Caffeinated Politics

I didn’t know much about Charlie Kirk until his death made headlines. I had heard his name, of course, but he was an asterisk in my mental filing cabinet, and if I had listed him anywhere, it would have been under the title of people who are famous for being famous. As we are at the one-year point since he was killed, it is a good time to talk about what lesson his death can teach our nation. Namely, the absurd level of gun violence that needs to be curtailed.

Many of us saw the raw videos of the moments when Kirk was struck by a bullet. It was gruesome and horrific and brutal in ways many people had never seen before following a shooting. Yet, this outcome of gun violence occurs daily across the nation, and we collectively blink. The videos were soon removed from social media, and it was that decision to shield the nation from seeing it that prompted me to think again about how this nation is protected from better understanding the scourge of gun violence

The Russian invasion of Ukraine and the dastardly crimes committed through orders from President Putin’s generals, along with the mass deaths that were perpetrated from the violence committed by Israeli Defense Forces in Gaza, make for graphic and painful images on news programming. But when it comes to the carnage in our own nation from gun violence, news editors trim the tape and sanitize the coverage.

That, I argue, is a problem.

News coverage of gun violence should not be stripped of its visceral reality. There must be an awareness in newsrooms of being much more frank about what is actually occurring many times each day when guns are fired at other people in this nation. Airing only sterile statistics, distant headlines, and sanitized videos or soundbites serves no purpose. This detachment breeds complacency among the citizenry. The media largely shielded the majority of the public from the graphic truth of what a bullet did to Kirk, as blood pumped out of a gaping neck wound. When our news media limits the scope of what happens by not airing graphic videos, it only aids in normalizing violence from guns, making it more abstract and easier to ignore as it becomes just another daily event.

I contend that journalists have a professional responsibility not just to inform, but to confront. When it comes to showing the raw, unfiltered consequences of gun violence, it can better inform and jolt viewers out of numbness and into awareness. That, too, is a role news reporters can play in their profession. They need to have the backing and support of their editors and station owners. (In a different time and in a different context, when working at WDOR radio, I did a week-long series that ran on most of the daily newscasts dealing with HIV and pressing how it was not a gay disease. It was a factual 3-minute report each day, but some listeners found it highly controversial. I never had more mail about an issue I worked on than from that one. The station owner, a conservative Republican then in his late 70s, took my side, as it was news reporting the way it should be undertaken.)

If this approach is taken, it would allow for a fuller and more meaningful coverage of the gun epidemic. It would force viewers to reckon with the issue. It would humanize victims by underscoring that a life was so ludicrously taken; it would expose the harsh brutality of endless supplies of guns in our society and underscore the urgency of gun control laws and reforms that are needed. Sanitized news coverage may protect the sensibilities of those who are too fragile to live in the world created by the NRA, but it also protects the status quo. If we want change, we must first see the cost of just doing more of the same.

As many will observe the tragic death of Kirk, I suggest that, as a nation, we might ponder how disgusting it is that so little ever gets done by legislative bodies to address gun violence. It was only a couple of days prior to the death of Kirk that we read about how police in Washington state arrested a 13-year-old boy accused of making threats to kill. When he was arrested, they found he had “everything ready to go to commit a mass shooting”, including a trove of more than 20 guns in his home.

As we think about Kirk this week, it is obvious to say that political violence is unacceptable. Full stop. But so are school shootings. Church shootings. Mall shootings. The list is endless. Kirk was shot from roughly 200 yards away. Think about that. That distance says a lot about what is happening in our nation. Not just that there was a soulless person with a gun, but that the shooter had the accessibility of firearms capable of such precision at such a range. We need a national reckoning when it comes to guns in America.

Over the 20 years I have written this blog, I have often made the main points about gun control clear. As many Americans reflect on what happened a year ago, I will list a few again.

• Enact universal background checks and red flag laws.

• Ban military-style high-powered rifles from being manufactured and sold for civilian use.

• Teach civic tolerance in schools, not just civics.

• Hold media platforms of all types accountable for amplifying violent rhetoric.

To stop the relentless, gut-wrenching loop of gun violence, the country has to finally stand up to the entrenched gun‑interest machine and its lobbyists.