True Horror of Gun Violence in Russian Ambassador Assassination Photos

The picture accosted me without warning from my Facebook feed. It looked like a scene from some idiotic action film. A man in a suit sprawled on the floor, flat on his back. Next to him another man in a suit wielded a gun pointed at the ground. People in the distance scattered for cover.

But the photograph didn’t come from an action film. The men in the photo were all too real: one the Russian ambassador to Turkey, the other his assassin. By the time I saw the photo on my Facebook feed, both were dead.It took a few seconds before I realized what I was seeing. There seemed to be a disconnect between my eyes and my brain. I couldn’t process the images. I knew what I was seeing, but my brain couldn’t remove the filter that identified such scenes as fiction.Eventually, I put it all together though, and the gravity of the image became clear. I was looking at a photo of a dead human being, seconds after the other man in the photo killed him.The first question that came to my mind—before wondering who either man was, before thinking of the victim’s family, or the potential international crisis that might result—was, “Why the hell would they post such a graphic photo?”My next thought: “That’s the sort of sensationalism the media loves.”I read the article and discovered details of what happened. But as horribly as the events were portrayed via the written word, the image made it seem even worse.But this is one instance in which I think the image is more important than the words.Publishing the photo isn’t sensationalism. One man shot and killed another man. Reading that sentence will make you think one thing. But seeing this picture will make you think another.

The picture captures the true horror in ways that words can’t.And maybe we need to capture that true horror in this country.I’ve written about guns before. Many times. I’m no fan of them. And despite the wishes of an overwhelming majority of the American public, members of Congress have been too cowardly to pass any effective gun violence legislation.Part of the reason for such inaction is that no matter what horrors abound due to this country’s fetishizing of guns, most of us are removed from those horrors. Despite my emotional reactions to the various gun tragedies that have occurred in this country, I can’t think about gun violence in the same way that someone who has experienced it first-hand.Pictures such as those above help break down that wall between experiencing terror and reading about terror.In 1968, after the assassinations of JFK, Dr. King, and RFK, Congress passed the Gun Control Act of 1968. The act created a minimum age and serial number requirements, restricted shipping guns across state lines, required ID to purchase certain ammunition, and extended a gun ban to cover mentally ill and drug addicts.The NRA president at the time, Franklin Orth, said that even though parts of the law appeared “unduly restrictive, the measure as a whole appears to be one that the sportsmen of America can live with.”The NRA president said that his organization could “live with” a bill even though it was “unduly restrictive.”That’s not the only time the NRA took a sane position. A few years before, when Congress wanted to pass a bill banning mail order sales, which is how Lee Harvey Oswald obtained the gun with which he killed JFK, Orth said, “We do not think that any sane American, who calls himself an American, can object to placing into this bill the instrument which killed the president of the United States.”So what caused the NRA to take such positions?Perhaps they had no choice. The Zapruder film captured footage of the president’s head exploding, a fountain of brain matter and blood. Days later, his assassin was murdered on live television.Then, almost five years later, a 17-year-old busboy, Juan Romero, cradled RFK in a pool of blood after he was shot in the head. A Life magazine photographer captured the moment.Two of America’s most important and influential leaders were killed by gun violence, and we saw the devastation with our own eyes.

Imagine if pictures of the horrendous inhumanity of Columbine, Aurora, or Tucson were widely disseminated. I shutter to think what pictures of Sandy Hook would have looked like. From time-to-time I think of a couple of the descriptions I read from parents of the victims, and it’s almost too much.How could anyone see pictures of such horror and then decide not to act? Would a Senator vote against sensible gun control legislation when faced with photographic evidence of the weapon’s barbaric handiwork? And if he or she did vote against such legislation, would the voting public, who also saw such images, ever forget how that Senator voted?These images are troubling. They’re sensationalist. But they’re real. They should make us uncomfortable because that discomfort is the only way our elected officials will be forced to act.So the next time there’s a mass shooting in this country—and it will happen again, it always happens again—I hope someone publishes graphic photos of the aftermath.And those of us who have been pushing for sensible gun legislation will say to those who opposed gun legislation—gun rights advocates, the NRA, cowardly Senators—the same thing that Jackie Kennedy said when she resisted cleaning herself up after leaving Dallas: “Let them see what they’ve done.”Click here to receive an e-mail each time I write a new post! Guaranteed spam-free, unsubscribe any time IF YOU LIKED THIS POST I BET YOU'LL ALSO LIKE: Serious Questions For Those Who Oppose Gun LawsPREVIOUS POST: Thinking of the Sandy Hook Victims Four Years Later

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