Louisville shooting: Raw video from shooting near Slugger Field
At least four people were killed and eight people wounded, two critically, during a shooting near Slugger Field in downtown Louisville on Monday.
Hagan Kurd, Storyful
This is my hometown.
I am now a Pastor here. I love being a Pastor in my hometown.
But today I am angry. I am outraged. I am shaking, crying, scared.
The Louisville Slugger entrance posted across National media outlets is where I spent summer nights in youth group, afternoons with family. I ran two Mini-Marathons past its entrance.
Now it holds the last moments of breath of four people who died there on Easter Monday at the hands of an unwell person with an assault weapon.
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Guns have desecrated my hometown.
It was bound to happen. Every major city is falling prey to a senseless, preventable killing. It was only a matter of time.
And instead of answering to an exponentially growing epidemic of gun violence weeks ago, Kentucky legislators worked to pass an anti-transgender healthcare bill quickly and quietly.
Why are they wasting your time when people are dying? Constituents are being murdered! Have they no urgency? No mercy? No conscience?
May they feel to their core a nauseating guilt.
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Maybe legislators answer to challenges rather than pleas for help
I dare you, legislators, to love your neighbor as yourself. I dare you do legislate for law that promotes safety of all, instead of worrying if your NRA funders may not give to your next campaign.
I dare you, legislators, to turn over the tables in the temples of firearm idols and say, against your party’s grain, that enough is enough, and that the bogus “good guy with a gun” argument holds no intellectual merit.
I dare you, legislators, to stop taking bribes laced with gun-lobbyist money in the dead of night that betray your constituents.
I refuse to pray for you until you prove you are praying with your feet and your vote. But I pray with my falling tears for my fellow Louisvillian’s families whose loved ones lost life this morning, for my hometown, for my state and country — that with boldness, we might resurrect a country more focused on saving lives than brokering gun money.
May the blood on your hands forever stain your legacy as you traipse through the halls of power with your worthless thoughts and cowardly prayers.
Enough.
A Louisville native, Rev. Molly Shoulta Tucker is Pastor of Ridgewood Baptist Church in Southwest Louisville.