LOUISVILLE, Ky. — When our city woke up to the news of the mass shooting at Standard Gravure in 1989, we talked about our lost innocence and our lost sense of security in Louisville.
Now, almost 34 years later, we are no longer saying those things. Our innocence is long lost, our violence is random and all around us.
In a stunning show of it today in just two hours, a mass shooting, then another fatal shooting outside JCTC at 8th and Chestnut.
This is a nightmare day for us. The weeks ahead are going to be full of sorrow as we join other cities and states with the reckoning over firearms, especially when they collide at the intersection of mental health.
On a week when the U.S. Department of Justice returned to continue its public discussion about Louisville Metro Police, our police department showed its finest bravery in just three minutes.
They stopped the mass shooter in the middle of the rampage.
Our thoughts are with the injured, those we’ve lost, the police officers and all the families.
And we are mourning – again – much too soon.
The question tonight: how do we stop this senseless violence?
We need answers.
We need them now.
We’ve been getting nice and compassionate statements from politicians all day.
But they are the people we need to step up and act.
They heard the cry, from Nashville three weeks ago today, now in Louisville.
This has got to stop.
It demands action.
How could we argue it any other way?
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