2024 Chiefs Superbowl Parade

I’ve looked for the right words for the past week. There are none. It’s another mass shooting. Another vigil. More thoughts and prayers. More meek and pointless calls for gun reform. And somewhere in the country, we will do it all again tomorrow, and this weekend, and next month.

Rinse and repeat.

We will hear the same tired line, “Guns don’t kill people, people kill people.” Then, we will hospitalize or bury the next batch of women, children, and men with holes in their bodies from the bullets of a gun.

“Guns don’t kill people; people kill people.”

Bullshit. Tell that to Lisa Lopez-Galvan’s family. Tell that to the 11 children wounded at a Superbowl parade on Valentine’s Day.

Let’s put some numbers into perspective.

How many people do you personally know who have been killed in a fist fight? Or a knife fight?

Here are my stats:

Fist fight: 0

Knife fight: 0

Gun fight: 2

The people I knew died because there was another person with a gun in their hand. I’ve seen fist fights, I’ve seen a knife branded, but I’ve never known anyone to die by either.

Oh but wait, there’s more.

I’ve been personally involved in 1 fist fight and 0 knife fights in my life, but I’ve experienced and been affected by gun violence 9 times.

That’s…

Fist fight: 1
Knife fight: 0
Gun Violence: 9

9. The common denominator is always the gun. Math doesn’t lie. It either is, or it isn’t. And it is. It is, and always will be, the guns.

The KC parade was my 9th experience with gun violence. I was there with my two children. Two hours prior to the shooting, we were standing in the same spot where it happened, in a sea of red in front of Union Station. We were as happy as everybody else to be there because we were celebrating a hard-won victory, and our Chiefs were home. Because of the crowd, we decided to move to the same spot we were last year, on a hill with a better view. Our entertainment, while we were waiting for the parade to start, was watching a boy my son’s age climb a light pole. He had the best view of us all, and my worrying about him falling, I thought, would be all the drama we’d have that day.

When the parade was over, while we were walking to the car, we watched the ambulances and police cars scream past us under a blue and sunny sky. The sound of the sirens was deafening, drowning out the joy of the music and happy cries in the crowd of the last three hours. We had to move out of the way to let ambulances through, and what was a bright and friendly meandering to the car suddenly became a dark, foreboding feeling that something wasn’t right.

I made a story up to my kids about the scene, something I’ve had to become accustomed to doing to calm my triggers and their nerves. I told them, “They probably just found all the passed out drunk people on the lawn when the crowd thinned out.” Meanwhile, I was trying to figure out why a man was asking strangers where Children’s Mercy Hospital was when he was standing right in front of it.

Little did we know that 1 woman was already dead and multiple children had been shot. Another mass shooting on what should have been a happy day.

Just. One. Fucking. Day. Without a Crisis. Without sirens. Without mayhem.

But, no. We couldn’t even manage that.

I won’t send my thoughts and prayers because if it had been us, it would feel like an insult. I won’t insult another family with a sentence or two and call it a day when their mother was just murdered or their child was just shot in the leg. So this is what I will do. I will write.

“Whoever said the pen is mightier than the sword obviously never encountered automatic weapons.” -General MacArthur

That’s not true. It’s years past time we pick up the pen and write sensible, humane, and reasonable gun reform into existence and then make it actually fucking happen. That, General MacArthur, is how the pen becomes mightier than the sword.

Sign the gun reform bills into law. Add the signatures of all the victims hurt or lost while they were waiting for us to care enough. They’ve already signed it with their blood.

*I wrote a poem as my way to express my thoughts and send my love out to Kansas City, and the rest of the world. We are all hurting, and sorry will never be enough.

My Bloody Valentine

Hip hip hooray
Let’s go to the parade
It’s a celebration
On this Valentine’s Day

Enjoy it now cause in a few hours
It will all be over
The crime scene tape
Will replace the Superbowl posters

As we sit here with our mouths gaping open
Watching the death toll rise
Another headline
23 more lives

Wake up tomorrow, take your shower, brush your teeth
It’s just another day, it’s just another week
The world will keep spinnning
And the innocent won’t be winning

Told there is nothing to be done
Hands are tied, mouths are gagged
Make sure to come to the gun show next Saturday
Bring your Dad

Keep drinking your coffee from your cute little “See the Good” cup
Pretend nothing happened, keep your head up
The headlines today will be tomorrow’s fodder
Thoughts and prayers replaced with next week’s murder

Don’t look too long at the screaming lights
Tell your kids it will be alright
While their noses are bleeding and they can’t find a breath
Shield their eyes from all the death

Take the bullet
Keep quiet
Don’t say a word
Cry in the bathroom
Try and forget what you just heard

It’s just another bloody day
In the raging neglect of the USA
Nothing to see here, and everything to fear
Just another gun show
Just another year