All day, I felt sick to my stomach over the live, on-air murders of a 24-year-old reporter and a 27-year-old cameraman at a shopping mall in Virginia. A disgruntled former colleague killed them, because he felt they had cost him his job, and other reasons.
I’m not often lost for words but anything I tried to write here – and there have been several drafts – seemed trite and self-serving. Yes, I once had a colleague threaten to kill me. But he didn’t. I’m for gun control, but anytime you say “control” and “gun” you get the NRA zealots crawling up your skirt, even if you assure them they can keep their legal weapons. And for the record, Flanagan bought his gun legally.
In the big picture, this shooting is no worse than dozens of other senseless, needless murders in America. The now-dead shooter, Bryce Williams aka Vester Flanigan, was fired two years ago, and he blamed Alison Parker and Adam Ward. For two years he seethed and schemed. He held onto that burning hate, blame and desire for revenge until it exploded on Wednesday, fueled by allegations of racism and homophobia. The station manager at WDBJ-TV said Flanagan was volatile and when they fired him after a series of incidents, they had to call police to remove him from the building.
Some say talking about gun control in the wake of a tragedy such as this is merely politicizing the situation. I say, it needs to be politicized. My heart breaks for Ward’s fiancee and Parker’s boyfriend, with whom she had just started living. Video of Parker and Ward’s final moments is making the rounds but I won’t watch it and I’m proud that my employer has decided that we won’t air it. I feel it’s only right to offer the victims a bit of dignity about their last moments alive.
They say that guns don’t shoot people; people shoot people. And there are many law-abiding citizens who own guns. But when a hateful, angry person means to do harm, he shouldn’t have access to a gun. That’s all I’m saying.