Chiefs’ Super Bowl parade shooting doesn’t feel surprising, and that’s a tragedy

It was supposed to be a celebration.

The Kansas City Chiefs just went back-to-back as Super Bowl champions; first time anyone has done it in 20 years. Fans were gathered to celebrate that accomplishment, children excited to see their favorite players such as QB Patrick Mahomes as they hoist another trophy.

Instead, the Chiefs parade now becomes synonymous with terror and pain, because of the inaction by the people in power. Three people are in custody after 22 people were shot during the Chiefs’ celebratory parade. One woman, Kansas City DJ Lisa Lopez-Galvan, was killed during the shooting. Of the 22 people injured, 11 of them were children, per CNN.

11 children, now with bullet wounds instead of championship banners, all because of the inactivity surrounding gun control in the United States.

The idea that people can’t go outside in America without the chance of being shot at is a chilling, yet unfortunately true reality of the world we live in. In fact, it’s become as synonymous with America as football itself. WKBW (Buffalo) reporter Briana Aldridge said that in the 45 days since the year turned to 2024, there have been 47 mass shootings. Over one for every day here, including Wednesday. There was also a mass shooting at Benjamin Mays High School in Atlanta, GA on Wednesday. Our most vulnerable citizens are the ones who end up filling graves and hospital rooms from bullet wounds, but the adults in power continue to do next to nothing about it.

Sadly enough, the Kansas City shooting took place on the exact day of the Marjory Stoneman Douglas school shooting six years ago. I was in high school then, a senior about to go to college. I’m 23 now and there still haven’t been any significant gun control laws enacted, while more and more American citizens continue to die.

How many more people have to see their lives ended in front of a bullet? How many more children have to go to school with the fear that they might not be coming home? Evidently, the answer is: far too many.

In 2023, the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation published an article calling the United States an outlier for their high rates of firearm-related deaths and shootings. In a 2021 study, it was found that the United States had the highest rate of firearm-related deaths among countries with over 10 million people, and it wasn’t particularly close either. That same study concluded that gun violence caused around eight percent of deaths in the US of people under the age of 20. Children, having their lives ended because of a bullet, yet the government continues to do nothing about it. Since the shooting at Sandy Hook, when elementary school kids had their lives abruptly ended, there’s been next to nothing changed about gun control, and if the lives of children being lost to gun violence can’t get laws to change, nothing will. America has decided that even children can be gunned down in school, but it’ll be fine because the “good guys with guns” will come in and stop the shooter after the fact.

It’s not about “good guys with guns” anymore. There are supposedly good guys with guns all around the United States, yet these shootings keep happening. The people in Kansas City who initially apprehended one of the shooters? They were citizens, people attending the celebration as fans.

The governor of Missouri, the same one who opposes gun control laws, was in the crowd as shots were fired, and the memo is always to send out their thoughts and prayers to the victims and their families. How many more thoughts and prayers are we going to have to send to victims and their families before enough is enough? How callous is it to send out your thoughts to the people who were shot, while thinking this is a great place to live?

It makes the prayers ring hollow when the reason children are recovering from bullet wounds is because of restrictions the governor opposed and relaxed gun laws in their state. The blood spilled on Wednesday afternoon is on his hands, yet I doubt any substantial change comes from it.

The most American tragedy happening at a celebration of our most American sport.