‘Fatigued and frustrated.’ Hundreds mourn Louisville shooting victims, call for change
Elected and community leaders called for tighter gun laws across Kentucky at a vigil in downtown Louisville, less than a mile from where a gunman killed five people on Monday.
Dr. Muhammad Babar, a doctor at University of Louisville Health, said he’s accustomed to consoling family members of patients who have died under his care.
“But I am having a tough time finding words to console the victims, the survivors and the loved ones of this senseless act of violence,” Babar said to a crowd of a hundreds packed in the Muhammed Ali Center Plaza early Wednesday evening.
“Like you all, I’m really fatigued and frustrated with this nonstop vicious cycle of deadly shootings in our nation,” Babar shouted. “Today, I just want to plead (with) you all and the elected leaders of our great nation, that it does not matter if you are Republican or Democrat . . . I know we all want our children to be safe in their schools. I know we all want our loved ones to return home in the evening for supper. So, when we share the same aspirations and hopes, then why can we not agree on finding solutions to curb this endless cycle of violence?”
Shouting into the microphone to the crowd, many of whom had risen to their feet to cheer and yell in support, Babar begged policy makers, “please, just do something.”
Louisville Mayor Craig Greenberg, who called on state lawmakers earlier in the week to allow the state’s largest city more autonomy to regulate guns and curb its “epidemic” of gun violence, focused his message at the vigil on the victim’s of Monday’s mass shooting.
“It’s important that we take time to acknowledge those losses and what they mean for us as people and as a community. We have to do that so that later we can gather our energies and focus on preventing these tragedies,” Greenberg said. “There will be a time to act, to take steps in honor of those we’ve lost and to channel our grief and pain into meaningful action.
“That day is coming; today is to mourn.”
Gov. Andy Beshear, whose close friend, Thomas Elliott, was among those killed on Monday, said at the vigil, “I believe in a loving God that one day will explain to me how this could happen.”
“While I am not angry, I am empty, and I am sad,” Beshear said. “I just keep thinking that maybe I’ll wake up. I just wish I’d taken an extra moment to tell him how much I cared about him. I know we are all feeling the same.”
“When you go home from here,” Beshear urged, “hug your families, call your friends, tell them how much you care about them. Because one thing I know we can do is live for the fallen. We can live better for them.”
But for many attendees, the vigil’s most provocative moments came from the speakers who called for lawmakers to act on gun safety.
“As we come together, as a city and as a country that has had enough of senseless gun violence, may we all commit ourselves . . . to take meaningful and necessary steps to ban assault weapons that were created only for battlefields,” Rabbi Beth Jacowitz-Chottiner told the applauding crowd.
‘Why haven’t we done more?’
A 25-year-old employee of Old National Bank killed five colleagues Monday morning, shooting them dead with a recently purchased, legal AR-15, before a Louisville Metro Police officer killed the gunman on scene. Eight other people were injured, and two — including a rookie police officer — remain hospitalized.
State Sen. Gerald Neal, a Louisville Democrat whose district includes the bank, told the crowd he shuts his eyes and asks himself, “Why haven’t we done more?”
“The truth is the events are foreseeable,” he said. “As painful and shocking as the news was Monday morning, tragically, it wasn’t out of the ordinary, and the lesson I gleaned, the perspective I find, is that it is time for all of us to do more. Yes, we must pray. Yes, we must reflect. But yes, we must act.”
Jean Murphy-Jacob, a mental health therapist, clapped for Sen. Neal as he called on the state to act.
“Every time (gun violence) happens, I feel like it should be the last straw to make some common sense laws,” she said before the vigil started. “But it just doesn’t seem to be, and I don’t know what it’s going to take.”
Murphy-Jacob said she came to the vigil to show her physical support, “not just for the community, but for coming up with some sort of solutions that are going to make sense.”
Sitting in front of Murphy-Jacob, Shannon Endres wiped her eyes.
“It’s hard. You’re tired of nothing changing,” she said after the vigil concluded and people began to scatter.
Endres’ husband, Scott, was with her. They had been to events like this before, even heard some of the same speakers, including Rabbi Jacowitz-Chottiner and Dr. Babar.
“I appreciated this, and it needed to be done,” he said. “But to be truthful, I sat here and got more angry and more angry. Because I’ve heard these speeches before. They always get the crowd going until the next time, when they have to come in and do it all over again.”
Shannon chimed in, “What does it take for people to decide this isn’t working?”
‘We need to work together’
Cathy Mekus, state chapter leader for Moms Demand Action, said ending gun violence has long been the organization’s work. Mekus, along with a couple dozen Moms Demand Action volunteers, attended the vigil, clad in their matching bright red shirts. Monday’s shooting made the mission that much urgent.
“My heart fell into the pit of my stomach,” Mekus said of learning about the Monday shooting. “I wanted to cry and weep and then I wanted to rage and yell at the same time because it’s happened again. And again. And again.”
Mekus said she’s stood on the stairs of Old National Bank on Main Street — the same stairs covered in shattered glass as seen in bodycam footage of the shooting — many times as she’s watched her husband and daughter cross the finish line of races they’ve run.
“Really, whether it’s someone here, whether it’s children in Nashville, whether it’s someone I’ve never met before… it’s a scourge. It’s a problem that we need to work together to address.”
At least one Kentucky lawmaker is ready to take immediate action on “common-sense gun reforms.”
Speaking after the vigil, State Rep. Daniel Grossberg, D-Louisville, said he is calling on his legislative colleagues of both political parties to show their willingness to come together for a special legislative session.
In Kentucky, only the governor can call a special session and it must focus on a specific subject. Both chambers of the General Assembly have Republican supermajorities and have, in recent years, been more inclined to loosen gun laws than restrict them.
Among the reforms Grossberg would like to tackle: red flag laws, universal background checks, mandatory safety training, trigger locks and ending the auction of guns used in crimes.
Grossberg pointed to the example set by Tennessee Gov. Bill Lee, a Republican, who is asking lawmakers to pass a red flag law in the wake of the Covenant School shooting that killed six people, including three children.
“I know that it’s possible here in Kentucky,” Grossberg said, “and I welcome anyone and everyone to join in that call.”
This story was originally published April 12, 2023 at 9:34 PM.
