The punctuation on the end of this NFL season is a shooting at the Chiefs’ parade in Kansas City.
Despite the optimistic “Three-Year Low” phrase in its’ headline, Forbes’ stats on 2024 shootings are predictably grim.
The United States has seen 44 mass shootings in the first six weeks of this year, marking the fewest since 2020, according to data from the Gun Violence Archive
Only 44! Only 7 a week.
We absorb that. Someone will make some “Parade Strong” bracelets or T-shirts. Red and Yellow. Those in the vicinity will be proud to wear them. You might be able to order one online or through a 1-800 number. The proceeds will go somewhere. Some oxidized brass statue will be bolted onto the parade route. A diving hero preventing shit from getting worse.
We’ll learn more about the heroes. Something cancellable will surface about one of them, which will create a whole different unresolvable debate on sports radio for a couple of weeks. The race of the shooter(s) will be an issue. What we would have done in this situation will be fantasized aloud as those nearby thankfully tune us out. (I would have fled).
A tough person you know — physically strong, and unfortunately more intelligent than you, as well — will want to keep debating the moment. “You obviously don’t know how the human knee works do you? You’d have to know how to do a Turkish military patella strike to be effective in an outdoor setting with a crowd that size and with the relative barometric pressure.” “Is that your solution?” “Is that what you want to do with guns? But what about…”
Opening day next season will start with a solemn reminder of the victims. Bowed heads. Some shallow perspective offered by Tony Romo or Kevin Burkhardt or Joe Buck. Some military shit flying over a stadium. Fireworks in an overt lack of self-awareness. An orphaned child participating in the coin flip. “Her teachers say she is really resilient.”
From now until then, and then forever after that collective moment of silence, the victims and their families will be on their own. The people at the grocery store in Buffalo, or the Walmart in El Paso, or recently in Maine (I’d long forgotten that one and it just happened in October) hard to hold ‘em all in our thoughts.
The grief is theirs to process. We believe it is finite. We trust that it rolls through someone like a Potbelly sandwich being toasted. Everyone is fine when it comes out the other side. That place is/was “strong” and everyone is healed. Their own community will handle it. This is the only way it works. This is the only way it can work. We’re not gonna think more about it. We have hands-free GMC SUV payments to make. Sorry. And it’s more normal than Black Friday. Throwing a bouquet after a wedding. Or resting a bowl of chips on your stomach as you watch Patrick Mahomes scramble for a first down.
We also understand how it really works. Grief is unmanageable. It doesn’t expire. And after decades of this, there’s an abstract price we’re all going to pay. Who knows what it is.
It’s been a strange couple of years in Kansas City. The coach’s son driving away drunk from the facility, striking a car with a kid in it. The love story of Travis and Taylor unfolding for all of us. The Chiefs fans who froze to death under mysterious circumstances just weeks ago after a playoff game. And now this.