The shooting Monday in a Louisville bank was yet another in a far-too-long list of mass shootings. As things currently stand, we still know relatively little about what happened leading up to this atrocity, but that doesn’t really matter to many people.

The anti-gun crusaders, for example, will jump right into this with all the emotion they can muster. That’s especially true if someone is termed a “survivor.”

Monday’s mass shooting in downtown Louisville is the 146th mass shooting this year according to the Gun Violence Archive.

Whitney Austin, a mass shooting survivor, said she is once again frustrated.

“A very similar situation that happened to me more than four years ago, has now played out here in Louisville, Kentucky, when we know that gun violence is preventable,” she said.

…

“I always have hope. I witnessed with my own eyes, the passage of the bipartisan, Safer Communities Act, and four years prior to its passage continued no after no after no from lawmakers. So I always have hope that change will come,” Austin said.

Austin wasn’t just someone who was at the place a mass shooting happened, but apparently was shot 12 times and survived. That has to take a toll on someone.

Yet what it doesn’t do is impart in particular expertise beyond what it’s like to be shot.

I’m sorry, but it doesn’t pass along a constitutional law degree, decades of study in gun policy, or anything else that is remotely relevant to the crafting and impact of gun control laws.

For example, it’s easy to demand restrictions on certain types of guns. Anyone can do that. What many activists can’t seem to do is look beyond their feelings and recognize how those restrictions won’t actually accomplish anything but negatively impact law-abiding citizens.

In their myopic worldview, there’s no place for weapons like an AR-15. They see the mass shooter but never the competitive shooter. They see the demons but never the person who picks the gun because it works for them better than anything else.

They have no room in their minds for anything but the idea that their righteous cause is just and screw anyone who doesn’t agree with them.” You don’t need a gun,” they’ll say, “just call the police like a rational person would.”

What they miss is that the police responded quickly in Nashville and in Louisville, but not quickly enough to save 11 lives.

Being a survivor gives one a kind of perspective, sure, but it doesn’t convey anything beyond that heavily biased and often self-interested perspective. Being shot doesn’t make one an expert. Being shot at doesn’t, either.

Yet the media will gladly put a microphone in the face of anyone who says they’re a survivor, so long as they push the right narrative for the cameras.

Of course, survivors are free to share their opinions. I’m not claiming otherwise.

What I’m saying is that their opinions don’t matter more than anyone else’s in the wake of something like Louisville and never have.