Kansas City Super Bowl rally shooting: Will U.S. gun violence ever end?

Two juveniles have been detained on gun-related and resisting arrest charges in connection with Wednesday's shooting following the Kansas City Chiefs' Super Bowl victory parade in Kansas City in the U.S. state of Missouri, according to the police on Friday. The two were being held at a juvenile detention center.

The shooting happened outside the city's historic Union Station. A mother of two was killed and 22 others injured by gunfire in a shooting during the parade. The 22 injured people range in age from 8 to 47, and about half of them are under the age of 16.

The shooting happened despite the presence of more than 800 police officers. "I'm angry at what happened today. The people who came to this celebration should expect a safe environment," Stacey Graves, chief of the Kansas City Missouri Police Department, said at a news conference.

The shooting appears to have been a "dispute between several people that ended in gunfire," Graves said, noting there is no indication of a "nexus to terrorism or homegrown violent extremism."

Lisa Augustine, spokesperson for Children's Mercy Kansas City, said the hospital was treating 12 patients from the rally, including 11 children, some of whom suffered gunshot wounds.

The Kansas City Chiefs said all their players, coaches, staffers and their families were "safe and accounted for" after the deadly shooting.

"We are truly saddened by the senseless act of violence that occurred outside of Union Station at the conclusion of today's parade and rally," the Chiefs said in a statement. "Our hearts go out to the victims, their families and all of Kansas City."

According to the White House, U.S. President Joe Biden was briefed on the shooting and will continue to receive updates. White House officials were in touch with state and local leaders, and federal law enforcement was on the scene cooperating with their local counterparts.

Raging gun violence

Kansas City has struggled with gun violence, and in 2020 it was among nine cities chosen by the U.S. Justice Department in an effort to crack down on violent crime. In 2023, the city matched its record with 182 homicides, most of which involved guns.

The Kansas City shooting was not the only incident to grab national headlines on Wednesday. Earlier, four students were shot outside an Atlanta high school, while three police officers were shot during a standoff in the capital Washington.

According to the Gun Violence Archive website, 656 mass shootings occurred in the United States last year, and 18,854 deaths were caused by gun violence.

So far in 2024, 49 mass shootings have taken place in the U.S., and 1,957 people have been killed by gun violence, the archive showed.

There were a record high number of school shootings in 2023, outpacing the previous year's record for the third year in a row. Last year, 346 school shootings were recorded by the K-12 School Shooting Database, which tracks gun violence on school grounds.

The rapid increase in school shootings over the past three years has made gun violence the leading cause of death of children and teens in the country since 2020, when it surpassed car accidents, according to the Kaiser Family Foundation's analysis of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention data.

Political deadlock

Most Americans continue to say gun control laws should be generally stricter, according to a CNN poll in 2023, which finds broad support for preventing people under the age of 21 from buying any type of gun.

Overall, 64 percent say they favor stricter gun control laws, with 36 percent opposed, and little changed since a survey taken in 2022 in the wake of a mass shooting at an elementary school in Uvalde, Texas.

About one-third of Americans say that the presence of guns makes public places less safe, while 32 percent of them say that allowing gun owners to carry their guns in public makes those places safer and the rest that it makes no difference to safety.

However, the country remains closely divided about how the availability of guns affects public safety, with sharp differences in views across partisan and demographic lines.

At present, the provisions on gun control vary from state to state, and gun control and cross-state law enforcement face many challenges.

Positions of Democrats and Republicans on gun control are becoming increasingly polarized, making it even more difficult for either party to compromise.

Democrats generally favor more gun control while most Republicans argue that gun rights should not be infringed upon. They have been using gun violence to lash out at each other, with control legislation stuck idle in the debate.

In addition, interest group lobbying is rampant. Group politics and electoral politics in the U.S. have provided legalized channels for gun groups to conduct money politics and influence the stance of Congress members on guns.

According to OpenSecrets statistics, from 1998 to 2022, gun ownership groups spent $190.4 million on lobbying.

With a political system where different sides hold each other back, an increasingly polarized political ecosystem, and pervasive interest groups, the U.S. has failed to resolve its domestic gun problem at the expense of countless lives.

(With input from agencies)