You have seen it many times before: The governor said after taking mass, mourning the loss of life. But what you saw after Monday’s massacre in Louisville, Kentucky, was different.
This time, the governor know some victims too.
“This is terrible,” Gov. Andy Beshear said shortly after the shooting. “I have a very close friend who is not coming today.”
That friend Thomas Elliott, 63, a prominent civic and corporate leader who works in the financial industry. Elliott is a senior vice president at Old National Bank, which has branches in the Midwest and Appalachia — including an office in downtown Louisville, where police say a former employee walked in Monday and started shooting with a gun.
The shooter was killed a few minutes later, after a shootout with officers who arrived quickly on the scene. But by then, nine people had been seriously injured and four bank employees had died, according to police.
The four who died were Joshua Barrick, 40; Juliana Farmer, 45; James Tutt, 64; and Elliott.
At the press conference, a visibly shaken Beshear wept for all, calling them “God’s children …
He mentioned that he also knew of two gunshot victims who were still alive, including one who was in critical condition at the time. As for Elliott, the governor described him as “an incredible friend” and “one of the people I talk to the most in the whole world.”
In America, Many People Know Gunshot Victims
Beshear knows some of the victims are not as unusual as it may seem, according to a new survey which is a non-profit research organization KFF published Tuesday morning.
In the survey, 19% of adult respondents said they had a family member killed by gun violence. A similar proportion said they had been threatened with a gun (21%) or had witnessed someone being injured with a gun (17%).
These figures are consistent with the findings of a 2022 UChicago Harris/AP-NORC Poll, as well as academic and statistical studies on the prevalence of gun violence. The KFF poll has some more detailed questions, designed to produce a more detailed picture of who is experiencing gun violence.
“We hope these numbers help explain how common these experiences are and how they impact gun violence,” Ashley Kirzinger, KFF’s director of survey methodology, told HuffPost.
KFF does not plan to launch a poll after the mass shooting. Advance notice of the survey hit reporters’ inboxes around 9 a.m. Monday, before news of the Louisville massacre began circulating on social media.
Then again, it’s not like this poll needs a new shoot to seem relevant. the Nashville school shooting just two weeks ago, the Michigan State University shooting just two months ago. Since the beginning of the year, there have been thousands of fatal shootings across the country — including another one in Louisville around the same time as the bank massacre.
The shooting took place in a college. One person died.
“The two incidents do not appear to be related,” Louisville Mayor Craig Greenberg said at a news conference after the bank shooting. “But both take lives. Both leave people wounded, sad and angry. I share all those feelings myself now.
There are so many of them now.
In America, Gun Violence Is Common
The US is the only economically developed country where gun violence is very common, and that is almost certainly because it is the only economically developed country where gun ownership is prevalent.
Or, more simply, America has a lot of gun violence because Americans have a lot of guns.
There is no quick and easy way to solve this problem because there is no quick and easy way to reduce the number of guns in circulation.
Strict restrictions on ownership are combined with buybacks for existing supplies already used in other countries. But the vote to pass it was not there, in Congress or in most state legislatures. Even if it passes, the ban will struggle to pass the U.S. Supreme Court, which has used an expansive reading of the Second Amendment. strike some of regulation already in the book.
Still, something good reason believe that more modest steps can make a difference. Among them are universal background checks and “red flag” programs, which allow courts to take guns away from individuals who pose a direct threat to themselves or others. The measures polled well and have become law in several states, though Kentucky is not one of them.
The Republican-controlled Legislature there has been moving in the opposite direction. Less than two weeks ago, a lot passed”Second Amendment Sanctuary“An initiative that prohibits local or state officials from enforcing federal gun regulations recently passed. Beshear, a Democrat who supports red flag legislation but opposes assault weapons bans, allowed it to become law without his signature.
On Monday, Beshear did not talk about the possibility of tightening Kentucky’s gun laws, saying only that discussions about “issue” will come later. And it certainly won’t be easy to pass the new ban, given the country’s political profile.
But if the survey data is correct, Beshear is not the only Kentuckian to have lost a loved one to gun violence. And maybe that will make a difference.