The deadly attacks at the Kansas City Chiefs Super Bowl victory parade weren’t “stupid,” to quote alleged shooter Lyndell Mays’ assessment of his own actions: They were evil.
To recap: Two young sociopaths, Mays and Dominic Miller, got into a stupid, middle school-level argument during the course of the massive parade, with Mays accused of (gasp) looking at Miller’s friends.
That proceeded, all too “naturally,” to Mays, Miller and others whipping out guns and opening fire, injuring 22 and killing one.
That’s not stupidity. He and Miller embody a savage, utter indifference to others.
Witness the cost: Lisa Lopez-Galvan, a beloved local DJ and mother of two, cut down in her prime.
And it’s only pure luck that there weren’t more deaths from those 22 other bullet strikes — many of which hit kids.
It might’ve been “stupid” to open fire in the moment, but why go packing to a Super Bowl celebration in the first place?
Part of the problem, of course, is the erasure of traditional social bonds in many cases by decades of terrible progressive policy aimed at undermining the family.
It’s striking that Mays’ mother set up a GoFundMe for his medical bills, laden with images of her wounded son and mewing about how he needed help during a “tragic time.”
Another part is the easy availability of guns, but more toxic is the learned habit of casually carrying them and using them.
Kansas City’s 2023 crime data (it was the deadliest year ever recorded for the city) list “arguments” as the single biggest cause of homicide.
And this ugly culture hurts vulnerable groups by far the hardest: Black men made up 65% of 2023 KC murder victims, in a city a bit over 26% black.
All that helps consistently place KC among the most dangerous metro areas in the US.
But the problem’s hardly restricted to one city.
Look at the monstrous teens who ran down a retired police chief in Las Vegas for kicks.
Or the violence at Brockton High School in Massachusetts, so bad that school officials are begging the National Guard to intervene.
Yes, we need better laws around guns, and yes, progressives must abandon their quests to normalize crime.
But this rot can’t be fixed without taking a long, hard look at the cultural foundation of too much of this country.
This story originally appeared on NYPost
