In a year when Louisville's homicide count is on track to beat last year's record, one church in the Parkland neighborhood wants to take bullets off the streets.
City Church International will host its annual “Buck$ 4 Bullets” event Oct. 14,buying bullets in any condition for a dollar.
“It’s very important for this side of town because have a lot of deaths, violent killings,” Church Deacon Robert Hogan said. “We’re trying to take some things off the street that could prevent the things that have been going on in our city.”
There have been 95 homicides so far this year in Louisville, which puts the city on track to have its bloodiest year ever. Homicides have destroyed neighborhoods, forcing residents to move and killing innocent bystanders such as Dequante Hobbs. Hobbs died after a stray bullet struck him in his kitchen while he was eating a snack. He was seven.
City Church International expects up to 150 people to attend the event, which will have food and a raffle for a car.
Hogan said after the bullets, the next step may be to try to remove guns from the community. Hobbs’ mother, Micheshia Norment, echoed that sentiment after a June study from the Centers for Disease Control that said more than 7,000 children are shot every year.
“The way the world is nowadays, you can’t stop anything,” Norment said when asked about gun availability in June. “We can do what we can to prevent it, but as long as shops — like pawn shops and all of that — are selling guns, it’s not going to stop.”
Though Louisville police recover thousands of weapons every year, Kentucky law mandatesthose weapons be sold back through auctions.According to firearms intake data, LMPD recovered nearly 3000 weapons last year. More than a thousand were semi-automatic pistols and 411 weapons were recovered from cases of aggravated assault.
