Yoko Ono Tweets Photo of John Lennon’s Bloody Glasses To Protest Gun Violence

It’s a haunting image. A pair of glasses resting on a windowsill with the New York City skyline blurred in the background. The left lens is spattered with blood.

Yoko Ono tweeted the photo four times Wednesday on the 44th anniversary of her wedding to John Lennon. Each tweet had a slightly different message.

• Over 1,057,000 people have been killed by guns in the USA since John Lennon was shot and killed on 8 Dec 1980.
• 31,537 people are killed by guns in the USA every year. We are turning this beautiful country into war zone.
• Together, let’s bring back America, the green land of peace.
• The death of a loved one is a hollowing experience. After 33 years our son Sean and I still miss him. Yoko Ono Lennon

John and Yoko were married March 20, 1969, and they used their celebrity and the press to speak to young people around the world about peace. Lennon told Rolling Stone, “We decided that if we were going to do anything like get married that we would dedicate it to peace. And during that period, because we are what we are, it evolved that somehow we ended up being responsible to produce peace.”

The couple invited the press into their Amsterdam hotel room every day for a week between 9 am and 9 pm as they answered questions and talked about peace from bed.

When a reporter asked, “So Everybody should throw out his part of Hitler out of his soul, then?” Lennon answered:

“In a way, we’re saying ‘we want peace’ and we’re staying in bed for peace, but I’m as violent as the next man, and I’m sure yoke is just as violent just as well. We’re violent people, you know. I prefer myself when I’m non-violent. I prefer me friends when they’re non-violent. It just makes for easier living and if we have to have violence, let’s channel it. You know, I don’t know how, you know. There’s other people can work out how to channel it, or give them somewhere to play and kill each other or something. But I don’t want to be involved in their violence. I prefer to live in peace, you know.”

It was almost like John Lennon predicted video games. This is audio from John and Yoko’s Bed In:

UPDATE: President Obama’s official account retweeted the image to his 28 million followers on Twitter.