A game, a parade, a shooting: the story of America in three acts

America's most communal cultural event, the Super Bowl, featured a wildly popular team from Kansas City, cheered on by a dating global pop star. After the Chiefs won, she kissed her boyfriend under the falling confetti.

Three days later, the city held a massive parade and celebration during which gunfire erupted, scattering panicked fans in football jerseys, killing one woman and wounding 22 others, about half of them children.

Super Bowl. Procession. To shoot.

Is there a more American story than that?

The shooting was not directly related to football, just as a shooting in a mall is not related to shopping. But every shooting feels like a crime against American culture. Institutions include schools, colleges, cinemas, churches and synagogues, supermarkets, concerts. There is now a subset of mass shootings taking place during parades.

No part of American public life feels completely safe. No shooting feels like a surprise, except to the people who experience it.

This was a coda to the global sporting event where we celebrate all things American – from football to Usher, military flyovers to the Puppy Bowl. What if a shooting happened during a massive hometown celebration of the champions, in a crowd of people wearing team uniforms? It felt like an unoriginal plot device. But fatal shootings occur so regularly in the United States that only the wildest circumstances attract attention.

Chiefs players were nearby. Some were rushed away. One, offensive lineman Trey Smith, described being pressured in a closet, hiding while trying to calm a little boy down. It was fortunate that the death toll was not higher.

“One of the cultural problems is that we are losing the ability to live in community with each other,” said Jason Kander, a fifth-generation Kansas City resident, a Democratic former secretary of state of Missouri and an advocate for stricter gun laws. “And if we can't safely gather and celebrate, it will only make the problem worse.”

That is the concern of Frank White, a Democrat and elected county executive of Jackson County (which includes Kansas City), who played eighteen seasons with the Kansas City Royals baseball club. He rode in the parade and stood on the stage outside Union Station for the celebration, along with his wife, two adult granddaughters and several others.

They were led inside and became separated in the chaos. Panicked people rushed through the doors. People hid for about 30 minutes, quietly and with their phones off, as American children are now taught in schools.

“You always want to put on the best show for your city at a time when a lot of people are watching you,” White said. “And you're proud that your city isn't part of a mass shooting like this. So it was discouraging. It's about showing your city and your civic pride, but at the same time you're frustrated because gun violence is just spiraling out of control across the country.”

Wednesday was Valentine's Day, the sixth anniversary of the shooting that left seventeen people dead at a high school in Parkland, Florida. It was also the 45th day of 2024 and by that evening there had been 49 mass shootings in the United States. according to the Gun Violence Archive. (The archive defines these as shootings in which at least four people are killed or injured, not including the shooter.)

The shooting in Kansas City raised familiar questions about the intersection of American sports and culture. Are sporting events, and the parades that celebrate them, a place to forget or experience the real world?

Bob Kendrick is the president of the Negro Leagues Baseball Museum in Kansas City, Missouri. His 12-year-old granddaughter and several museum employees attended the parade.

He knows better than most that sports has always been a prism for issues of race, gender, fairness, economics and violence. Discussing the shooting, Kendrick invoked Buck O'Neil when he mentioned that Jackie Robinson would become the first black player in the major baseball leagues. It was a sporting moment, but also much more than that. People came to the games just to boo Robinson, O'Neil said. They weren't baseball fans. The country always had – has – always had problems to deal with.

“There are few things in our society that are as stimulating as sports,” says Kendrick. “Maybe music. And of course, baseball was at the forefront of that galvanization.”

Football can be at the forefront these days. And when it unites people, in Kansas City and around the world, it feels like Sunday's Super Bowl, or Wednesday's parade before the shooting started.

“And now the issue of gun laws is being raised again, especially in this state, and systemic issues that every city faces,” Kendrick said. “It just makes you think about things that you should be thinking about anyway, but you don't necessarily want to think about, especially at that moment.”

Joe Posnanski, a best-selling sports book author, spent fifteen years as a columnist for the Kansas City Star. He knows the dueling perspectives imposed on the sport. Some want the games to be an escape from the harsh realities of life, without politics and bitterness off the field. Others see sports as a reflection of what the country is going through.

“The reality is that we can try to stay in the sports world and let them be some kind of beacon that can bring us together,” Posnanski said. “But it is inevitable that something will happen and the wall will collapse. There is no way to protect that feeling from the outside world. That is the reality of where we are now.”

The Super Bowl is the ultimate American distraction from the outside world. An estimated 123 million people in the United States watchedwhether you want to root for a team, watch the commercials or spot Taylor Swift, the global music icon and girlfriend of Kansas City star Travis Kelce.

Victory parades are a distraction in the outside world, with their vast, unsecured crowds. In Denver last June, two people were shot at the end of the championship parade for the NBA's Nuggets. Days earlier, when the Nuggets won the title, a shooting near the team's arena injured at least 10 people.

Wednesday was a day of warm sunshine in Kansas City. Police estimated that a million people came to cheer on the Chiefs, most wearing team colors. Schools were canceled for the occasion – a 'red snow day'. Fans hung from trees and light poles. About 850 police officers were spread throughout the city center.

The Kansas City Star called it “the biggest party in Kansas City history.”

There were speeches, music and cheering. The Chiefs left the stage. Team buses were parked behind Union Station.

Then came another familiar American ritual: frightened people fleeing a danger they couldn't name.

“We're all starting to join this club that none of us want to be a part of,” said Quinton Lucas, the mayor of Kansas City, who was at the parade with his wife and mother.

A 43-year-old named Elizabeth Galvan, also known as Lisa Lopez-Galvan, was killed and 22 others, ages 8 to 47, were injured. Two teenagers were trapped.

Then came the ritual responses, the offering of thoughts and prayers, the pleas for gun reform, the rhetorical questions about how much is enough and why this seems to be such a uniquely American problem.

“Praying for Kansas City,” Chiefs quarterback Patrick Mahomes, the most valuable player from the Super Bowl win over San Francisco, wrote on the social platform X. He added three prayer hands emojis. It would have been strange if he hadn't said anything. It would have been newsworthy if he had said more. Mahomes and his wife Brittany visited young victims at a hospital on Friday.

The NFL released a statement Wednesday, featuring three well-known phrases from the post-tragedy, noting that “we are deeply saddened by the senseless shooting.”

Others in football, like Chiefs safety Justin Reid, advocated for “real solutions.”

What bothers Kander, beyond the tragedy and the numbing recurrence of gun violence, is what the shooting means for Kansas City. The city was buzzing with pride, he said, with the Chiefs, Taylor Swift and the news that Arrowhead Stadium, home of the soccer team, would be a venue for World Cup soccer games in 2026.

“Kansas City has felt like the center of the universe, and that's not something people here, including myself, have ever experienced,” Kander said. “That translates into the way you think about yourself.”

The parade wasn't just about a football match. It was more than that: a culmination, a social statement.

And then the scene of another tragic shooting.

On Wednesday night, the scene at Union Station looked like a parking lot after a big game, covered in trash and discarded bottles.

But it was also different. There were clothes, lawn chairs and strollers left behind. There was police tape. And there were little square pieces of colorful paper, the red and gold confetti that showered the people there to celebrate all the good of the past few days.