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Keenan: Late journalistâs parents vow to bring change

Virginia TV reporter Alison Parkerâs parents are determined to set a course toward meaningful gun control








Marney Rich Keenan, The Detroit News Published 6:05 p.m. ET Sept. 3, 2015 Andy Parker, father of Alison Parker, is comforted by a family member of Parkerâs boyfriend and colleague, Chris Hurst, after an interfaith service.(Photo: Stephanie Klein-Davis / Getty Images)


Another day, another mass shooting, another set of parents vow to stop the insanity, and the most heavily armed civilian population in the world figures this, too, shall pass.

This time, the carnage was particularly heinous because it occurred on live television. Alison Parker and Adam Ward, two 20-something journalists for WDBJ-TV in Roanoke, Virginia, were executed by a mad man with a gun in the midst of a live interview.

For those of us who did not turn away despite a CNN anchorâs warning, Parkerâs screams âOh my God!â â as the 24-year-old beloved daughter, friend and fiancÃ© fell dead â were almost unbearable.

But the operative word here is âalmost.â Because after I shuddered to think what I would do if I were that poor girlâs mother, I got in the car, drove to work and went on with my life unfettered.

You have to wonder: with each successive mass shooting, are we becoming more inured to the root cause? When are we going to reach our tipping point? When will the headlines stop repeating themselves? When will reducing gun violence stop falling on deaf ears? When is it going to be too close to home?

Within days, Parkerâs parents, Andy and Barbara Parker, turned their anguish into impassioned gun control advocacy, writing op-eds and appearing on numerous networks.

âI plan to make my lifeâs work trying to implement effective and reasonable safeguards against this happening again,â Andy Parker wrote in the Washington Post. âWhat do we need to do stop this insanity? In my case, the answer is âWhatever it takes.â â

Barbara Parker vowed not to buckle under the pressure of the well-financed NRA and forceful defenders of the Second Amendment. âThere are people out there whose minds we will never change,â she said. âIf you are a parent, if you are a mother, if you have children â how can you look your child in the eye and say we are willing to allow you to be collateral damage in order to keep what some people perceive to be their constitutional right? If we as a society are willing to accept that, what kind of society are we?â

The disgrace is that we have been here before â and not just in Newtown, where the massacre of 20 kindergartners and six educators was supposed to make us take gun control seriously.

In May 2014, Richard Martinezâs 20-year-old son Christopher was one of six University of California-Santa Barbara students mowed down in a hail of bullets. At a memorial service for the victims, Martinez blasted politicians just as Parkerâs parents are doing now.

âThere havenât been any leaders on this issue,â Martinez said. âThey have done nothing, and thatâs why Chris died, and the other kids â¦ Itâs almost become a normal thing for us to accept this.â

He asked the crowd to stand with him and, raising his fist, urged them to chant, âNot one more! So loud they will hear you in Washington!â They did just that, the chant reverberating around the stadium long after Martinez left the stage.

One year later âNot one moreâ has become: Nine dead in a shooting at a black church in Charleston, S.C.; four marines and one sailor killed in attacks on a Chattanooga, Tenn., military facility; and three killed when a gunman opened fire in a Louisiana movie theater.

And thatâs just the mass shootings that make the headlines. All told, 33,000 people die each year as a result of gun violence in this country. On average, thatâs one life every 16 minutes, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention â a rate thatâs higher than any other developed country on the planet. We are also the only advanced nation on earth that lacks what the President calls âsufficient, common-sense gun safety laws.â

So when Alison Parkerâs parents talk about allowing our kids to be collateral damage, I get it. We all do. But a good part me feels once we gave Newtown a free pass, once those politicians refused to look at the Sandy Hook parents holding photos of their dead children, meaningful gun control was a lost cause.

When Andy Parker vows: âI promise you these people are messing with the wrong family. We are going to effect a change,â we all better pray heâs right. Because odds are, collateral damage is right around the corner.


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