‘Put yourself in my shoes’: Kansas community activists talk Chiefs shooting, state gun violence

TOPEKA — LaTonya Boyd carries her daughter’s funeral book with her to a discussion of Kansas gun violence — a physical representation of a problem that has scarred many families, and one that has seen little state action.

“I think a lot of our laws are made by people who have not been in that situation,” Boyd said. “I’m a mother who lost my daughter trying to leave a domestic violence relationship, shot multiple times. They always say, ‘I’m sorry for your loss.’ 

“And I’m like, ‘No, you’re not sorry for my loss because you make these stupid laws that are not even good.’ No, put yourself in my shoes, and then you talk to me about feeling for my loss.”

State conversation turned toward gun restrictions in 2021, after an Olathe East High School student shot and injured the school’s assistant principal and school resource officer, and again this year, when more than 20 people were injured by gunfire and one woman was killed during the Kansas City Chiefs’ Super Bowl victory parade in Kansas City, Missouri, on Feb. 14.

But debate at a local and state level leaves out the voices of Black and brown communities, Boyd said, especially those disproportionately hurt by day-to-day gun violence.

“I think they really need to come out of that capitol building and walk around Topeka,” Boyd said. “So they know what’s really going on. They say they’re impacted by gun violence, but I don’t think that’s true at all. Some of them, maybe, but the ones that really fight for stupid gun laws, I don’t think they really care.”

During a Kansas Reflector podcast, Boyd, along with Courtland Davis, director of operations at the YWCA Northeast Kansas, and LaRonna Lassiter Saunders, a civil rights advocate and attorney, discussed the nuances of Kansas gun violence. 

In an average year, 456 people die and 655 are wounded by guns in Kansas, according to Everytown statistics. Approximately 135 people in the state die by gun homicides and 271 are wounded by gun assaults annually, with 311 estimated firearm-related suicides. 

“I’ve felt the effect of gun violence since I think 14 or 15, when I went to the first of many funerals, young folks were lost due to gun violence,” Davis said. “And that is something that has happened periodically for most of my life. … You have the perpetrator, victim thing that happens with gun violence, but then there’s that ripple effect, and the trauma that the families experience and friends, and everything from classmates to teachers.”

Many lawmakers in the majority-white, majority Republican Kansas Legislature continue to promote the  idea of “God-given” gun rights. 

In a January discussion about a proposed constitutional amendment that would place gun rights on the same level of constitutional protection as the freedom of speech, Rep. Rebecca Schmoe, R-Ottawa, said the gun violence debate was exaggerated. 

“Each time we discuss responsible Kansas gun owners, you predict rivers of blood, parking lot standoffs, and general murder and mayhem erupting across the state,” Schmoe said. “How many times must Kansans prove that narrative to be not only false, but slanderous to their good name and reputation before you stop actively seeking out ways to chip away at the free exercise of their inherent right to self-defense?”

In the aftermath of the Chiefs parade shooting, Kansas Attorney General Kris Kobach said a “good guy with a gun” would have stopped the shooting, despite the presence of 800 police officers at the event.

In the wake of the shooting, Olathe resident Denton Loudermill was falsely portrayed as the shooter. Right-wing Missouri politicians called him an “illegal immigrant” under arrest as the shooter in posts shared widely on social media. Loudermill filed lawsuits against them in early April. 

Lassiter Saunders, who acted as Loudermill’s legal advocate in the case, said she’s seen lawmakers present at the shooting change their perspectives somewhat. 

“I’ve heard more lawmakers say” ‘We need to do something about that, I should be able to come and celebrate the Chiefs without a shooting,’” Lassiter Saunders said. “The more they get that perspective, then they can relate to those people that are impacted. But without that perspective, they’re just widgets, numbers, data.”

This podcast is one of four podcasts the Kansas Reflector is doing in conjunction with the YWCA Northeast Kansas’ Racial Justice Challenge, a monthlong series focusing on different topics.