Senator Rand Paul is working on partnerships in Louisville to find a way to make community centers more accessible to children after school and hopes it could lead to lower gun violence throughout the state pertaining to juveniles.
Paul said that the solution to gun violence among juveniles isn’t an easy solution, otherwise, it would have been solved before.
“We have to draw together to try to look for solutions. I think if there were an easy solution, someone would have done it a long time ago,” Paul said.
He references the December shooting where a 16-year old was shot waiting for a bus in Louisville and said that for a solution to be found, thought has to go into where the kids go after school.
With this in mind, he is in talks with Jefferson County Public Schools to provide transportation provided by the schools back to Boys and Girls Clubs directly following school.
“Why don’t we make the first stop leaving school the Boys and Girls Club, and then they go [there],” Paul said. “What would happen is maybe 10 people get off and then they go to a place that hopefully is safe or safer.”
In providing this opportunity he hopes to replace the accessibility to the unsafe environments at home or elsewhere the youth may be subjected to.
Executive Director of the H.L. Neblett Center Keith Cottoner said that a system similar to this in Owensboro would be beneficial to himself and other after-school programs.
At the Neblett Center, Cottoner said that when they have to employ their own people to drive out to get the students, they ultimately are losing staff momentarily while picking up some students.
As of right now, they mostly pick up students from all across the city and only one school has a school bus drop them off at the center.
With his time in Louisville at the YMCA, he also knows firsthand — as a worker and a parent — how beneficial provided transportation is to the local centers for all involved.
“The child receives homework help, they are fed and it’s extremely beneficial for my child and working parents who couldn’t get them to the care center,” Cottoner said.
He said it also helps the care centers with fuel costs and other associated costs and would be open to conversations with local superintendents to provide more of an opportunity to the students.
Girls, Inc. was reached out to but was unable to comment in time.
As it pertains to the war in Ukraine he said that the war is very unlike the war in Afghanistan as Ukrainians are fighting back and putting up a great deal of resistance.
“Ukrainians are staying and fighting; [President Volodymyr Zelenskyy] has put up at least a great symbolic sort of resistance so far and I think the Russians are gonna have to at some point calculate what it’s like to be in a country where people don’t want you there,” he said.
And while he sends his thoughts and prayers to the country, he notes that people who are in need of American arms and weapons, ‘ought to pay for our arms rather than just give them all away.’
Also in contrast to the war in Afghanistan, he said does not think bringing in Ukrainian refugees to the states would be beneficial to Ukraine. While he said it would be compassionate, he believes it’s better if the citizens of Ukraine flee into the neighboring countries with the hope of coming back.
In the case of them seeking refugee status here, he notes that it would be harder for Ukrainians to return back to their properties and organize resistance at the border to continue fighting. Similar to the Afghan refugees he feels if it were to happen it wouldn’t be as beneficial for the country in the long run.
He noted that while he does sympathize with the refugees from Afghanistan, a great deal of them are now living in America and can’t return back to the country and start anew for their home.
“They would be the people you would want to form a new government in Afghanistan — they’re all gone. You can see how sometimes we may have great sympathy for people that may not be best for their country for them all to leave,” Paul said.
