Louisville, Kentucky, is a surprisingly rough place. We might think of the state as the home of horses and fried chicken--to say nothing of Sen. Rand Paul and Rep. Thomas Massie--but it's got its rough patches.
And Louisville has been one, but things are improving. The question is why?
The reason I'm asking is because of a report from the city where law enforcement cites some of their work and credits that for the drop in shootings.
In 288 days, one LMPD division has seized 250 illegal firearms in just one part of the city.
Some of them are specially equipped to fire a lot of bullets.
“These four guns, two of them have extended magazines,” Deputy LMPD Chief Emily McKinley said while pointing to a slide displayed at a Wednesday briefing. “The two at the bottom, you’ll see those magazines that carry the ammunition are longer than the gun itself. So those guns have extended magazines to carry additional bullets.”
The seizures come from LMPD’s 1st division, which extends north of Broadway from Butchertown to Portland.
The focus is in high-crime sections described in LMPD’s Crime Reduction Strategic Plan as a “Sustained Focus Improvement” area or “SFI.”
However, they also note that they've increased the police presence in rough parts of the city and beefed up investigative resources.
Plus, there's something that you won't see mentioned in this report at all that might well have had a bigger benefit than any weapons seizures.
Assuming these 250 illegal firearms, including those with full-auto switches, weren't just sitting around unattended, most of those are going to come with a corresponding arrest. Unless they've only targeted black market dealers, which seems unlikely, they've arrested a lot of people in possession of these illegal firearms.
In other words, they likely put some of the most dangerous people in Louisville behind bars.
While McKinley argues the seizures are what have led to a reduction in shootings and homicides--something noted elsewhere in the original story--it seems far more likely that the arrest of dangerous people, coupled with an increased police presence and more aggressive investigations, has had a greater impact on violence in the city.
And that distinction is important because just citing seizures suggests that the guns are the real problem. They're not. They never were.
In a peaceful, well-adjusted society, you could hand every citizen a rocket launcher and have absolutely no issues. For people who don't intend violence, having weapons is never the problem. It's always the people who want to hurt others, and with those, it doesn't matter if all they can access is a rock; they'll use that to injure and kill people.
It's a shame McKinley didn't note that in some manner. Whether his overlords in city government nixed it or whether he actually believes guns are the problem, it's a shame because I think they've done the right things in Louisville, and they're seeing results. I hope they continue to do so and continue to see benefits from it.
But it's not the guns.
Sure, guns are needed for shootings, but not for violence, and if the focus is just on guns, don't be surprised when you see stabbings skyrocket in that part of Kentucky. That's what we saw in the UK when they started banning guns and cracking down on them. Now, they're seizing people's kitchen utensils and acting like they're really taking a bite out of crime.
I'd sure hate to see that happen anywhere here in the United States.
Luckily, this is Kentucky. I doubt they'll play the anti-gun game anytime soon. Sure, they might elect the odd Democrat to statewide office, but they've shown no hint of actually going down the anti-gun rabbit hole.
And that's ultimately what would have to happen for Louisville to really, really try to focus on the guns.
