If you’ve had one conversation about yesterday’s shooting at the Ward Parkway Center, you probably talked about the last time you were there. For me, it was late Saturday, when I went to sign up last-minute for the Trolley Run.
A good friend of mine was volunteering, directing the other procrastinators where they needed to go to fill out paperwork and get their T-shirts. The store rented out by the Trolley Run was full of good-intentioned people giving up their Saturday to make sure other people who had put off signing up could still run. It’s goddamned frightening to imagine that, if that lunatic had started shooting 24 hours earlier, my friend and the other volunteers may have been among the victims. And it’s goddamned frightening to think that the victims were just as innocent, just as undeserving of someone’s fucked-in-the-head act.
Likewise, local bloggers have weighed in on when the last time they were at the mall. They’ve also taken it a step further, calling for gun control and pointing out that the violence still pales in comparison to elsewhere in the world. Here are a few entries.
General Blather: “Proof That Kansas Citians Can Be Just As Crazy As Everyone Else”
Tony’s Kansas City: “Shooting Interrupts Shopping!!! Panic among white people who want violence to stay in its proper place (i.e. minority communities)!!!”
Hip Suburban White Guy: “Round Up The Guns”
Happy in Bag: “‘What If’ At Ward Parkway”
And Alonzo Washington, the "KC Crimefighter," points out that violence can happen anywhere in this rambling YouTube video.
-- Eric Barton
Showing 1-1 of 1
The funny thing about all this is that this kind of violence exists everyday in the inner-city but it quickly becomes just another unsolved murder of some useless thug. This was frightening to most because the victims were White which is not typical in Kansas City, MO. We were nicknamed the "Murder Capital of the U.S" just a couple summers ago and that did'nt seem to bother anyone too much because the violence and murder was isolated in the hood. The local news is no better because when it comes to the stereotypical murder in K.C., the most we get is a 15 second image of a Black man and a half-assed theory on what occured. Talk about your wake up calls, ladies and gentlemen!
like
dislike
