The Kansas City Chiefs rally shooting is a problem that can only be solved at home | Opinion

It is hard to talk about the shooting at the Kansas City Super Bowl championship parade first because so many families have been turned upside down by the senseless violence, but also because of how much we don’t know. We don’t know anything about two teens who charged with gun and resisting arrest offenses, as their names are shielded in juvenile court. Police haven’t released any information about the firearms the teens allegedly had, how they were obtained and what dispute led to the indiscriminate use of firearms on so many innocent bystanders. (We do know two adults were charged with felony murder related to the incident on Tuesday.)

That hasn’t stopped commentators from blaming illegal immigrants, gun makers and gun sellers, or criticizing heartless Republicans who won’t rush to restrict guns at the drop of a single dead body.

What has the nation focused on Kansas City’s most recent mass shooting is the fact that unlike so much other gun violence in our country, the parade brought together people from across racial, class and suburban-urban boundaries, and so those affected by this violence run the gamut of Missouri and Kansas society from the top to the bottom. Regular folks, two governors and the Kansas City mayor scurried for shelter from the barrage in the same way.

The day-to-day story of gun violence in Kansas City and the nation is far different. When a suburbanite picks up a gun, he — and it is almost always a he — he kills himself or other suburbanites of the same race. In the same way, urban dwellers kill each other. On most days, bullets don’t cross the lines that divide us any more than we cross those lines.

In Kansas City, gun violence is, for the most part, an urban phenomenon. Most of those hundreds who pulled the trigger and those who died last year were young Black men. Poor, urban Black residents are the disproportionate victims and perpetrators of gun violence nationwide. This is a fact.

The solution to this problem will not be found among legal gun sellers and manufacturers. America is awash in more than 300 million guns — a few million more or fewer will make no difference. The guns allegedly carried by the two young men facing charges were already illegal under federal law — minors can’t carry handguns legally in public. State law limits concealed carry to those 19 and over or military veterans age 18 or older. Making them double illegal by writing more laws won’t let the police magically disarm youths with bad intentions or make it any more palatable to police in ways that disproportionately put members of minority groups on the path to jail.

In the same way, making Republicans more sensitive to gun violence in urban areas won’t change much either. There are precious few of the GOP species in Kansas City to change things. And blaming society for the violence of these two kids doesn’t hold water either. Looking at the sweep of American history, there has never been a time when it was better to be a Black person than today. Programs aimed at the poor and minorities are funded like never before and opportunity is greater than it has ever been. The beacon of a Black middle class showing the road out of poverty has never been brighter.

If new facts come out, I’ll be happy, even eager to change my tune, but for now, with what we know, this is a problem that will have to be solved at home.

At home in Kansas City, where public schools spend nearly $15,000 a year per student, the alleged perpetrators of this gun violence are most likely current or former public school students. Where did the $360,000 a year spent year after year on a classroom of 24 go? Were these kids left behind by a school system that has given up on the hardest to reach?

At home in the community — where were the churches and civil society groups that should have seen these young men going astray? This is nothing new. Three years ago, after a year of gun violence, the police and a mayor came up with a plan to address the situation. The result was last year’s record violence after which there was another plan. Then came the parade and these two kids.

At home, where chances are single mothers struggled to find father figures to guide these young men onto a productive path and away from a street culture where personal disputes are resolved with gunfire, there needs to be change.

Change is not going to come from a government program or a federal mandate or a civil rights investigation or a mayoral plan or the police. If change ever comes, it will come from the culture that raised these boys and let them down.

That is damn unsatisfying when so many would like to have someone to blame, when Kansas City would like to point the finger. But it is the reality we face. Until we do, there will be more parades, more gunfire and more heartache.

David Mastio, a former editor and columnist for USA Today, is a regional editor for The Center Square and a regular Star Opinion correspondent.