Listen, I didn’t want to talk about guns and violence this week. Honestly. I had a whole thing planned about the QuikTrip patches that are going on the Royals jerseys this year. It was pithy. It was funny. It was irreverent. It referenced roller foods and fly balls.
Nope. Not this week.
As many of you know, I am a public address announcer for a number of sports groups around town. North Kansas City High School, Park University, UMKC, Kansas City Monarchs, and the Kansas City Comets to name a few. On Thursday, North Kansas City was playing in their district semi-finals at the high school, however, I had another commitment to the KC Comets in Independence.
As you’ve no doubt heard, Independence was rocked last week by the killing of a police officer and an officer of the Jackson County Court with two more officers in the hospital as a result. One of the solemn duties of a public address announcer is to deliver requests for moments of silence after important events or notable deaths. Just this year, I’ve had to deliver two related to shootings in Kansas City. It’s about to be three.
Thursday, I had just finished my moment of silence at Cable Dahmer Arena. I had introduced an elementary school choir to sing the National Anthem. Just as the stillness of the moment had subsided, my phone started buzzing and blew up with text messages. “Are you ok?” “I just heard what happened. Please text me back.” “Are you there?”
Those messages seemed familiar. And they should, because I got the same messages after the Chiefs parade only a few weeks earlier. And they certainly meant something bad happened.
There was a shooting on Thursday night at the basketball game at North Kansas City High School. Two people were injured and the suspects are still at large as of Monday. I switched into “reporter” mode while also announcing the Comets game. They won, by the way, in overtime. As news rolled in, I reported that it was some sort of argument outside of the fieldhouse and several people were involved. Several dozen rounds were spent, and had it happened five minutes later, that entire area would’ve been filled with fans leaving the game.
The juxtaposition of reporting about a shooting at a sporting event while at a sporting event where I had just done a moment of silence about another shooting while we are all still in the shadow of a third shooting during a triumphant parade about a sporting event weighs heavy on my mind this week. We’re all tired of this, aren’t we? As I wrote just two weeks ago, we can’t keep doing nothing. Nothing is going to get us killed.
As I watched the video of the fieldhouse where I normally sit, watching basketball and volleyball games at a school that is my alma mater. I watched men and women, children of all ages, families and friends run for their literal lives out a back door. We’re just stacking trauma on top of trauma at this point. There is nothing proactive being done right now and the problem seems to be getting worse. At least to me. As I was at the site of two shootings in the past month and paying tribute to a third.
So, no, you don’t get my QuikTrip patch on the Royals jersey column this week. And it included some amazing puns, too. You get to hear me bitch and moan about guns and violence. Again.
(You can find Chris Kamler on all the socials, where he is most often known as @TheFakeNed)