Kansas City shooting tore through civic fabric. Did it also end sports championship parades as we know them?
KANSAS CITY, Mo. — As Chris Jones led crowd chants for a three-peat, it was fun for Kansas City Chiefs fans to envision what could happen in February of 2025. After Jones (perhaps inebriated) said he would be back for the 2024 season, you could forgive an exuberant Chiefs fan for dreaming of a third consecutive Super Bowl parade and fourth in six seasons.
Just like in 2020 and in 2023, Wednesday’s parade down Grand Street culminated with a rally in front of Union Station. But minutes after Travis Kelce serenaded the crowd with an off-key version of “Friends in Low Places,” chaos ensued. One person, Elizabeth Galvan, was killed and over 20 people were shot in yet another mass shooting in America.
Now, Kansas City grieves for Galvan and those who were wounded. As police work to find a motive for the shooting after three people were detained, the city will have to soon wrestle with another question: Will it ever have another championship parade like this again?
The area in front of the historic train station has become the site of all of Kansas City’s huge gatherings. The Royals celebrated their 2015 World Series title there and the 2023 NFL Draft was held in the same spot where the Chiefs have soaked in their recent Super Bowl wins.
All four of the championship parades have followed the same route; players, coaches, staff and dignitaries are carried south through downtown on Grand before getting out and celebrating in front of thousands gathered in front of Liberty Memorial.
On the Monday and Tuesday after the Super Bowl, the theme around the city I love was how good we had gotten at hosting parades. A car got into the parade route before it began in 2020 and led to a brief chase, but the four parades since 2015 had largely gone off without major incident.
Until now. There were over 800 police officers from Kansas City and the surrounding areas in attendance on Wednesday. The presence of all those good men and women with a gun didn’t stop this from happening.
By all accounts, the post-shooting response from first responders was swift. Aid was rendered within seconds to shooting victims and many were at nearby hospitals in a matter of minutes. And while their actions should be heartily commended, they also shouldn’t have been necessary.
"I'm sorry. I'm sorry that this happened yesterday," Kansas City Mayor Quinton Lucas told KCTV. "I and we worked hard to put on an exceptional parade. We spent millions on it. We did a lot of things. But we failed yesterday to keep everybody safe. And that's something I have great guilt over."
Wednesday’s shooting isn’t the first that’s happened near a North American championship parade in recent years. In 2019, four people were injured in a shooting during the Toronto Raptors’ title celebration.
But it’s no secret that gun violence is a much bigger issue in the United States than it is in Canada and other countries. Kansas City isn’t immune from those problems. Its gun violence rate is one of the nation’s worst among larger cities.
That stat doesn’t explain what happened on Wednesday, however. And it’s why the question Kansas City will soon be asking itself about future parade routes will also be addressed in cities across the country. Did what occurred in Kansas City on Wednesday end the championship parade as we know it?
If you think that’s a hyperbolic question, think it through for a second. No matter the size of the police presence, there’s no reasonable way to secure an entire parade route or open-air venue where Wednesday’s shooting took place like you would for a sporting event or concert. And in Missouri (and many other states), open and concealed firearm carry is legal in many circumstances. There was no mention of firearms on the sports authority’s list of parade rules.
The success of local sports teams is one of the few things remaining that can bind a city’s residents together. The championship parade is the ultimate example. Instead of buying an expensive ticket to see your favorite athlete play a game, anyone can get a front-row seat for a glimpse along the parade route as long as you’re there early enough.
But now, it’s far too easy to envision city-wide championship celebrations becoming an exclusive affair in the name of safety. Without the ability to reasonably ensure gun-free zones along a parade route, teams could opt to host celebrations at their own arenas or stadiums in lieu of a parade. Capacity would be extremely limited compared to a city-wide celebration, and to get in, fans would have to go through security just like they do on game days.
It’s a solution that benefits no one outside of the lucky few who would be able to attend.
Hours before the shooting, as I stood along the start of the parade route with my dad, we talked about how we wanted to be at every parade. The Chiefs have now won four Super Bowls. Wednesday was his fourth Super Bowl parade. It was my third. We vowed to not choose to be home if we were lucky enough to have the chance to attend one again, whether it was next year or in any year after that. And we both hoped that what we were about to watch wasn’t going to be the last we saw together.
Little did we know, it might have been our last parade. And it’s all for reasons that have nothing to do with the Chiefs’ future on-field success.
