In a nation of rising gun violence, should images of the fatalities be made public? Or are words more powerful?
In his televised remarks from the White House press room a week after the Uvalde shooting—a year ago May 28th— actor Matthew McConaughey, a Uvalde native, spoke to national reporters in the White House press room. He held up a child’s shoe with a hand-drawn heart on it.
He said it belonged to one of the 10-year-olds killed by the teen gunman using an AR-15, at close range. It’s a military weapon designed to blow targets apart. Built for war, its bullets travel with speed and fierce velocity that can decapitate a person, or leave a body looking “like a grenade went off in there,” Peter Rhee, a trauma surgeon at the University of Arizona, told WIRED magazine recently. This type of assault weapon has become a signature of school shootings and other mass shootings across the country. There are still no restrictions limiting its sale to 18-year-olds in Texas, nor in other states.
“Maite wore green, high-top Converse with a heart she had hand-drawn on the right toe because they represented her love of nature,” McConaughey told reporters. Then, pointing toward a new pair of green Converse shoes his wife held in her lap, he said, “These are the same green Converse on (Maite’s) feet, that turned out to be the only clear evidence that could identify her after the shooting.” It was the first time anyone had tried to describe, in any detail, to a national audience, the devastation the Uvalde gunman’s assault rifle had wrought inside the girl’s classroom. “How about that?” he concluded, then left the podium.
McConaughey’s attempt to describe the gun used and the kind of damage it is designed to create, was powerful in its simplicity and told in a way most people could both feel and understand. These weren’t bloody bullet holes one might see in a police drama on Netflix. The fatal wounds Maite suffered along with many of the 18 other fourth graders killed that day at close range were left with no chance of survival. There was no need to call an ambulance—just a need for DNA samples from family members so the ravaged bodies would be possible to identify.
McConaughey didn’t elaborate, but later reports confirmed Maite had been shot in the face, her head nearly decapitated; her body ravaged, except for that green Converse shoe still left on one of her feet.
Fast forward to now. As we near the one-year anniversary of the Uvalde shooting, there still hasn’t been much, if any, visual imagery shared from that deadly day, save for the release of a little more video of police inside the school, keeping themselves away from the shooter. Authorities still aren’t sharing photographs or video evidence clips of what they eventually found after the shooter was finally put down an hour after his shooting spree began.
Journalists also don’t have many photos to share, as they were forbidden by authorities to take pictures inside the school; any photos shared by police with the media were not published by local and national newspapers out of respect for the families of the children who died.
But the lack of a photographic record, or visual evidence of what happened beyond the video of the police’s inadequate response, raises an age-old question and debate among journalists. Refraining from sharing horrific photos can be seen as being ethical and empathetic to families of victims, respecting their privacy. But not sharing them, or at least some, also hides some of the truth about the shooting, and prevents people from having powerful evidence to share nationally about the destruction an AR-15 can cause at close range—evidence that could be used to advocate more strongly for new laws designed to regulate the sale of military weapons to civilians in a way that everyone (or at least more people) might understand. Some argue that failing to share photos of the injuries these children suffered makes it easier for pro-gun lobbyists to fight regulation.
Today, there still are no such gun sale restrictions keeping teens from buying these military-grade weapons, and no new gun laws under serious consideration on Capitol Hill. Have the hundreds of mass shootings occurring after Uvalde diminished our memory of it? Would a photographic record of the violence keep public (and policymakers’) memories alive during an election year?
“Observing from the front lines, then sharing what I saw—it makes me feel a bit like a fraud. Am I traspassing? Sharing sacred secrets that are not my stories to tell? I hope not.”
Actor Matthew McConaughey, speaking at a White House press conference
Photos have always been able to advance causes and clarify the context of the complex events and issues challenging society today. Consider Lynsey Addario’s photos of the war in Ukraine, or the Guardian newspaper’s famous decision to publish a photo of a dead, 2-year-old Syrian boy washed up, drowned, lying face down on a Turkish beach following a failed attempt by his family to reach Europe from Turkey during the 2015 European refugee crisis. And we can’t soon forget the videos of George Floyd’s last moments. Visual records can change society’s perspectives of a social problem. All of these images, and so many more, made global headlines and caused dramatic upturns in local, national and international concern over the social and political issues the photographs revealed.
Since the Uvalde shootings, there have been more than 105 incidents of gunfire at K-12 schools, according to the advocacy group, Everytown for Gun Safety. Should storytellers, journalists, gun policy nonprofits and creatives gather and share horrific images from these events to keep policymakers focused on efforts to create limits on the sale of AR-15s to civilians? Or do words feel more appropriate when finally uttered by someone like McConaughey from a national stage?
Let us know your thoughts. We’ll share your feedback in another post.
Photo, top: A memorial for 61 people killed in 2017 by a shooter using the 32nd floor of a Las Vegas Strip hotel to open fire from an AR-15 onto a concert crowd gathered below.