Ky. governor says shootings are a 'cultural problem'

BENTON, Ky. (AP) — This was supposed to be Spirit Week at Marshall County High School.

Instead, homecoming events were canceled, the governor was in town lamenting the nation's moral decay, and preparations were being made for the funerals of two 15-year-old children.

Tuesday's attack by a fellow classmate at the high school left more than a dozen survivors with gunshot wounds or other injuries, and three of them remain hospitalized. Hundreds more were scarred by what they saw.

Kentucky Gov. Matt Bevin called on Americans today to "wake up" and recognize that school shootings are a "cultural problem."

"We have become desensitized to death, we have become desensitized to killing, we have become desensitized to empathy for our fellow man and it's coming at an extraordinary price and we have got to look at the root causes of this," Bevin told The Associated Press.

"We can't celebrate death in video games, celebrate death in TV shows, celebrate death in movies, celebrate death in musical lyrics and remove any sense of morality and sense of higher authority and then expect that things like this are not going to happen," he added.

The Republican governor spoke at a community event in Benton, where he was followed by the father of one of the slain students. Sobbing, Jasen Holt asked for prayers for all the "sweet kids" who were killed, injured or traumatized.

"It's not only ours, it's about all of them," said Holt, whose daughter Bailey Nicole Holt was the first to die. "Just pray and take care of each and every one of them."