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A former friend and teammate of Connor Sturgeon’s from Floyd Central High School in Floyds Knobs, Indiana, described Sturgeon to The Daily Beast as “Mr. Floyd Central.” Sturgeon was smart, popular, and a star athlete in high school track, football, and basketball, he said. ... In an essay on “personal ethics” for the University of Alabama, uploaded to CourseHero in 2018 under Sturgeon’s name, Sturgeon wrote about his quest to improve his “discipline, responsibility, and self-esteem... so that I can improve myself as a whole.” “My self-esteem has long been a problem for me,” he wrote. “As a late bloomer in middle and high school, I struggled to a certain extent to fit in, and this has given me a somewhat negative self-image that persists today. Making friends has never been especially easy, so I have more experience than most in operating alone." (Fiallo, Rohrlich and Olding, 4/10)

(Connor) Sturgeon graduated from the University of Alabama in December 2020, according to a spokesperson for the university. He participated in an accelerated master’s program and earned both his bachelor’s degree and a master’s degree in finance at the same time, the spokesperson, Shane Dorrill, said. Earlier, Sturgeon played basketball and ran track for his high school in a Louisville suburb, and he was named a semifinalist for a National Merit Scholarship in 2015, according to local news reports. A former high school classmate of Sturgeon’s who knew him and his family well said he never saw any “sort of red flag or signal that this could ever happen.” “This is a total shock. He was a really good kid who came from a really good family,” said the classmate, who asked not to be identified and has not spoken with Sturgeon in recent years. “I can’t even say how much this doesn’t make sense. I can’t believe it.” (Tucker, 4/11)

A Louisville bank employee armed with a rifle opened fire at his workplace Monday morning, killing five people — including a close friend of Kentucky’s governor — while livestreaming the attack on Instagram, authorities said. ... The shooting, the 15th mass killing in the country this year, comes just two weeks after a former student killed three children and three adults at a Christian elementary school in Nashville, Tennessee, about 160 miles to the south. (Lovan and Galofaro, 4/11)

In a brief statement Monday following a mass shooting in downtown Louisville, President Joe Biden said the victims were on his mind – and called on Republican legislators to take action. ... "Once again, our nation mourns after a senseless act of gun violence – Jill and I pray for the lives lost and impacted by today's shooting," Biden said in a Twitter post. ... In a longer statement, Biden thanked Louisville Metro Police Department officers "who quickly and courageously stepped into the line of fire to save others." But he also used the release to ask Republican lawmakers to pass gun safety measures. He said Republican lawmakers need to pass legislation to require safe storage of firearms, background checks for people buying guns and to eliminate the immunity from liability from gun manufacturers. (Aulbach, 4/10)

Kentucky is one of 26 states that allow for permitless carry of firearms for eligible adults. The state passed a law in 2019 that removed the provisions that mandated state gun owners pass a background check if they were going to going to conceal carry their weapon. Under the law, most adults over 21 can purchase and carry a firearm and take them to most places in the state without any license. (Pereira, 4/10)

KHN: Most Americans Say They Or A Family Member Has Experienced Gun Violence 

A majority of Americans say they or a family member has experienced gun violence, such as witnessing a shooting, being threatened by a person with a gun, or being shot, according to a sweeping new survey. The national survey of 1,271 adults conducted by KFF revealed the severe physical and psychological harm exacted by firearm violence, especially in minority communities. (Szabo, 4/11)

Justin Jones, one of the two Black Democrats expelled from the Tennessee House of the Representatives for leading a gun control protest on the House floor, was sworn back in to his seat on Monday in a swift rebuke to the state’s Republican supermajority. (Cochrane, 4/10)

One warm afternoon in May, Dwight Jackson was getting dressed for a visit to his favorite cigar lounge. He slipped his holstered SIG Sauer P320 pistol onto his belt, put on a button-down shirt and leaned across his bed for his wallet. Suddenly, he said, the gun fired, sending a bullet tearing through his right buttock and into his left ankle. “I heard ‘bang!’” said Jackson, 47, a locomotive engineer who lives in Locust Grove, Ga. “I looked down and saw blood.” His wife heard the shot from down the hall and screamed. She called an ambulance while Jackson hobbled toward the front door, painting a trail of blood over the hardwood floors. At no point, Jackson later told police, had he touched the gun’s trigger. (Barton and Jackman, 4/11)

As of mid-April, there have been at least 145 mass shootings in the United States in 2023, according to the Gun Violence Archive, a nonprofit research group that tracks gun violence. (The group defines a mass shooting as one in which at least four people are killed or injured.) And mass shootings represent just a small fraction of shootings nationwide. How has this pervasive violence affected our mental states or changed the way we live? The New York Times’s Well desk created an online form for readers to answer those questions in their own words. More than 600 people responded: Some had personal experiences with gun violence; others were dealing with the existential dread of what might occur. (Lindner, 4/11)