The police are investigating a shooting at the Coke Lot next to the IMS.
Speedway Police confirmed one person was shot and killed shortly after 2 Saturday morning.
Police were called to Lot 1-C after people reported shots being fired. When they arrived, they found a man shot to death.
So that’s a disturbing kick off to race weekend.
Update The Indy Star has identified the shooting victim as a 25 year old Kokomo man by the name of Max Levine.
What happened that led to the shooting will be important, but not something that anyone will learn from, even if there is something to be learned. Probably not someone who decided to just go and shoot someone at random, or someone who decided to go to the Speedway to “stand his ground”. I wonder if last year’s “altercation” set a precedent for that to be the place where you bring your weapon at 2:00 a.m. and settle your differences. In any case, it’s probably the sort of situation where the NRA will say “If he only had a gun…”
So it looks like the familiar formula: a case or two of beer, loose talk taken personally between two strangers in a crowd, late at night in a a state where it’s just fine to carry a gun “just in case”. Now, it would have made sense to prohibit weapons within 1000′ of the speedway, but you never know who might want to shoot you. If both carried guns and were ready to use them, someone would have died, and it may not have been one of the guys with the guns.
“Now, it would have made sense to prohibit weapons within 1000? of the speedway”
That makes no sense, at all. There are no “special places” or “rights-free zones.” The same rationale used to justify a no-2A zone can be used to create a no-1A zone. Would you like having “sensitive places” established where you are denied your 1A right not to be compelled to pray to Jesus?
The great problem here is that the entire range of United States’ government is operated under a “no-back down” order, and this confrontational mentality permeates the entire citizenry, especially the demographics most likely to become the most inflexible and prideful government employees: cops and soldiers. With escalation being the American norm, and with a kind word of apology, clarification or concession being seen as weakness, a man has no gentlemanly or honorable way to retreat from conflict, so incidents such as this occur.
Take the guns from the cops; tone down the “zero tolerance” and “+1 force continuum” bullshit coming from the cops; get rid of the entertainment glorification of cops as persons who are due immediate and full obedience, lest they be entitled to inflict full violence upon the non-compliant, and you will begin to ablate the American social belligerence,
Unless we restrain the cops and cease glorifying their martial temperament, the personality of the population will never change.
But don’t the cops have a 2nd Amendment right to carry a gun?
When they’re in their individual capacity, they can do what they want. On the clock, they do their employer’s bidding. We can send every cop onto a beat without a gun and violate no constitutional right.
Gotta agree with you on this one, Freedom.