RIATH AL-SAMARRAI: The Kansas City shooting has brought the dark possibilities surrounding the 2026 World Cup back into focus. It is up to FIFA and host cities to ensure gun crime does not become a factor

There was one poignant comment that stood out among many others in the wake of the horrific mass shooting at the Kansas City Chiefs’ Super Bowl parade on Wednesday.

It was spoken by the city’s mayor, Quinton Lucas, and it came at a time when the full weight of the situation was still being assessed. By then the numbers were: one dead, 21 injured and at least eight children among them.

Mayor Lucas saw the human faces behind these statistics and the horrendous frequency with which they are updated on a national scale: “Parades, rallies, schools, movies – it seems like almost nothing is safe.”

It was a thought shared passionately and with a sense of anger by many, both within the United States and abroad, and a more exhaustive list of vulnerable locations was hardly needed. But we could also choose to broaden our thinking to the World Cup, which will of course go to the US, Mexico and Canada in 2026.

Overreactions don’t help in the aftermath of any trauma, but no reaction would be worse and with that comes a thought: what measures will FIFA and the host cities take to ensure that gun crime doesn’t become a factor in an event of enormous proportions? dish?

Concerns have been raised ahead of the 2026 FIFA World Cup in the US, Mexico and Canada

It was in 2022 that a powerful editorial in the LA Times attempted to answer a similar question, noting how four years after the World Cup, the governments of Britain, Canada, New Zealand and Japan had all posted warnings to potential travelers against the growing weapons risks in the US. There was one line that really stood out in that piece and might resonate with World Cup fans now, after 800 police and security personnel were unable to stop what was happening in Kansas.

“It is the randomness of the shootings in a country with more guns than people that is probably most disturbing to visitors,” it said. “If people who have lived here all their lives can’t dodge the bullets, what chance does a tourist have?”

We can reasonably hope that the 2026 tournament will proceed without such incidents – the worst fears surrounding the host nations are thankfully rare in how often they occur, which was largely the case at the World Cups in South Africa and Brazil. We can also point to the many safe and excellent trips that many of us have made to the US without encountering any problems – for example, I was very happy to see the tournament return to the United States. The great aspects far outweigh the bad.

But it would also be naive to overlook the dark possibilities, and the shooting in Kansas has brought them back into focus, as if they might one day disappear.

Despite what is known about crime rates in parts of Mexico, there are eleven US cities that will host matches in the tournament and the Gun Violence Archive informs us that each of them will have experienced at least two mass shootings in 2023.

In the case of Philadelphia, where 500,000 people are expected to attend six games, that number was 20 last year. In Dallas, where nine games will be played, including a semi-final, there were eleven. Kansas, where six games will be played, had five. Just seven weeks into 2024, mass shootings have already occurred in seven of those eleven cities, including the terrifying scenes at the Chiefs celebration parade.

The scenes at the Chiefs celebration parade were one of several mass shootings so far in 2024

Hundreds of police and security personnel were unable to stop the attack in Kansas

These numbers, which are as unthinkable to people in the United States as they are to onlookers elsewhere, mean that conversations about gun control will be among the recurring stories before 2026 and will only increase as the World Cup approaches.

That is the decision FIFA made when it voted the American bid over a bid from Morocco in 2018. Looking back at that staging, you might notice that the Moroccans made a brief reference to their own “very low arms circulation,” and given what they were up against, their point needed no further explanation. That is still not the case.