Blood in the Streets of Kansas City

So there was a Super Bowl recently, and the Kansas City Chiefs won a back-to-back title in overtime over the San Francisco 49ers, and as usual there was a parade in the team's honor through the streets of Kansas City, Missouri (it's not in Kansas itself just on the state border, weird I know) and even with all the police and private security forces in place to manage the parade route and celebration sites, two three gun nuts were able to open fire and give our nation yet another mass shooting (via Jaclyn Diaz at NPR):

One person was killed and up to 21 others were injured after shots were fired Wednesday afternoon outside Union Station in Kansas City, Mo., at the conclusion of a celebration for the Kansas City Chiefs' Super Bowl win, officials said.

The number of victims from this shooting is still evolving as law enforcement continues their investigation.

Officers took three individuals into custody, Kansas City Police Chief Stacey Graves said during the day's second news conference, updating the previous tally of two suspects brought in.

One suspect was captured after a foot chase with officers, she said...

In preparation for the expected crowd size, 800 law enforcement officers were on scene for the parade, Graves said. The heavy police presence helped in getting fans to safety once the shooting began and in administering life-saving aid to gunshot victims, she said...

Even with all those good guys with guns, gun violence still happened.

But KCUR reported that Children's Mercy Hospital received 12 patients from the rally, 11 of them children and nine of those with gunshot wounds. Fire Chief Ross Grundyson couldn't immediately confirm the ages of the victims.

Children.

The gunmen FIRED AT CHILDREN.

It is too early to speculate what the motive of the gunmen were, but the fact they opened fire with children present spells out that these sons of bitches didn't give a damn who they were hurting.

And there's one more event in public that we can't dare attend without risk of getting shot at.

We can't go to open-air music concerts.

We can't go to movie theaters.

We can't go to food festivals.

We can't go to our city halls.

We can't go to grocery stores. Or Wal-Marts.

We can't go to malls (TOO MANY TO LINK HERE).

We sure as hell can't send our kids to schools - we haven't been able to for decades since Columbine in 1999 - without the risk of them never coming back.

We as a nation cannot peaceably assemble - we cannot celebrate, we cannot convocate, we cannot be a community - because the ongoing threat by the National Rifle Body Count Association's public demands that their rights to carry murder weapons everywhere at all times shall not be infringed.

It's just that the gun nuts' right to carry assault rifles and semi-automatic handguns stocked with high-capacity magazines requires the rest of us to pay in our blood.

We in the majority are dying so that the paranoid, armed-to-the-teeth minority can fantasize to their Turner Diaries cosplay bullshit.

Goddamn the NRA. Goddamn the politicians who let them rack up these body counts.

We need gun reform NOW, before every street in America drowns in the blood of our children.