Louisville’s Democrat mayor Craig Greenberg decried the state’s law which requires confiscated guns, like the AR-15 used in Monday’s deadly bank shooting, to be sold at auction.
“To those in the national media that are joining us here today, this may be even more shocking than it is to those of us locally who know this and are dealing with this,” Greenberg said Tuesday at a news conference.
“Under current Kentucky law, the assault rifle that was used to murder five of our neighbors and shoot at rescuing police officers will one day be auctioned off,” he said. “Think about that. That murder weapon will be back on the streets.”
Greenberg’s comments came a day after a gun-toting employee entered Old National Bank in Louisville and opened fired, killing five and injuring others. The gunman was then killed in a shootout with police.
Under a 1998 law, local law enforcement must send guns taken during investigations to the Kentucky State Police, who in turn sell them to a federally licensed dealer.
Mayor Greenberg said that if he destroyed the gun, it “would make me a criminal for trying too hard to stop the real evil criminals who are taking other people’s lives and who are eager to make a spectacle of mass murder.”
“The laws we have now are enabling violence and murder,” he said.
Kentucky State Police captain Paul Blanton told the told the Lexington Herald-Leader that the money from the gun sales goes to the Kentucky Office of Homeland Security and the Kentucky State Police.
In February 2022, Greenberg survived an attempted assassination at his campaign office. Earlier this year, he announced that Louisville police would remove firing pins from guns used in crimes and add warning labels to them before sending them to the state police.
“None of us wants this to happen again,” Greenberg said Tuesday. “But it will keep happening. That’s why we have to do more than what we’ve already done. Let’s change the state laws.”
Authorities said this week that bank gunman Connor Sturgeon bought the gun used in Monday’s shooting legally the week prior. Five bank employees — Joshua Barrick, Deana Eckert, Thomas Elliott, Juliana Farmer and James Tutt — were killed.
“It’s time to change this law, and let us destroy illegal guns, and let us destroy the guns that have been used to kill our friends and kill our neighbors,” Greenberg said.