The mass shooting in Uvalde, Texas, last week was just one of countless mass shootings we’ve had in this country going back years.
But there is something about this horrific shooting that seems to have impacted Americans more than other horrific shootings. Perhaps because it involved children. Or maybe because it happened only a week ago and we’re still in shock over it.
Sadly, however, the country will do what it always does. It will argue over gun laws, everyone will send their “thoughts and prayers” and we will move on to whatever is next in the news cycle. Former CNN anchor Brooke Baldwin wrote about mass shootings for The Atlantic with the headline, “Don’t Let the Cameras Turn Away.”
Baldwin recounted many of the mass shootings she covered during her career. And she wrote, “I see it differently this time, removed from the race to rush to Texas and the pressure to land interviews with victims’ families surrounded by the makeshift vigils of flickering candles, teddy bears, and crime tape. Let me tell you what will happen: The news media will be in Texas through this weekend, and then news executives will start paring down the coverage next week. The conversation has already turned to politics, as some pundits urge a focus on mental health and others on guns. Some journalists will try to hold our elected representatives’ feet to the fire. A segment or two will go viral. Americans will share their outrage on social media. And then another story will break next week, and the news cycle will move on.”
Then Baldwin offered a suggestion that is controversial, but worth considering. She wrote, “Having been part of the cable-news machine for more than a decade, I have a few ideas about how it can be fixed. Some of the children at Robb Elementary needed to be identified by DNA because their bodies had been ripped apart by assault-style weapons. I remember standing in silence as I watched one tiny white casket wheeled out of a funeral home when I was covering Sandy Hook in 2012. I had the thought then: Would minds change about guns in America if we got permission to show what was left of the children before they were placed in the caskets? Would a grieving parent ever agree to do this? I figured this would never happen. But perhaps now is finally the time to ask.”
Baldwin isn’t the first to bring up this idea. It’s been a topic of conversation since the school shooting in Texas, and even before that.
Susie Linfield, who teaches cultural journalism at New York University, wrote a guest essay for The New York Times on Tuesday: “Should We Be Forced to See Exactly What an AR-15 Does to a 10-Year-Old?”
Linfield wrote, “Photographic images can bring us close to the experience of suffering — and, in particular, to the physical torment that violence creates — in ways that words do not. What does the destruction of a human being, of a human body — frail and vulnerable (all human bodies are frail and vulnerable) — look like? What can we know of another’s suffering? Is such knowledge forbidden — or, alternately, necessary? And if we obtain it, what then?”
Many have used the example of Emmett Till, a 14-year-old Black child murdered by white racists in Mississippi in 1955. His mother insisted on an open casket so the world could see how he was tortured. A photo taken by Jet magazine was seen across the globe and is believed to have played a role in the civil rights movement.
Linfield wrote, “In the case of Uvalde, a serious case can be made — indeed, I agree with it — that the nation should see exactly how an assault rifle pulverizes the body of a 10-year-old, just as we needed to see (but rarely did) the injuries to our troops in the Iraq and Afghanistan wars. A violent society ought, at the very least, to regard its handiwork, however ugly, whether it be the toll on the men and women who fight in our name, on ordinary crime victims killed or wounded by guns or on children whose right to grow up has been sacrificed to the right to bear arms.”
“But,” Linfield continued, “seeing and doing are not the same, nor should they be. Images are slippery things, and it is both naïve and arrogant to assume that an image will be interpreted in only one way (that is, yours) and that it will lead to direct political change (the kind you support). Anti-abortion activists frequently wave images of fetuses at their rallies; these photos denote, to them, a nascent human being in need of protection. To abortion rights advocates, the image is sentimental, manipulative and, frankly, disgusting.”
Linfield went on to write, “In the case of Uvalde, all of this remains, for the most part, theoretical. It is highly unlikely that the grieving parents would ever consent to the publication of images of their children and equally hard to imagine that the pictures would not circulate on sites that would dishonor, if not defile, the victims. Images of dead children, after all, are different from all others. Children represent both innocence and promise — represent, in fact, our belief in the future. To see them violated elicits instinctual reactions of pity, anger, grief and shame. The question, though, is what we do with that vortex of emotions once it has been unleashed.”
Linfield then concludes — smartly — that lawmakers should see such disturbing visuals, but it would still be up to people — not photographs — to make changes. As Linfield wrote, “Don’t ask images to think, or to act, for you.”
Answering questions
Check out The Washington Post’s Amber Phillips, Steven Rich, John Woodrow Cox and Seung Min Kim answering reader questions about gun violence.
The question of publishing photos also came up in that roundtable. Cox, who has written extensively about children and gun violence, said, “I don't foresee newspapers breaking from tradition any time soon and publishing the images, but I have raised the idea that lawmakers — especially those who refuse to consider any new gun safety reform — should look at the images. If they are insistent on 18-year-olds (or anyone else) owning weapons of war, they should understand what those weapons do to children.”
The entire conversation is worth your attention.
Powerful tweet
I had to mention this tweet sent out by rapper, producer and actor Ice-T. It has several silhouettes holding rifles. It then says:
If the shooter turns out to be …
Hispanic: “Build a wall!”
Arab: “Ban Muslims!”
Black: “BLM are terrorists!”
White: “We need to ask ourselves how are we as a society failing these poor troubled young men? What kind of movies, video games, and music are we making?”
Above it, Ice-T wrote, “American BS.”
He’s not wrong, especially if you’ve listened to many on the right, including right-wing media, following the mass shooting in Buffalo.
21 minutes of silence
On Tuesday, the media in Texas went silent for 21 minutes to honor the 21 victims killed in the mass shooting in Uvalde.
Katrice Hardy, executive editor of The Dallas Morning News, wrote, “We’re asking you to silence your social accounts Tuesday from noon until 12:21 p.m. so the people of Uvalde can feel our support from all over Texas.”
Many newsrooms across the state took part in the 21 minutes of silence, including the Houston Chronicle, The Texas Tribune, Austin American-Statesman, San Antonio Express-News and several TV and radio stations.
Interesting story of the day