In remarks following a mass shooting at the Chiefs Super Bowl parade, Kansas City Mayor Quinton Lucas made a pointed statement about how the tragedy was able to take place even with more than 800 police officers stationed at the parade to secure the area.
“That’s what happens with guns,” he said plainly.
At least one person was killed in the violence and 21 people — including 11 children — were injured. As of Thursday, police had detained three people and confiscated multiple firearms in connection with the shooting, which they attributed to an interpersonal dispute.
“Parades, rallies, schools, movies, it seems like almost nothing is safe,” Lucas added.
According to reports, the violence began as an argument and escalated. It was not a single-shooter targeted attack like the kind that often receives more media attention. That makes it more in line with the vast majority of shooting incidents in the US.
Lucas’s statements highlight the fact that the proliferation of guns and weak gun control policies have fueled the United States’s mass shooting crisis, including the latest instance of violence in Kansas City. They also explicitly acknowledge the fallacy of the “good guy with a gun” argument: the idea that adding armed security — rather than limiting access to guns — can keep people safe.
The US has problems with gun violence because it has a lot of guns
The US is unique among industrialized countries when it comes to the frequency of fatal gun violence.
According to CNN, which referenced the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation (IHME), a University of Washington global health research group, the proportion of homicides caused by gun violence in the US was 18 times that of the average of other developed countries in 2019.
Similarly, the number of firearms people own in the US far surpasses that of any other developed country. The US has about 120 firearms per 100 residents, much higher than Yemen, the next closest…
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