Louisville killer's parents: He shouldn't have had a gun

AP Photo/Timothy D. Easley

Folks in Louisville are still reeling from the deadly attack at a bank in their fair city. A number of families lost someone, but I suspect it might be hardest for the killer’s family.

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After all, while others are processing the suddenness of what happened, they have the added burden of knowing their loved one perpetrated the attack. The fact that we now can call it domestic terrorism likely doesn’t help them sleep easily at night.

Now, though, the Louisville killer’s parents are joining their dead son in pushing for gun control.

The parents of the Louisville gunman who killed five people at a bank earlier this month said their son should have never been able to purchase the AR-15 he got “in 40 minutes” just days before the shooting.

In an interview with Savannah Guthrie, Todd and Lisa Sturgeon, parents of the 25-year-old shooter, said their son had been in treatment for mental health issues in the weeks leading up to the incident.

They said, because of his mental state, he should not have been able to purchase a gun with such ease.

“We know that [he] was seeing two mental health professionals and that he was able to walk in,” Todd Sturgeon said on the “Today” show. “From what we have been told is that he walked in … and walked out with a weapon and ammunition in 40 minutes.”

“Because of his mental condition, he should not have been able to purchase the gun,” Lisa Sturgeon added. “If there had been a delay or something of that nature, that would have been helpful.”

The Sturgeons told Guthrie their son had been struggling with his mental health for the last year and had experienced panic attacks, and anxiety, and had attempted suicide. They said he had been seeing a psychiatrist, and a counselor, and was taking medication for his condition.

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Well, that’s interesting. His mental state was such that he couldn’t be trusted with a firearm. Did they take steps to have him adjudicated as mentally defective, as the law terms it?

If not, and if they were so sure he was in a fragile mental state, why didn’t they take those steps?

Now, in fairness, I don’t think they’d have gotten him declared as such because there’s literally nothing in that list that would make it obvious he should have a constitutionally protected right stripped from him.

But the point I have here is that they’re talking in hindsight about how he should have been inhibited in some way from buying that gun. The thing is, in hindsight, we usually look at things and can see clearly that the man was deeply disturbed and yes, was probably someone we wouldn’t want to trust with a firearm.

Yet we can’t go back and determine that. He had panic attacks and anxiety? So do a lot of other people who never shoot up their workplace. He attempted suicide, but again, most people who have attempted suicide don’t turn around and become mass shooters.

In fact, based on what we’ve been told by the gun control side, those who attempt suicide and fail usually never attempt it again. Since most mass shooters have to know there’s at least a chance of being killed, one would imagine someone who isn’t interested in suicide would do no such thing.

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Nothing about the Louisville killer’s background is suggestive of what would have happened and thus makes trying to stop such a thing incredibly difficult.

Regulations like waiting periods, which is what the parents appear to want, don’t stop people determined to kill others. This guy didn’t write a suicide note on a cocktail napkin. He wrote a literal manifesto detailing why he was doing it. That took planning. Delaying a few days wouldn’t have stopped him.

But it would have stopped the 22-year-old woman who needed a gun to scare off a stalker. It would have stopped the middle-aged small business owner from having the means to defend himself after a couple of punks claimed they’d burn his store down if he didn’t pay protection money in a couple of days.

Those individuals  are the ones who pay the cost and bear the burden under waiting periods. The guy who methodically plans an act of domestic terrorism? Him, not so much.

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