The mayor of Louisville has said Kentucky law would make him a criminal if he destroys the assault-style rifle used by a gunman in Monday’s killing of five bank employees in his city.
An emotional Craig Greenberg was speaking on Tuesday at a lunchtime press conference during which police revealed the killer – an employee at the Old National Bank who also wounded eight others, including two critically – bought the weapon legally six days previously.
The killer’s rifle was confiscated after police shot him dead, and Kentucky law requires officers to send it to state police officials to sell at auction.
Greenberg’s administration can remove the firing pins from any guns that local police officers confiscate, which leaves them inoperable for at least a little while. But incapacitating impounded guns in any other way is illegal, and that has left Greenberg – who lost a friend during the bank attack – fuming.
“Think about that,” Greenberg said. “That murder weapon will be back on the streets one day under Kentucky’s current law.”
He added: “Let us destroy illegal guns and destroy the guns that have been used to kill our friends and kill our neighbors. We have to do more than we’ve already done. Let’s change the state laws that would make me a criminal for trying too hard to stop the real evil criminals who are taking other people’s lives.”
Greenberg, who said the US had grown tired of gun crime, appealed for Kentucky’s Republican-controlled state legislature to cede responsibility for addressing gun violence to local municipalities.
“Let Louisville make its own decisions about reducing the amount of illegal guns on our streets,” he said. “I don’t care about finger pointing. I don’t care about blame. I don’t care about politics. I’m only interested in working together with our state legislators to take meaningful action to save lives, to prevent more tragic injuries, and more death.
“Arguing is not a strategy. Doing nothing is not a strategy.”
Louisville’s interim police chief, Jacquelyn Gwinn-Villaroel, told reporters that the killer, identified as 23-year-old Connor Sturgeon, was a current bank employee who bought the weapon on 4 April. She said he made the purchase at a local dealership but declined to provide more details.
Video from responding officers’ body-worn cameras was released later on Tuesday. Footage shows officers being shot at.
According to authorities’ timeline of the massacre, Louisville metro police department officers arrived at the bank in the city’s downtown within three minutes of the first 911 call about the attack at about 8.30am local time on Monday.
The five killed, and most of the injured, were struck within a single minute of gunfire, authorities said, before the shooter – who was livestreaming his spree on Instagram – sat down in the lobby waiting for police to arrive.
He opened fire again as police rushed in, wounding two of them, one critically, before officers killed him.
“The act of heroism can’t be overstated,” Gwinn-Villaroel said of her officers. “They did what they were called to do. They answered that call to protect and serve.”
The injured officer, Nickolas Wilt, 26, a rookie who graduated from training on 31 March, was in critical but stable condition in the University of Louisville (UofL) hospital on Tuesday. “It’s looking hopeful,” the police chief said.
Three others remain in hospital, the UofL chief medical officer, Jason Smith, said.
Those killed were named as Joshua Barrick, 40; Thomas Elliott, 63; Juliana Farmer, 45; James Tutt, 64; and Deanna Eckert, 57.
Elliott was a close friend of Kentucky’s Democratic governor Andy Beshear, who paid tribute at a media briefing late on Monday.
“Tommy Elliott helped me build my law career, helped me become governor, gave me advice on being a good dad,” he said. “He’s one of the people I talked to most in the world, and very rarely were we talking about my job. He was an incredible friend.”
At Monday’s press conference, the Democratic Kentucky congressman Morgan McGarvey echoed Joe Biden’s appeal for Congress to pass an assault weapons ban.
He said Republicans in the state legislature seemed more focused on fighting culture war issues than addressing gun violence.
“We are in crisis,” he said. “That is not a political issue. But it becomes one. In Kentucky, Republicans would rather ban books and pronouns, and then make Kentucky a sanctuary state for weapons.
“We are hurting. And no matter what policy we pass, no, it will not bring back these people. This will not bring back our friends, our neighbors and our loved ones.”
