Biden Urges Swift Action Following the Shooting at the Kansas City Super Bowl Parade

Written by Eric Lutz

Just a few days before a shooting occurred at a Super Bowl celebration in Kansas City, taking at least 22 lives, ex-President Donald Trump was at a National Rifle Association gun show in Pennsylvania. He assured his commitment as the “best friend” of Second Amendment advocates if he ever comes back as the president. “There was immense pressure with regards to guns,” Trump recalled about his term in the office. “But we did not succumb to it. We didn’t do anything.”

The Republican leaders have a pattern of describing the continuous violence in soft terms—a joyous day “has transpired into a disaster,” said Eric Schmitt, the Missouri Senator on Wednesday. However, this perpetual cycle, the accumulation of tragic anniversaries, is not a random disaster hitting communities nationwide; it is the result of deliberate inaction from the officials, as Trump boasted the previous Friday. “We should not tolerate such incidents as a norm,” the Chiefs' Justin Reid wrote Wednesday. “I hope our leaders take effective action, so our future generations won’t be familiar with such violence.”

There has been significant progress in the movement for gun safety over the recent years—mainly with the Bipartisan Safer Communities Act of 2022, which was signed into law by President Joe Biden after the Uvalde school shooting. “The momentum is picking up,” Emma Brown, director of the gun reform group Giffords, shared with me recently. However, as Brown mentioned, there is still a considerable difference between present gun policy and the stricter regulations that most Americans support, owing to the “generation-long influence” of gun lobbyists and manufacturers over state and federal lawmakers.

So far, this influence has hindered more powerful reforms on a federal level and culminated in an inconsistent set of gun laws at the state level—some states such as Illinois and California have implemented stricter limitations, while others like Missouri have loosened theirs. Conservatives often call attention to violent incidents in places like Chicago as proof that gun control is ineffective. However, research shows that regions with laxer gun laws tend to witness higher rates of gun-related fatalities. Missouri, defined by one Democratic state legislator as a “testing ground for dire gun laws” on Wednesday, has some of the most lenient regulations in the country, along with some of the highest rates of gun deaths and homicides. The city of Kansas, where the mass shooting occurred last Wednesday, had the seventh highest homicide rate among the major cities in America last year.

Trump, in his speech last week, was referring to some of the pressure he faces after the Parkland school shooting, on whose sixth anniversary another shooting incident marked the Chiefs Parade. “We initially planned a different interaction here, to discuss some of the initiatives you guys are taking in Capitol Hill to raise awareness and push for change, and this incident happened while you were here,” CNN’s Brianna Keilar asked the parents of Parkland victim Joaquin Oliver. “What are your thoughts as you watch this?”

“Not surprised at all,” responded Manuel, Joaquin Oliver's father. “It never ends.”

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Stacey Graves, Kansas City Police Chief, shared details concerning the parade incident on Thursday. According to her, the preliminary inquiry suggested that the incident "seemed to be a dispute between several individuals which resulted in gunfire." The crossfire ended up harming Lisa Lopez-Galvan, a radio DJ and a mother in Kansas City, who was killed, and at least nine children who were among those injured.

“It doesn’t have to be this way,” wrote Brown on Wednesday. But it will continue to be, as long as there are leaders in this country who take pride in doing “nothing” to prevent such mindless violence. “What are we waiting for? What more do we need to witness? How many more families need to suffer?” said Biden in a statement on Wednesday. “The time to act is now.”

CORRECTION: In a former version of this report, CNN anchor Brianna Keilar was misidentified.