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Summary: The latest burst of bullets raked a crowd of revelers at the conclusion of the Kansas City Chiefs’ Super Bowl victory parade on Wednesday.
Two great American sports, baseball and basketball, have been embraced in many other countries, but, with the exception of Canada, American-style football remains a sport played only in the United States.
There is another all-American phenomenon that is unique to our 50 states: mass gun violence. Yes, there are war zones and other chaotic locales where people get shot with some frequency, but the USA is not supposed to be a war zone, even though it often feels that way.
The latest burst of bullets raked a crowd of revelers at the conclusion of the Kansas City Chiefs’ Super Bowl victory parade on Wednesday. Twenty-two people were hit, including eight children. So far, one person has died.
There are two usual scenarios for these incidents; either a lone shooter decides to target a group of people on a campus, in a school, in a church or at some other public venue, or two rival individuals or gangs get into a spontaneous gunbattle and end up injuring a lot of bystanders. Early reports suggest the Kansas City mayhem was of the second type.
Whether loners or gang members, though, both benefit from the ready availability of high-capacity weapons in this country, as well as from the profound reluctance of Republican lawmakers to offend the firearms industry or their fanatical, gun-worshiping constituents. Missouri, in particular, is a state where GOP legislators have made every effort to put guns into the hands of anyone who wants one, no matter how unstable or dangerous that person might be.
Thus, on a day when folks in Missouri were celebrating the success of the Kansas City team at an event where there were cops everywhere, a group of people were able to freely exercise their right to keep and bear arms. What a quintessential American story it is.
See more of David Horsey’s cartoons at: st.news/davidhorsey
View other syndicated cartoonists at: st.news/cartoons
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