Will it take a high-profile athlete being shot and killed to make us care? | Opinion

Imagine Patrick Mahomes lying in a pool of blood. Or Andy Reid being rushed to the hospital with multiple gunshot wounds. Would that finally make us care enough to do something? Would that finally produce action from the spineless politicians more beholden to the gun lobby than their constituents?

Sadly, I doubt it. We’ve been here too many times already — Cleveland, Denver, Milwaukee, should I continue? — and it never makes a damn bit of difference. We swallowed our nerve when the Sandy Hook children were massacred. You really think an athlete, even a big-name one, getting slaughtered in yet another exercise of the Second Amendment would convince us the life of an actual human is more valuable than the guns this country fetishizes?  

This isn’t a hypothetical question. Fortunately, everyone on the Kansas City Chiefs — players, coaches, staff and their families — was unharmed in the shooting during Wednesday’s parade that left one dead and at least 22 injured, several of them kids. (This is not to be confused with the mass shooting at an Atlanta high school Wednesday, which also left several kids injured.)

But gun violence is so prevalent in America, our disregard for the safety and security of our fellow citizens so callously great, it is only a matter of time before one of the athletes being celebrated becomes one of the horrifying statistics.

“This is SAD man! Kids are being shot and somebody didn’t come home tonight,” Chiefs safety Justin Reid wrote on X. “We cannot allow this to be normal. We cannot [allow] ourselves to become numb and chalk it up to ‘just another shooting in America’ and reduce people in statistics and then move on tmrw.

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“This is a SERIOUS PROBLEM!!” Justin Reid added. “I pray our leaders enact real solutions so our kids’ kids won’t know this violence.”

Good luck with that.

A majority of Americans support both an assault weapons ban and common-sense gun control, including universal background checks and minimal standards — training, licensing and registration — for gun ownership. After every high-profile mass shooting, there are calls for something to be done.

And yet here we are again. A celebration of our most American event ended by our most American tragedy.

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“The Super Bowl is the most unifying event in America. Nothing brings more of us together,” President Joe Biden said Wednesday night. “And the celebration of a Super Bowl win is a moment that brings a joy that can’t be matched to the winning team and their supporters. For this joy to be turned to tragedy today in Kansas City cuts deep in the American soul.”

It’s a wound that is self-inflicted, however. We choose to live this way by our inaction. We choose to accept death as the price of our “freedom.” We choose to subject our kids to lifelong trauma and stress because they had the audacity to want to see their favorite players celebrate a Super Bowl title.

Several members of the Chiefs comforted kids in the chaos that followed the shooting. Offensive lineman Trey Smith gave one child the WWE belt the players had been passing around and stayed with him until he calmed down. Coach Andy Reid hugged one distraught teen, reminding him to breathe.

Admirable responses, all of them. Especially when it just as easily could have been one of them — or their families or their teammates — who needed comfort and aid.

And grotesque as the odds are, someday will.

“When are we going to fix these gun laws?” Chiefs defensive end Charles Omenihu pleaded in a post on X. “How many more people have to die to say enough is enough? It’s too easy for the wrong people to obtain guns in America and that’s a FACT.”

Of course the gun zealots were quick to respond. The problem is mental health issues, not guns, they claimed. Except America does not have the market cornered on mental health woes. We do, however, have the market cornered on mass shootings, deadly and otherwise.

They pointed to the part of the Second Amendment that says “the right of the people to keep and bear arms, shall not be infringed” while ignoring the part that says “well regulated.” Or tried to claim well regulated meant something different when the Constitution was written. (They also ignore that muskets were the gun of choice when the Constitution was written, not automatic weapons that can shred tissue and vaporize bones.)

But it is the guns. It's always been the guns. And when the day comes that a big-name athlete dies because of one of those guns, his or her blood will be on all of our hands.

Follow USA TODAY Sports columnist Nancy Armour on social media @nrarmour.