This morning's mass shooting in Louisville, KY was–possibly–the 150th mass shooting in 2023's first 100 days. As of this writing, four victims have died, three are critically injured, and six have non-life-threatening injuries.
As a data-focused organization, the Center for Policing Equity (CPE) is not accustomed to sharing approximate numbers but in this case we have no other option, as there is no general agreement as to what constitutes a "mass" shooting.
The working definition used by nonprofit research group Gun Violence Archive posits a mass shooting as one in which four or more people are killed or injured, a definition that is helpful but does not cover, for instance, the Valentine's Day murder of three students at Michigan State University, the Portland, OR murder of two high school students and an adult on March 25, or last Friday's shooting in Chicago in which one man was murdered and two others wounded. Nor would it include the second shooting in downtown Louisville today, also before noon, in which one person was murdered and another injured.
This is a public safety catastrophe of the highest order. There is no place in this country where we might reasonably believe ourselves safe–not at a bank, a parade, a movie theater, a grocery store, a nursing home, a mall, a hospital, a music festival, our neighborhoods, houses of worship, college campuses, high school front doors or parking lots or elementary schools, neither public nor private. More than 45,000 people are killed by firearms in this country every single year. That is the rough equivalent of the entire population of Galveston, TX, or North Lauderdale, FL. Every year.
Yet leadership at the national, state, and local levels remains obsessively focused on "public safety" as expressed through the size, firepower, and budget of police departments. These leaders would be better served by listening to the communities, constituents, experts, survivors, elected officials attempting to represent their communities, or even many law enforcement organizations that have called for and centered their public safety efforts on evidence-based solutions. Instead, they deny their responsibility, deflect the blame, or distract with misinformation that is ableist, racist, or simply nonsensical, with a special emphasis on firmly ignoring the racial justice implications of this reality for Black people and communities.
Today CPE mourns with the people of Louisville, KY, even as politicians, activists, and news crews respond to the latest in these wholly preventable atrocities. We wish speedy healing to the injured and comfort to all who have been left behind, survivors, loved ones, and entire communities. We mourn also with all who have buried a loved one felled by weapons that our leaders have chosen–every day for decades–not to control.
The road to a just society in which all are valued and none need fear violent death is a long one that we will continue to walk together, toward a future in which such needless losses will no longer have to be endured.