They Saw the Horrific Aftermath of a Mass Shooting. Should We?

[Swede]

Gift article

The crime-scene investigators are the ones who document, and remember, the unimaginable. This is what they saw at Sandy Hook.


https://www.nytimes.com/2023/04/20/magazine/sandy-hook-mass-shooting-scenes.html?unlocked_article_code=Ys8qQumhFggtKrH62Bv370QlgttTEuYGMijBunSTYUrlzvbpEAJKSFvkdDogGODorPJsSpOXKateqHd692klOXS3_ExdqnN1BPXNA9e4LPDKATNOp_IjsXMDkIOFdLIQcuvB33o4GDddEMZQIZUiQz0IX_DQysJBnChAbkMnCGagca-so5ReMrhkrziZns4VLWo_z3dq75N5GdpCrkIC4hvPpliNE3LG5w1iPJIrlHM3Vc9lKM2nD0H_qinHKhMHkwS_MbfE5fV8btJek82aUf7sAQQNkr06Iz2E-Mz8VzBxKX7deUldY0fLVut8PiU8HLu6pBhhBp7EBdsIX_IVmjFISGTDwNRQ5Kc&giftCopy=4_Disclaimer&smid=fb-share&fbclid=IwAR20qL4Q2SzSpl8Dj9xWUkml5xCd403jq-GKN82fqgqJRzJqwbI9IBwpjc4

[Silent Type]

1. Gun owners should have to watch films annually, like they did with driving

students from at least the 1960s.

[Skittles]

4. they wouldn't care

they are driven by cowardice, they don't care who gets killed

[ret5hd]

9. If they get "aroused", do they pass or fail?

[Silent Type]

10. LOL. I'm good with that, and suspect many will exhibit a "Red Flag."

[usonian]

2. MSM cleans it.

A mass murder has the shock value of a walk-off base hit to center field.

There must be a respectful way to show how ugly and brutal these incidents are.

Otherwise, they are normalized.

[wnylib]

8. At least characters like Alex Jones should be required to

view the videos as part of the settlement when he lost his case. Every gory detail.

[brer cat]

3. May they all some day find peace.

I read the entire article, but I didn't want to see pictures.

[BigOleDummy]

5. I have tears...

running down I'm not ashamed to admit. I'll have RAGE in a little while. How can a so-called civilized nation allow this shit to happen?

[thucythucy]

6. The obvious analogy is to Emmett Till.

It was the publication of the photo of his mutilated body on the cover of Jet that galvanized the Civil Rights Movement and prompted a generation of activists to redouble their efforts.

I don't know that a single photograph would have the same effect today, but I think it would be worth a try. Of course it could only happen--should only happen--with the consent of the victim's loved ones.

The effects of guns on the human body are consistently and repeatedly sanitized by the mass media, where actors get "shot" and their wounds are too often neat little circles of "blood." Even the more graphic depictions are in effect sanitized by the audience knowing that they're fiction.

Then again, the advent of slasher films may have desensitized entire generations.

We won't know until someone tries. Sadly, there are far too many "opportunities" waiting for this to happen.

[NullTuples]

7. Just as with Vietnam, the media has a responsibility to show Americans the truth.

From an anonymous, now-archived letter sent to The Atlantic back in the mid-teens:

The media needs to show Americans the truth. Watching tonight's news coverage of the massacre, it was bizarrely possible to think of a mass shooting as a random event like a tornado that causes a community to rally together. Thoughts and prayers for all. Yet entirely missing from the coverage was the truth of what had happened. No pictures of pools of blood. No video of blown out brains. No images of dead children in pews.

Just as the tide of public opinion against the war in Vietnam did not turn until images of the war reached into American living rooms, today's epidemic of mass shootings will not end until Americans see and share in the bloody experience. Scalia's Heller decision will not join Taney's Dred Scott opinion in the ash heap of history until Americans are moved to action by indelible images from mass shootings of suffering and death.

So here is a plea to the media. Do not let decency standards shield us from this indecency. Show us the carnage and do not let Americans look away from what the NRA's lobbying has wrought.

[SpamWyzer]

11. Yes.

A picture is worth a thousand words and there are things you cannot unsee. YES! Show them on TV until it stops happening! Show Americans all the dead bodies of children. YES!