With the 199th mass shooting this year happening yesterday in Allen, Texas – we are asking: should the American public be confronted with images of gun violence?
We also review what gun control measures the GOP took out of Evers’s budget last week.
Check out this episode on Spotify and Apple Podcasts!
Gruesome images of the victims were shared widely on Twitter following the shooting, renewing the debate over whether media companies should show Americans the visceral impacts of gun violence on human bodies. News publishers have typically avoided showing graphic images but have made exceptions in some cases (for example, by publishing the photo of a girl suffering from a napalm attack during the Vietnam War).
On Saturday, a gunman fatally shot eight people, including children, and injured seven others, at an outlet mall in the Dallas suburb of Allen before he was killed by a nearby police officer responding to an unrelated call. Authorities have identified the attacker as 33-year-old Mauricio Garcia.
The gunman used an AR-15-style rifle in the attack and was wearing tactical gear. What motivated Garcia to open fire on innocent people shopping on a Saturday afternoon isn’t yet known, but police are investigating his connections to white supremacist ideology. According to law enforcement, Garcia had consumed and posted white supremacist and neo-Nazi content online.
The Gun Violence Archive, an independent research and data collection organization, defines a mass shooting as an event where at least four people were shot or injured, outside of the gunman. More than 14,500 people have also died from gun violence this year alone.
Explore a database of mass killings—defined as at least four deaths, excluding the offender, regardless of the type of attack—since 2006 here.
An overwhelming majority of American voters favor a wide variety of gun control measures and over half worry that they could be victims of gun violence, according to a Fox News poll out at the end of April:
Wisconsin is no different in its support for more gun control. And Gov. Evers again proposed a series of gun control and safety measures in his 2023-25 biennial budget.
And last week, the joint finance committee revoked just about all of them – despite large majorities of Wisconsin residents who support measures such as universal background checks and red flag laws.
Here are some other items marked for removal by Republicans:
Wisconsin selects five (5) Teachers of the Year (TOY) annually to represent Elementary Schools, Middle Schools, High Schools, and Special Services. Through an interview process, one of the five is selected to represent Wisconsin in the CCSSO National Teacher of the Year program. DPI considers all five of its TOYs as Teacher of the Year and does not give special designation to the one chosen to represent the state in the National Teacher of the Year program
So far, a New Berlin computer science teacher, Saghar Homayounpour, has been selected along with Claudia Heller de Messer, an English as Second Language teacher at Milwaukee Parkside School in Milwaukee Public Schools; and Rachel Kumferman, a school social worker at McKinley Elementary School in the Wauwatosa School District. The other two Wisconsin Teacher of the Year award winners have not yet been announced.
Sign up with your email address to get our weekly round-up and never miss an update.