Kentuckians mourning another mass shooting met by GOP lawmakers’ unfathomable cowardice

A candle is held up during the July 9 vigil for the Florence mass shooting victims. (Photo by Hailey Roden | LINK nky)

Over Fourth of July weekend, there was a mass shooting at a 21st birthday party in Florence (northern Kentucky, Boone County); four people were shot to death; three are recovering, including a 19-year-old girl.

According to news reports, the 21-year-old shooter was on probation with a criminal history that included sexual assault of a 13-year-old.

Community unites in mourning for victims of Florence mass shooting

The 19-year-old girl’s father, while thankful for community support, said, “I mean, I’m not very hopeful for the future. I really am not after this has happened. I love the support, but it’s just so devastating. Now I’m worried about things like this happening again. If it happened to me, it could happen to anybody. And I hate to see that other families are going to have to go through situations like this.” He says guns are too easily accessible to people who shouldn’t have them.

According to Everytown for Gun Safety , Kentucky has the 15th highest rate of gun violence in the United States, and we continue to do not one damn thing about it.

While we await more information on how a man with this criminal history had seemingly easy access to firearms and ammunition, here is your reminder that our Republican supermajority in Frankfort continues, year after year, to kick this deadly can down the road.

We have some of the most free-for-all gun laws in the country: open carry, concealed carry, gun sanctuary, etc… During the 2024 General Assembly, the GOP rammed through House Bill 5, a multifaceted, complex, omnibus addressing punishment of crimes after the fact while staggeringly leaving out gun crime prevention altogether.

The American Civil Liberties Union called HB 5 “an extremely bloated collection of regressive policies and regurgitated ideas,” and if you spent any time following this year’s session, you could not miss the absolute, stubborn refusal of leadership to allow hearings, much less public votes, on simple, straightforward solutions like Senate Bill 13 — crisis aversion, allowing firearm removal from people experiencing a mental health crisis — or Senate Bill 56 to require safe storage of guns.

During session, sponsors of HB 5 were repeatedly asked how HB 5 prevents gun violence **before** it happens.

Primary sponsors like Reps. Jason Nemes and Jared Bauman never gave a clear answer.

House and Senate leadership did not seem to care.

Following the Old National Bank mass shooting in Louisville last year, the Kentucky Medical Association designated gun violence a public health crisis . “Two of the KMA’s proposals related to gun safety include barbed criticisms of Kentucky’s GOP supermajority, which, as one resolution notes, “has denied protection of our school children, citizens and police officers by ignoring control measures for assault rifles and killing enhancements by avoiding enactment of effective background checks and ‘red flag’ laws.”

But as Senate Floor Leader Damon Thayer posted during KYGA 2024 on Mar. 4 on Twitter/X, “Just because it is sent to committee doesn’t mean it is on the move. On the contrary, it lacks the votes in committee & on the Senate floor. As the only legislator to win @NRA “Defender of Freedom Award,” I am opposed to SB 13 & all red flag laws. #kyga24”

Of course, the very reason these bills lack votes in committee and on the Senate floor is because, as leader, Sen. Thayer ensures they are never heard in committee and do not make it to the floor.

What a clever trick this is.

Maybe if the KMA handed out look-at-me awards he could brag about on social media, Sen. Thayer and his caucus might be more amenable to listening to medical experts, the people on the front lines of gun violence, instead of the NRA.

After the Florence mass shooting last week, Sen. John Schickel posted his condolences on Twitter/X, stating that everyone is in his thoughts and prayers.

Two questions for Sen. Schickel:  How would HB 5 — which he vociferously championed just a few months ago— or any of his own proposed bills while in office, have thwarted this kind of tragedy? What has he done during his lengthy time in the legislature to address gun violence?

Like Sen. Thayer, Sen. Schickel is leaving office at the end of this year, but he made sure to boost Twitter/X condolences from state Rep.-elect TJ Roberts of Boone County, who posted a Bible verse and referred to the Florence mass shooting as “unfathomable evil.”

But don’t expect much from Rep.-elect Roberts in addressing gun violence. You need only have followed his Twitter/X account the last few years to note his seeming obsession with guns.

I have never met Roberts, but this time last year, after I’d begun writing regularly about the Old National Bank mass shooting, it was no surprise to see him post, “Kentucky ‘journalist’ Teri Carter has to be the biggest Karen in Kentucky. Show off your guns and make her mad” with photos of what appeared to be his guns.

I tell you this not because men like Roberts sometimes behave childishly and irresponsibly on social media — as law enforcement will tell you, responsible gun owners do not flash photos of their guns at strangers — but because this kind of behavior, along with that of leaders like Sen. Thayer blocking discussion of potential gun laws, represents the mindset in our GOP supermajority, the people we count on to make laws, to behave responsibly, to keep Kentuckians safe.

Gun violence is not “unfathomable evil” and will not be stopped with thoughts or prayers or burying good gun legislation in the basement of the Capitol.

Gun violence is fathomable and preventable, and it continues to go unchecked here in Kentucky because our GOP supermajority, in their unfathomable cowardice, refuses to grow up and address it.

As the father of Florence’s 19-year-old shooting victim said, guns are too easily accessible by people who shouldn’t have them.

What are we — what are our GOP supermajority lawmakers — going to do about that?

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