Two days ago, WDBJ television reporter Alison Parker and cameraman Adam Ward were killed while filming a story in Moneta, Virginia. This was not Charlie Hebdo, nor was it coverage of a war-torn country. This shooting was carried out during a segment on tourism in Moneta by a mentally unstable man who should not have had access to a firearm. We won’t waste time explaining the background of the shooter, his alleged motives and grievances, or anything of that nature. He does not deserve any form of recognition or infamy. The man who carried out this shooting is the same as all the others: confused and selfish. However, this senseless act of violence has afforded us yet another opportunity to reevaluate how we will address this problem.

There is footage of the shooting from the perspective of the news camera filming the live interview, first person via the shooter, and synced together as to allow for the shocked face of the women about to be killed and the gunman aiming his gun to be seen at the same time. As if seeing shaky cell-phone videos and surveillance-camera footage of atrocities was not enough, we now get to relive the moment through the eyes of the shooter in what could only be the most macabre form of voyeurism imaginable.

Perhaps it was intentional, but seeing footage of the shooting in the first person seems to make the viewer feel culpable. Watching the gun rise into the frame with one’s own inability to prevent the next frame made us feel more culpable than the countless names of victims we’ve typed or the neat bar graphs charting the loss of innocent life we’ve scrutinized. These atrocities do not exist solely in newspaper headlines and 24-hour news cycles. We saw a gun in a hand that seemed as though it was our own and, as the trigger is pulled, felt, if only for a few seconds, culpable for what can only be described as an epidemic of our own making.

Ultimately, aren’t we all responsible for this? Whom do we get to blame for the senseless death of these news professionals, and whom do we get to blame for all the deaths before theirs? Whom do we get to blame for allowing this to happen again and again? Every time these shootings happen, the same arguments are raised, and the same statistics are used. There is nothing more depressing than hearing about the senseless killing of innocent people and wondering what angle to take this time or whether it would be OK to recycle a statistic as if somebody were paying attention. Is there anything left to say?

Should something have prevented the shooter from getting a gun? Obviously. Did the shooter have a history of mental illness and or warning signs? Obviously. Should more attention be placed on mental health? Obviously. Should we feel culpable? Obviously. While you or I may not have personally pulled the trigger, we watched Parker and Ward lose their lives, maybe with Netflix or Facebook open in the next tab. Nothing about that is right. We need to do more than feel culpable, but that would at least be a step in the right direction.