Mass Shootings are Just One Type of Gun Violence

Two forms of gun violence that rocked my new town of Louisville on the same day.

Jemar Tisby, PhD

Apr 15, 2023

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I had planned to travel to Nashville. Justin Jones and Justin Pearson had just been expelled from the Tennessee House of Representatives for protesting in the name of gun control.

Their actions were brought on by a mass shooting that claimed the lives of three 9-year old children and three adults at an elementary school in Nashville.

But just days after the expulsion of the two Black lawmakers, another mass shooting rocked the nation. This time it was in my new home city of Louisville, Kentucky.

While the mass shooting that day at Old National Bank—one in which a gunman killed five people—rightly received national attention, there were two shootings in downtown Louisville that day.

Two hours later after five people were shot and killed at the Old Louisville National bank in downtown, LMPD officers stand outside JCTC at 8th and Chestnut Streets Monday morning. LMPD tweeted that "there was a shooting outside and suspects fled prior to police arrival." April 9, 2023 — Photo Credit: Matt Stone/Louisville Courier Journal

Just a few blocks away, one man was killed another person hospitalized in the kind of gun violence has become so common as to hardly be “newsworthy” anymore.

I wrote about them in the Louisville Courier Journal.

In the justified outcry against mass shootings and the demands for banning semi-automatic assault rifles, we must remember the other forms of gun violence that continually plague our communities.

The differences explain a lot. The shooting at Old National Bank claimed more victims and the assailant used an AR-15 assault rifle which has been the focus on vigorous efforts to ban the sale of such weapons.
The mass shooting comes just a couple weeks after another mass shooting in Nashville at an elementary school. The shooter also used an AR-15. That event also led to the expulsion (and later reinstatement) of two Black members of the state House of Representatives in Tennessee.
The outcry about the mass shooting in Louisville is understandable. It is one of the 145 such incidents so far in 2023 according to the Gun Violence Archive. It is further deadly evidence that we need better laws and policy around gun control.
But the shooting at JCTC represents the kind of killings that have become endemic in poor communities. The kind of killing that doesn’t make as many headlines anymore because they are so commonplace.

Read the full article HERE.