Addressing anti-Second Amendment rhetoric around the Kansas City Chiefs Super Bowl parade shooting

A lot has come of the Kansas City Chiefs Super Bowl parade with a lot of anti-Second Amendment activists working hard to politicize the tragedy for their own political ideology. I want to address some of the poor takes and manipulated statistics these idealogues have provided, and give some context that would hinder their talking points to better educate the public about firearms.

I first want to talk about some claims Rep. Linda Featherston (D-Overland Park) said in an article published by Johnson County Post.

She first states that, according to Everytown for Gun Safety—an anti-Second Amendment activist organization—“Missouri and Kansas, rank 38th and 37th respectively in state-by-state rankings that take into account the strength of states’ gun laws relative to the rate of violent gun deaths.”

Everytown, like every anti-Second Amendment activist group, is known for manipulating data and taking things out of context in order to push a narrative they prefer. Due to this, I decided to take a look at the data and found, not to my surprise, that this was exactly the case.

According to the statistics provided by Everytown, they put California as number one when it comes to “gun law strength” versus “gun violence rate,” referring to the states with the strictest gun laws as “national leaders.” Meanwhile, they put Kansas in the “national failures” group, ranking them at 37, as Rep. Featherston noted. However, data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) shows that, when it comes to “homicide mortality by state,” Kansas and California both had a death rate of 6.4 in 2021, the most recently updated year.

If Kansas should be considered a “national failure” when it comes to gun laws and yet has the same mortality rate for homicides as California, which is the number one state for gun law strength as noted by Everytown, can we truly claim that this is an issue of gun law strictness? It would appear to me that, in reality, we are dealing with an issue created more so by culture than by guns. This is further reflected when you look at and compare other states in Everytown’s ranking versus the ranking of states when it comes to homicide mortality rates.

Rep. Featherston goes onto claim that “Kansans want gun safety reform,” citing the 2022 Kansas Speaks survey, noting “54 percent of respondents felt that the government and society could take action that would be effective in preventing mass shootings.”

I do agree that society can and should take action to be effective in preventing mass shootings because it is a societal issue—not a governmental one. As citizens who have the right to bear arms, we have a duty to ourselves, our families, our friends, and our communities to be responsible gunowners. I have no issue with that. However, it is not an issue to be dealt with by an overreaching government, as taking away people’s rights regularly does more harm than good.

Furthermore, while I wouldn’t be shocked of this statistic, I think it is important to remember that most people taking this survey, including many of those who own guns, are not well informed on actual gun statistics, policy, and history—all of which is important to understand in order to create an informed opinion regarding any issue and not just what you hear from media outlets.

“Surely a body that claims to be pro life would set aside special interests to save preschoolers,” Rep. Featherston further writes. “Sadly, the answer is no.”

I wanted to add this last part because this is something that people who hate the Second Amendment will regularly claim, and it is not only intellectually dishonest it is a statement made in bad faith. This idea that, if you care about people having a right to defend themselves, you somehow don’t care about the life of children. I would actually claim the opposite to be true. It is because the lives of children are so important that people are willing to take the time to understand a complex issue such as firearms. In fact, when you look at the frequency of how often guns are used in self-defense, it is conservatively estimated to be about 500,000 times a year but could be much higher than that. Furthermore, a lot of educational policy, of which tends to be supported by the same people who support gun control policy, actually leads to more frequent gun violence and school shootings, and I am planning to write about that at a later date as there is a lot to get into on that subject alone.

I also want to take a look at claims in an article made by journalist Alison Kite who writes for left-wing media outlet Kansas Reflector. Under just a bit of scrutiny, her claims don’t hold water, but you have to note the wording she uses to understand this.

“And the shooting played out as Kansas City also recorded its largest number of homicides ever in 2023, according to the Kansas City Star,” Kite writes. “Missouri has the 9th highest rate of firearm deaths among states. Kansas ranks 19th.”

In true Kansas Reflector fashion, there is important information that is left out—unless you are one of the few readers who will click on the provided links. According the the Kansas City Star, Kansas City, Missouri recorded its largest number of homicides ever in 2023. However, Kansas City, Kansas “saw a large drop in homicides and other violent crimes.” This is important to note because Kansas City, Kansas and Kansas City, Missouri follow different laws, including Kansas City, Kansas being in the number one state for gun freedom, according to the Cato Institute. Furthermore, we need to understand what “firearm deaths” means, because we aren’t just talking about homicides here despite her previous sentence. “Firearm deaths” includes accidents and suicides. This is important to note because suicide is undeniably a mental health issue and greatly inflates the number of deaths we are talking about.

“Missouri has the third-weakest gun laws in the U.S., according to the Giffords Law Center to Prevent Gun Violence,” Kite reported. “Since 2007, the state has permitted residents to obtain firearms without a permit, which led to between a 25% and 47% rise in homicides and a 23.5% increase in suicides by firearm, according to the Johns Hopkins Center for Gun Violence Solutions.”

Again, it is imperative to understand that the information Kite gives is taken out of context.

First, the statement that “Since 2007, the state has permitted residents to obtain firearms without a permit, which led to between a 25% and 47% rise in homicides” is questionable. My first inclination was that 25-47 percent is a very broad percentage range, so it stuck out to me. Secondly, I was curious where she would have come up with these two specific numbers, which led me to another article regarding the recent Kansas City shooting that touted this statistic with a link to the same study where the “23.5% increase in suicides by firearm” statistic is noted. The issue is that this study, funded by Joyce Foundation—an anti-Second Amendment organization—never says anything about a 25 to 47 percent rise in homicides in Missouri due to firearms being obtained without a permit.

The study does say in it’s results “There were estimated increases in firearm homicide (47.3%), nonfirearm homicide (18.1%), and firearm suicide (23.5%) rates associated with Missouri’s repeal.” I think that the inclusion of the 18.1 percent increase in nonfirearm homicides is important, because that is a significant increase. Also, we’re not talking about firearms with that statistic, which calls to question why there was a significant rise in violence as a whole, which is, again, likely a cultural issue.

I do hate it when careless or bad people harm others, whether it’s with a gun or something else. The loss of human life is always a tragedy. I am further disgusted when people dare to politicize tragedies for their own bad faith narrative and suggest that people should be punished as a collective because of the wrongdoings of an individual.

As President of Argentina Javier Milei once said, “Collectivist experiments are never the solution to the problems that afflict the citizens of the world. Rather, they are the root cause.”

I fully agree with this. There is no real justice in a society that would act in such a way, and those who would seek such punishments would never be satisfied with the punishment of others until they eventually found themselves being punished in ways they would never imagine. It is because of this I find it is of great importance to uphold freedom for the safety of others, as to take away freedom in the name of safety would mean no one is truly free or safe.