It’s been almost two and a half months since two women were injured by a stray bullet(s?) during a White Sox game at Guaranteed Rate Field. You’d think two fans getting shot while enjoying America’s pastime would be big news – and it was for a while. But this is Chicago, the city the right likes to point to when they shout about crime (although cities like St. Louis, Missouri, Shreveport Louisiana and Mobile, Alabama consistently exceed Chicago in homicides per capita), and gun violence is, tragically, not hard to come by. And since the shooting happened on August 25, 2023, it has been that way three major mass shootings that made national news and dozens that didn’t. America is a country steeped in gun violence.
All of that would lead you to believe that Major League Baseball would at least have an interest in making fans feel safe on America’s ballparks so they can continue going to baseball fields. MLB concluded the 2023 season with the highest turnout rate since 2017, but it is rapidly aging fan base has been a story for years, and that means bringing families with children to the old stadium. Which, I suspect, families are much less likely to do if they fear their children will be shot while eating hot dogs on the third base line.
In late September, one of the shooting victims broke her silence, telling Chicago’s Channel 7 that she had not: as reportedsmuggles a gun into the game in her belly fat. According to the victim“She definitely hasn’t smuggled a gun into the ballpark… She also said she has never owned a firearm, although she does have a FOID card. The victim said she was fully cooperative with police, but the last time they contacted her was the day after the shooting.”
Whether or not the woman brought a gun into the park and accidentally fired it, shooting herself in the leg, seems like something that could have easily been discovered by now, if that was the case. But the woman’s attorney, John Malm, told ABC 7: “The evidence we have, both from the injuries and from the X-ray showing the position of the slug in her leg, tells us she did not shoot herself. ” As the woman did if she had brought a gun to the park, she should have stashed it somewhere before being taken to the hospital, but there are no reports of anyone recovering a gun at the scene. The whole situation is bizarre.
Chicago police, meanwhile, have not updated the public about the investigation for more than a month, telling Deadspin that while the investigation is still ongoing, “there are no updates at this time.” And while it’s unfair to judge what’s going on in an active investigation based on what police tell the public, it feels like everyone just chalked this up to “America – what can you do?” No one even seems to agree on where the shots came from inside or outside the baseball fieldwhich looks like something Dwight Schrute might imagine in the Dunder Mifflin parking lot. If someone gets a gun past security and into a major league ballpark, that’s a big deal. If the stands at Guaranteed Rate Field are positioned in such a way that someone can shoot into the park from outside, that’s a bigger problem.
If, like me, you’re old enough not to have grown up with active shooter drills and people bringing semi-automatic weapons to Starbucks, this all seems surreal. Then the Loma Prieta earthquake stopped the World Series in 1989 it was a big deal. Imagine what would have happened if someone had been shot during an MLB game in 1989. We would have talked about it for weeks, even months. The date is said to be etched in history and something people write oral history about. Instead, it seems like it has cycled in and out of the news cycle just like every other mass shooting in America.
Sadly, in 2023 in America you can get shot if you go to Walmart, church, temple, bar, movie theater, country music show in Las Vegas, elementary school, middle school, high school, grocery store, and just about anywhere you can think of. Perhaps the most American thing you can do is worry about guns on the margins.