Name an atrocity in recent years, and there’s almost definitely footage of it. Whether it’s on security cameras, phone cameras, dashboard cameras, ATM cameras, or just plain camera cameras (if those even still exist). If a person has been murdered in cold blood, chances are you can watch the distant, grainy footage right in the comfort of your living room. Now, of course you don’t want to watch it. Who would?
This is completely understandable for dozens of reasons. You might not want to watch it because of sheer repulsion. You might not want to watch it because of the idea that human life, no matter how invincible we may feel, can end at any moment, and there’s nothing we can do about it. It feels invasive to watch someone die. It feels absolutely wrong to peer into someone’s final moments without permission.
On the morning of Aug. 26, 2015, thousands of people in the Roanoke-area of Virginia and across the United States had no choice but to bear witness to the final moments of two innocent lives. As we all know, a crazed former employee (we’ll refrain from giving him the credit of using his name) of WDBJ shot and killed two journalists, Alison Parker and Adam Ward, during a live broadcast. He also shot and wounded Vicki Gardner, executive director of the local chamber of commerce, who was being interviewed by Parker.
As if this wasn’t bad enough, the killer held a camera during the entire ordeal, and posted his view of the atrocity on Facebook just minutes later. Today, you won’t find a YouTube clip of this video or find it anywhere on social media. But that day, chances are you came across the 25-second video showing him walk up to the journalists and pull his gun at point-blank range. Some of us pressed play. Some of us came across it on Twitter and the video played automatically. Some of us scrolled by it and shuddered at the thought of what we could have just seen.
But you know what, I hope you watched it.
Yes, you read that right. I hope you watched it.
These two sentences may have made you recoil. You might think I’m crazy. But everyone should have taken the time to watch how two innocent people were stalked and murdered. You’re not a sick individual for seeing how Ms. Parker and Mr. Ward died, you’re human.
Gun violence has become entirely too prevalent in recent memory. As a result, our generation is almost desensitized to this kind of thing.
I remember hearing about the elementary school shooting in Newtown, Conn. in 2012. I remember being glued to my television screen with an absolutely sick feeling in my stomach as I watched the events unfold. I remember the conversation about gun violence that took place then.
I remember hearing about the shooting at the community college in Oregon earlier this month. I remember seeing it on Twitter, pausing for a moment, and continuing to scroll up. The news didn’t even take a toll on me. This is what our society, more or less, has come to. And of course, I remember the brief conversation about gun violence then.
When will this conversation end? When will it be resolved?
When you heard about the events that unfolded in Roanoke in August, you may have had a similar reaction. After all, when a school full of children is slaughtered, it’s a little difficult for the murder of two adults to break through your coping mechanism. Our natural response to this type of thing is to protect ourselves and others from pain, and seeing two journalists killed while doing their job is painful. In this video, there was no blurred bar covering the gruesome act, there was nothing to sanitize what we were seeing. In fact, too much of what we see today is sanitized and it makes us numb to the world around us. It makes us numb to gun violence.
Consider this: the first-person account of the journalists’ murder is not without value. It opens a door into a serious issue our country is dealing with. This is how shootings happen. A man with a gun walks up to an unsuspecting group of people and opens fire. It’s a window into shootings at schools, movie theaters, malls, anywhere. It reveals the issue that if a crazy person with a volatile background is not permitted access to a gun, then innocent lives would still be walking the earth today.
It’s one thing to see a photograph of someone who was murdered. It’s another thing to see them alive right in front of your face seconds before the trigger is pulled. But with all the sad aspects to this story, the saddest is that Alison Parker and Adam Ward will have died for nothing. Just a few weeks later, we were on to the next gun atrocity. A few weeks from now, we’ll be on to the next one. I can only hope that one day these tragedies will inspire someone to make a meaningful change.
