Fortunately, an assassination attempt on mayoral candidate Craig Greenberg missed him entirely. The Louisville Democrat felt the bullet graze his sweater before his campaign workers successfully and courageously barricaded the door against the assassin.

Who would pick up a firearm and try to kill a mayoral candidate? You’ll be surprised:

Craig Greenberg, a Democratic candidate for mayor of Louisville, Kentucky, says a gunman walked into his campaign office and fired at him Monday.

Greenberg says one of the bullets grazed his sweater, but no one was hurt. pic.twitter.com/4gDaHppbrp

— CBS Mornings (@CBSMornings) February 15, 2022

The Louisville Courier Journal had no trouble identifying the alleged assassin. As it turns out, Quintez Brown worked for the LCJ as both an intern and a columnist, as well as working as a civil-rights activist in the community:

A Louisville activist has been identified as a suspect in Monday’s attempted shooting of mayoral candidate Craig Greenberg.

Quintez Brown, 21, was charged with attempted murder and four counts of wanton endangerment after Greenberg was shot at in his campaign headquarters Monday morning in Butchertown, LMPD spokeswoman Elizabeth Ruoff said late Monday.

Brown, a civil rights activist, is a former intern and editorial columnist for The Courier Journal.

A police report says a man later identified as Brown entered the building and fired a 9mm Glock handgun at Greenberg before fleeing the building.

It gets even weirder, as Charles C.W. Cooke notes at National Review. Guess which pet cause Brown once championed? Opposition to constitutional carry:

Your life has no meaning to the irresponsible politicians in Frankfort who time and time again choose the National Rifle Association over your life.

Their support for Senate Bill 150, which allows Kentuckians to carry concealed weapons without a permit, is yet another warning: They’ve put a price tag on your life and decided that the blood money they receive from the NRA is more valuable.

Every time lawmakers vote against gun safety, and thus the lives of our most vulnerable, they show that their hearts can be as cold as the steel of the guns they praise.

Oddly, the LCJ doesn’t take note of Brown’s gun-control activism in their report today on the shooting. Instead, they just offer a more generic take on his status as an editorial columnist, as well as being “involved in the racial justice protests of 2020.” The LCJ also notes that Brown went missing last summer for a couple of weeks but was found by family and friends.

More recently, Brown launched his own campaign for political office:

Quintez Brown, 21, is running to represent District 5 for Louisville’s Metro Council.

“Frederick Douglass said that the youth should fight to be leaders today, because the men who run this country are sick.” – Kwame Ture pic.twitter.com/tUCjXXG2hS

— Quintez Brown – District 5 (@tez4liberation) December 15, 2021

Brown’s platform was “revolutionary” and “Pan-African”:

To reach our goal of #OneBillionVoices I ask that you read and share this letter I wrote.

"We must become even more conscious of who we are and why we are in these circumstances. Then we must change these circumstances and construct a new world." – Hueyhttps://t.co/QiyL8xj5hg

— Quintez Brown – District 5 (@tez4liberation) January 11, 2022

The “love letter” wasn’t exactly oriented toward Valentine’s Day kisses:

My call to action is simple. Voting and petitioning will not be sufficient for our liberation, but in the current moment it will be strategically used to reach the masses. I do not want to speak of a long road ahead of us because no such road exists. We are already here and it begins with you. Secure your number amongst the billion and commit yourself to win a new world side by side with a united left front. “From all according to ability.” Radicalize your natural environment, organize the people around you, and watch our numbers grow.

Frankly, this looks like a young man in the middle of a mental-health breakdown that’s been a long time coming. His last column at the LCJ hinted at this too, a few months before he briefly went missing:

I went to school and became exceptional. I beat the odds. My parents allowed me to invest in a bright, comfortable future where I will have earned the benefit of the doubt in a world where my skin color automatically denies me such right.

I’ve earned the right to say I’m not one of the poor, miserable “others” in the streets begging for a handout. I’m America’s bright future. I’ve become another symbol of neoliberal progress where my title and my “recognized” name will give hope to those in desperate need of food, security and shelter.

And thus I’ve become destroyed. No longer myself. But another tool of oppression.

Picking up a gun to force his “revolution” seems inevitable from this long descent. His “revolutionary love letter” all but promised a violent uprising of some sort. And yet, in a media world where honking horns and Spotify contracts are treated like ackshual violence, no one seemed to notice Quintez Brown’s leap off the deep end until he tried to assassinate another local politician. And even then, the same media outlet on which his descent can be chronicled seems less than interested in tying this violence to either Brown’s clear political support for totalitarian systems or his mental health. Don’t expect much more national media coverage of this either, for the same reasons that the LCJ is treading lightly now.

You can bet they won’t touch this aspect of the shooting, either. The pan-African activist picked a Jewish politician as a target. Coincidence? We’ll see, we’ll see …

Craig Greenberg, a Jewish Democrat running for mayor of Louisville, KY, was shot Monday. Arrested for his attempted murder is a 21-yr-old "racial justice" protester who calls for "the total liberation and unification of Africa under scientific socialism.”https://t.co/tOMzOuiDIA

— Jeff Jacoby (@Jeff_Jacoby) February 15, 2022