lonely hours, and "the tiny, minor questions that become huge questions
when you can't sleep at night." That, he says, is what drives his
activism.
But the film relies as much
on silence, and what its subjects withhold or cannot yet bear to
consider, as the details they choose to share.
A
doctor on duty at a local hospital at the time of the shootings
describes in detail what a bullet from an AR-15 rifle, the weapon used
by Lanza, does to the body of a six- or seven-year-old child. But he
does not speak about the one victim who made it to the emergency room
before succumbing.
Two emergency responders begin to explain what they found at the scene, only to pull back.
State Police Sgt. William Cario was the first to enter, but he too demurs.
"I don't think anyone needs to know specifically what we saw," he says.
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