Just got home from the scene of the United States' latest mass shooting. Now there's a sentence you never want to be able to write. This morning, a soon to be former employee walked into Old National Bank in downtown Louisville and opened fire with an AR-15.
The gunman, a 25 year old man, shot thirteen people, four fatally before he was killed by police. Two police officers were among the wounded, one of them in critical condition after taking a round to the head.
From what I've heard, the officer in critical condition was only a couple weeks out of the academy. It appears to have been a targeted attack, all four of the dead were executives at the bank.
When I got word of what happened I grabbed my camera and headed down there. Didn't really know what to expect, what does one expect when going to a mass shooting?
Surreal. That's the closest I can come to describing it. It was a beautiful spring day, the sun was shining, the birds were singing, and we were standing just a couple hundred yards from where five people had just died.
The shooter apparently livestreamed the whole thing on Instagram, from what I've heard it was the police that ended the stream. A bank manager got to watch it all unfold in a Microsoft Teams meeting. Who needs Westerns when you're stuck in the modern adaptation?
As if this wasn't bad enough, we got word that two more people had been shot a few blocks away at the local technical college, one fatally. That shooting was unrelated to this one, and the shooter in that case is still at large. Kept hearing rumors of a third shooting but as of yet have been able to find no details to confirm that.
As I was writing this I just got word that another person has died and that it is actually three LMPD officers that were wounded. Earlier in the day I'd heard that one of the officers had died but as of yet that does not seem to be the case.
The building the bank is in also contains other offices and apartments. Kentucky's governor, Andy Beshear ran his campaign for office from the building and was close friends with two of the people that died.
It just feels insane and unreal, the last big mass shooting was just 150 miles down I-65 in Nashville two weeks ago, and now it's our turn. They told us in rehab that doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results was the definition of insanity, which seems to sum up our approach to mass shootings.
If you look close you can see evidence markers in the photo above. Wish we had evidence this was going to end soon.
When I finally left this afternoon, I didn't even have to travel a block before I ran into the rest of the world carrying on as if nothing had happened. The dissonance of that is something that I'm still trying to wrap my head around.
All in all it made for a proper Monday from Hell. Y'all stay safe out there.
As long as second amendment stands tall, mass shootings will always be there. Senators are under NRA's pay bill, they don't really give a damn about this situation. They are not going to do anything to end the killings. That ain't rigth!
Even if you could break the NRA's grip on Congress, with the current precedent and makeup of the Supreme Court it still wouldn't make a difference. Yeah, the only thing the NRA cares about is protecting gun manufacturers. Why would they do anything, every time there's a mass shooting and people start talking gun control, gun sales skyrocket. It's almost like mass shootings are part of their marketing plan...
really Monday from hell.
i see that not less hot on your side of the earth.
!LUV
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Indeed. The decorations are a bit different but it's just as warm.
Thank you!
I wonder why some people will just decide to engage themselves in such activities. It is not nice. Killing is bad and it is a sin
That's the million dollar question right there. Here in the US we argue about that every time something like this happens. Then we change nothing and a short while later it happens again and we get to rehash the argument again.
You took some amazing shots, too bad it was under those circumstances. It's crazy how many shootings you have over there. Looks like the craziness never ends.
Thanks. It's wild, the mass shootings get all the press and attention but the more mundane, everyday shootings are even more numerous. After a while you start to get used to it somehow, I sometimes forget that it's not like this everywhere.
Near as I can tell, it doesn't.
Not every country allows citizens to own guns, like the US, but we have different problems as people are almost the same everywhere. However, no guns, no mass shootings.
Yeah, we have more guns than people at this point. That fact alone makes me suspect that we're in for a lot more of this before it's all said and done.
People are much the same no matter where you go, gun laws not so much. I've had several conversations with galenkp about the differences in gun laws between our respective countries and it makes you wonder how they can vary so widely. Here it Kentucky it's perfectly legal for just about anyone to walk around carrying a concealed firearm. Meanwhile in the UK they're worried kitchen knives...
Does make reading about a mass stabbing somewhere else in the world seem almost quaint.
Living in a country where you can only get a gun for personal protection, if you can convince the court with hard evidence, that your life is in danger, I'm not a fan of giving guns to everyone. We don't have shootings here, or extremely rarely, so I'm ok with that.
Yeah, Galen has a few guns and most likely the Australian law is a bit different. I hope they won't adopt any law allowing people to hold guns here. I don't need that.
I also know opinions differ on this subject and I'm ok with it.
Lol, I feel that. I have altogether too much personal experience dealing with people waving guns around and no business possessing them.
It's like we're caught in an absurd catch-22, everybody feels like they need a gun, because of all the other crazy assholes out there who already have one, and nobody's willing to put their guns down because they're afraid the others won't. It'd be funny, if only it were funny.
Yeah, it's a lot better to not need a gun than to be able to have one I suspect.
It's not that bad.
Yeah, it's not like it's Bakhmut or anything...
:wide eyed emoji: As bad as it looks and, obviously, it looks a lot worse to someone who's never been here but out of everywhere we've been,
Iwe still feel safest here.Oh yeah, aside from the bad craziness that was the long hot summer of 2020 I've never felt particularly unsafe here. It's all what you're used to I suspect, statistically we're a lot more likely to die by the gun compared to other industrialized/wealthy nations. Even that is less ominous than it sounds, almost twice as many of our gun deaths are suicides rather than homicides, which is a peculiarity that's pretty well unique to the US.
Lol, a few years back I was in Oregon looking for a place to camp, ended up driving up a forest service road until I stumbled upon a gun range. Figured that was a good sign I was in the right place so I set up camp nearby.
You know even these virtual conversations you're a helluva reporter, right?
I know that feeling. Like finding the fire station in the middle of Watts at 3am way before cell phones or navigation or anything.
Hadn't realized I was doing anything reporter-y but thank ya!
Exactly!
Damn dude.
Pretty much. Lol, I was wondering if you were tuned in to the 'noose'.
What a weak two word response. In case you couldn't tell, it meant thanks, again, for keeping me up to date. You're my front row for this stuff.
Nah, I got you. Thanks for paying attention. Lol, as I was writing it I was wondering what comment you'd end up dropping.
Damn. I can never wrap my head around this part of USA political culture. Have some theories but watching it all unfold....
We have managed to get ourselves into quite the predicament it seems. At this point I'm not even sure there is a way out, and even less sure we'd take it if there was. This sort of thing has become normalized to a disturbing degree, with everyone's responses taking on the aspect of a ritual. Hell, it's easy to forget that this isn't the normal for everyone. Watching it all unfold from up close is something else though, like it just registers differently.
I can imagine. We get family murders and plenty of political or mafia-style assassinations here but mass shootings are very uncommon
Senseless tragedy, scary stuff..
You can say that again. It's bad enough when you're reading about it in the news, it's something else entirely when it's happening where you live. I used to live just a few blocks from that bank, the shooter lived just a mile from my mom's house, it's just insane to think about.
Wow, too close to home, things are crazy, so happy I moved to the mountains in Upstate, but I do worry about my grandkids, I hope the burbs of North Jersey stay safe.
Blessings to you and yours
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