Kansas City Star Gets It Half-Right on Super Bowl Celebrations

The Kansas City Chiefs have been one of the best teams in the NFL year after year for some time now. We can debate how much of that has been with the NFL’s help, if any, but the point is that fans of the team are loving life. They’re living in their team’s golden age.

Now, they’re back in the Superbowl once again and a team with a good chance of winning.

So, it makes sense that the hometown newspaper would be concerned about how people might opt to celebrate. Some people get carried away and do stupid stuff, so it makes sense to address it beforehand, right?

I think so.

So the Kansas City Star did just that…sort of.

Americans love to celebrate: Independence Day, New Year’s Eve, sporting events. For some reason, loud noise often figures into those celebrations. Usually, that means fireworks but — shockingly — some people turn to firearms. That can cost lives. 

This isn’t a new phenomenon. In a recent Second Amendment decision, the United States Supreme Court cited a colonial-era law from New York that placed “restrictions on gun use by drunken New Year’s Eve revelers.” (The penalty was a 20-shilling fine.) 

More than 250 years later, celebratory gunfire is still a problem. 

Every Independence Day and New Year’s Eve, SoundThinking — the company that makes ShotSpotter, the acoustic gunshot detection system used by Kansas City — detects a spike in gunfire. And, as everyone knows, what goes up — in this case, bullets — must come down. Tragically, they often strike people when they do, often with deadly consequences. 

Jennifer Macia, a reporter for nonprofit The Trace, compiled several incidents from this New Year’s Eve. A 10-year old girl killed in Miami. A woman killed as she watched fireworks from her porch. Many others were killed or wounded by falling bullets just as the clock struck midnight and the calendar rolled over to 2025. Tragedies such as these happen every year.

Of course, this was written by someone who works for the company that makes ShotSpotter, so there’s a reason he focuses on gunfire.

And I’ve written about celebratory gunfire and how idiotic it is more than once. It’s dangerous, as noted.

However, let’s also understand that celebratory gunfire may be a problem after a championship win by a local sports team, but it’s far from the only one.

Riots aren’t exactly unheard of following championship wins. They’re nasty and destructive, but they’re brought about by the positive emotions of winning. I remember how happy I’ve been over the Atlanta Braves World Series championships in 1995 and 2021 and how sick I felt after the Falcons choked so hard during the Superbowl that it triggered my gag reflex.

Sports evokes a lot of emotions and people want to celebrate.

I just find it odd that as deadly as riots can be, this piece is targeting this one mode of celebration and there’s no admonishments not to riot to be found anywhere at the site.

Why is that?

Again, the writer works for the company that makes ShotSpotter, and he references statistics presented by his company, but one would imagine the rest of the paper staff might think, “Maybe we should tell people not to burn the city down one way or the other.”

They didn’t, and that’s not sitting well with me.