At least one person was killed and 21 injured in a gun attack during the Kansas City Chiefs Super Bowl parade on Wednesday, the fire chief in the central Missouri city said. United, reports AFP.

Eight people with serious and life-threatening injuries were taken to the hospital within 10 minutes of the attack, Chief Ross Grandison said at a news conference.

Kansas City Police Chief Stacey Graves said a total of three people have been arrested in connection with the shooting.

Children’s Mercy Hospital earlier told AFP it was treating 12 people injured during the parade, including 11 children. “Nine people received gunshot wounds,” said a hospital spokeswoman.

Tens of thousands of people cheered on the Chiefs as they marched through the streets of Kansas City to celebrate Sunday’s victory in the Super Bowl, the annual American football competition.

A traditional convoy of double-decker buses drove down Grand Boulevard to Union Station.

The shooting happened near the train station parking lot as the parade drew to a close.

“Madness”…

“I thought it was fireworks,” John O’Connor told the Kansas City Star, explaining that he heard “15 to 20 shots in a short amount of time.”

In a statement, Kansas City officials said they were “saddened” and condemned the “senseless act of violence,” adding that all players, coaches and staff, as well as their families, are safe.

Chiefs quarterback Patrick Mahomes said he’s “praying for Kansas City” in a post on X.

According to Kansas City Mayor Quinton Lucas, authorities contacted the White House, which offered federal assistance.

The White House said President Joe Biden had been briefed on the situation.

The mayor of Kansas City, who attended the parade with his family, said he was “furious.”

The Super Bowl parade “is a day that many people hope to remember for the rest of their lives; and what they don’t have to remember is the threat of gun violence,” Quinton Lucas said at a press conference.

Proliferation

The United States pays a very high price for the proliferation of firearms on its soil and the ease with which Americans have access to them.

The country has more individual guns than residents: one in three adults owns at least one gun, and nearly one in two adults live in a household with a gun.

The result of this proliferation is a very high rate of gun deaths in the United States, unmatched in other developed countries.

About 49,000 people died from firearms in 2021, up from 45,000 in 2020, already a record year. This amounts to more than 130 deaths per day, more than half of which are suicides.

However, it is mass gun attacks that have the greatest impact, illustrating the ideological divide between conservatives and progressives over how to prevent such tragedies.

Recent American history is littered with mass murders, and no place in everyday life is seemingly safe, from businesses to churches, from supermarkets to nightclubs, from public highways to public transportation, AFP reports.

Of all these mass killings, some in schools have particularly shocked public opinion, such as the 2012 massacre at an elementary school in Connecticut, in which 20 children, ages 6 and 7, were killed.

The US Congress has not passed any ambitious legislation because many of its members are under the influence of the powerful National Rifle Association (NRA), America’s main gun lobby.

In fact, in a country where millions of Americans consider the right to own a firearm a fundamental constitutional right, the only recent legislative advances remain marginal, such as universalizing criminal and psychiatric background checks before purchasing any gun.