Outtakes from a recent assignment for VICE about domestic-violence-related mass shootings in America.
“The term "mass shooting" often inspires visions of chaos, of armed men raining bullets indiscriminately on schools or nightclubs or blighted urban streets. The public imagination paints them as capricious storms of violence that appear as quickly as they churn through the news cycle. Above all, we perceive them as public, the victims at best acquaintances of the killer, and at worst random targets of a deep, faceless hate.But the majority of mass shootings are private acts, neither random nor unpredictable. In fact, close to 60 percent of those that kill four or more people unfold just as this one did in Ravenel on May 17—not gangland feuds or terrorist attacks but intimate executions carried out in quiet homes by ordinary men who murder the women and children closest to them over slights as insignificant as a new phone number or a custody hearing.” Top: South Carolina Senator Marlon Kimpson (District 42 - Charleston and Dorchester Counties) in Charleston, SC has introduced common-sense gun-control bills in the South Carolina Legislature.
Bottom: The graves of Armani Mungin, 8; Betty Mungin, 55; Alexis Mungin, 29 and her unborn twins. Kenneth Lamar Ancrum, 23, faces 5 murder charges in their shooting deaths.
All images © 2016 Justin Cook Documentary Photography. All rights reserved. No reproduction without permission.