John,
I’m the Vice President of HR at Brady but I’m coming to you today as a gun violence survivor. My father was heinously shot and killed on Easter Sunday eight years ago. The attack was filmed and posted online and it still haunts me and my family.
Last week, three days after what would have been my father’s 83rd birthday, another traumatic video circulated online. Charlie Kirk was brutally shot and killed and the footage was posted for the world – and his family – to see again and again.
That’s why I wanted to raise my voice and speak to this experience that is so personal to me. Speaking about my father’s murder is not always easy, but I know how important it is to use my experience to hopefully stop the next family from experiencing grief. I hope you’ll take the time to read my Op-Ed below, published recently in USA Today.
Thank you for being in this fight every day, John, your support means more than you can know.
Brenda Joiner
Gun Violence Survivor
Vice President, Human Resources & Operations
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My Op-Ed in USA Today
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In 2017, my family suffered an unimaginable loss: My father, Robert Godwin Sr., was gunned down while on an Easter Sunday walk.
His death was not only sudden and brutal – it was recorded. And that video of his shooting, like so many others in our digital age, continues to haunt my family. It resurfaces on social media platforms and websites without warning, dragging us back into the darkest moments of our lives. Each time, we are forced to relive the trauma, scrambling to contact platforms and beg them to remove the footage.
The pain never leaves. It is renewed with every reappearance.
This is why I am so alarmed at the recent, widespread circulation of videos of Charlie Kirk’s assassination. Regardless of where you fall on the political spectrum, the permanence of such horrific content will have lasting consequences for Kirk’s wife, children, parents and friends. Just as my sisters, brother and I continue to live with the endless replay of our father’s final moments, so too will Kirk’s young children face a future where the specter of their father’s graphic shooting retraumatizes without compassion or restraint.
They don’t deserve that – just as my family doesn’t deserve to be confronted by my father’s death whenever we log online.
And they are not the only ones impacted. There is damage inflicted upon the vast number of Americans who were confronted – by choice or against their will – with video of Kirk’s assassination. We are living in an age where we can watch and replay – again, by choice or against our will – real-life horrors with a click or simple scroll.
Exposure to violent videos is hurting all of us. According to researchers, this exposure is pulling us into cycles of mental and physical distress and, often, feelings of helplessness. Recent polls show that 1 in 6 Americans report that they have personally witnessed a shooting.
But what do we make of the millions more Americans who are digitally exposed to these graphic traumas? Traditional victim and bystander tallies can no longer account for the mental, psychological and physical harm of our country’s gun violence crisis.
For my family, we don’t just want the freedom for all Americans to live without fear of gun violence in daily life, but also to live without fear of traumatizing images of gun violence every time they access the internet.
We are not unique.
Across the country, survivors of violence and their families carry the same burden, pleading with tech companies for humanity and dignity. But we can each take steps online and offline to reduce the trauma caused by our nation’s gun violence crisis, trauma that compounds each and every day when an additional 327 people are shot.
Especially as proactive content moderation decreases on certain social media platforms, if you encounter disturbing content that violates social media companies’ community standards, report it immediately. If you follow accounts sharing such content, unfollow them.
Urge your friends, family, colleagues and greater social circle to also report content they are confronted with and unfollow accounts.
Turn off autoplay or limit sensitive content via social media application settings.
Further, we must all resist the urge to share or engage with the content – even to shame the original poster – as that will just increase its reach and harm.
But, videos of gun violence won't really stop until shootings do.
Our nation’s daily gun violence crisis and high-profile shootings like Kirk’s assassination – and the Evergreen High School shooting in Colorado that happened the very same afternoon – also demand action by our elected officials. We must collectively support sensible gun safety policies that will decrease the likelihood of the bloodshed we experienced on Sept. 10.
We know what that means: There are plenty of sensible, popular gun safety solutions – from universal background checks to assault weapons ban to safe storage to extreme risk laws – that are entirely consistent with the Second Amendment. For example, there are few political stances as popular as universal background checks, which a Fox News poll found nearly 90% of Americans support, including large majorities of Democrats, Republicans and gun owners.
To stop these tragedies before they happen, we need to hit pause, not replay. We need to commit to disrupting the endless cycle of shooting after shooting. I truly believe that if we can each step back and say "enough is enough," we can put a stop to the trauma, and we can end our nation's gun violence crisis.
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