The shooting started this time at a Super Bowl parade in Kansas City, and when it stopped, at least one person was dead and more than 20 were wounded. And somehow, there was a tragic and shameful symbolism to it all, just because shootings like this really are as American as the Super Bowl now.
This was a celebration of sports in Kansas City, another time when we saw another big American city turned into a small town, hundreds of thousands of people in the streets because players like Patrick Mahomes and Travis Kelce and Chris Jones had brought them out and brought them together and made them feel as if they were all in it together. Sports was doing that again, until the shooting started again near Union Station.
This was what it was like in 2013 when two brothers blew up at the finish line at the Boston Marathon and people died, in the middle of what is always such a joyful celebration of sports in that city, a holiday of sports, really. Then five years later, on this same date, Feb. 14, there was the mass shooting in Marjorie Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Fla.
And this was once again the country of guns, right before we once again heard about all the thoughts and prayers from the cowards in our government who continue to tell us that guns aren’t the problem, even as more blood is routinely shed because of them. This always goes back to the wisdom of the great Pete Hamill, who always used to wonder how many home runs Babe Ruth would have hit without a bat.
So this time the story for the Kansas City Chiefs that began Sunday night when Mahomes threw the winning pass in overtime in the Super Bowl ended with the real soundtrack of America, which is gunfire. What had been the happiest day in the history of Kansas City ended with nearly a dozen children being treated at Children’s Mercy Hospital. According to the reports out of that city, at least one other victim was treated at St. Luke’s Hospital.
Mahomes would later post this on X:
“Praying for Kansas City.”
It is a lovely thought. But we are past the point in this country where prayers can do much when someone points another gun at innocent people. I was in Parkland six years ago after the shooting there, walking the streets and seeing the makeshift memorials, and then going home to listen to all the phony rhetoric from our politicians about how this time things were going to change.
Only things didn’t change after Parkland the way they didn’t change after all those children and those teachers were gunned down by Adam Lanza at Sandy Hook Elementary. This is a country lousy with guns, made lousier by politicians who won’t do anything about them, as they continue to genuflect in front of a Second Amendment crafted in a time of muskets and militias.
They shot up a Super Bowl parade on Wednesday. They shot up an elementary school in Connecticut. They shot up a high school in Florida. They shoot up nightclubs in Orlando and nearly seven years ago, a gunman shot up a music festival in Las Vegas, where the Super Bowl was just played, and when the shooting stopped that time, 58 people were dead.
It was 17 dead at Marjorie Stoneman Douglas six years exactly before guns were going off in Kansas City. Anthony Rizzo of the Yankees attended that high school, and came back after the shooting to attend a vigil there. Here is something he said at the time, in a voice I remember being powerful and fragile and eloquent:
“There are a lot of communities out there that know exactly what we’re going through right now and have to relive those moments again and again. While I don’t have all the answers, I know that something has to change before this is visited on another community and another community and another community.”
Another community this time was Kansas City, Mo., on a sun-splashed February day. In the shadow of what happened almost as soon as the speeches ended, the mayor of Kansas City, Quinton Lucas, issued a statement, one that included this phrase:
“This is absolutely a tragedy, the likes of which we never would have expected in Kansas City.”
But in this country, at this time, why wouldn’t he expect a tragedy like this to finally come to his town?
Why would anybody be surprised that it just happened again, six years to the day after Parkland?
The only difference this time is that it felt like somebody opened fire on the Super Bowl.
