Here’s the TV commercial the Kansas City Chiefs really need to make | Opinion

Naturally, Kansas City Chiefs stars are all over the new TV commercial asking taxpayers to pony up to help the Hunt family upgrade Arrowhead and go halfsies with John Sherman on a new stadium for the Royals.

But here’s the commercial they really need to make: the one about how players on America’s Team could have died, too, in that mass shooting at the Super Bowl rally celebrating their success.

Chiefs quarterback Patrick Mahomes, who has more clout in this state than anyone I can think of, could use it to say he’d like to be able to bring his own children to the next Super Bowl parade without having to dress them in white, red and gold Kevlar.

He and other Chiefs stars could just look into the camera and say that continuing to run in the wrong direction on gun control puts us all at ever greater risk of having to run for our lives, just as they had to do.

This commercial wouldn’t have to be even half as slick as their ad asking for our tax dollars.

And if they did this, they’d be listened to by lawmakers that gun safety advocates from Hollywood or Washington could never hope to reach.

If they spoke the simple truth that gun safety should not even be a partisan issue, not just Jeff City but lawmakers across the country might hear what they’re saying in a way that they haven’t listened to the grieving parents of children killed in school shootings, or survivors of those massacres.

For years, we’ve been told that since no one law would solve the entire problem tomorrow, well then all we can do is call this rolling bloodbath normal, arm ourselves, and keep making it easier to get weapons anywhere and carry them everywhere. But how’s that working?

As role models, sports icons and now survivors of a shooting, players talking about our out-of-control love affair with firearms could make a real difference.

Some of them have already started the conversation. After the shooting, Chiefs safety Justin Reid posted this on X: “This is SAD man! Kids are being shot and somebody didn’t come home tonight. We cannot allow this to be normal. We cannot (allow) ourselves to become numb and chalk it up to “just another shooting in America” and reduce people in statistics and then move on (tomorrow). This is a SERIOUS PROBLEM!! I pray our leaders enact real solutions so our kids’ kids won’t know this violence.” Amen, Justin.

Likewise, defensive end Charles Omenihu posted: “When are we going to fix these gun laws? How many more people have to die to say enough is enough ? It’s too easy for the wrong people to obtain guns in America and that’s a FACT.” Yes, it is.

In the commercial I’d love to see these players and others make, they would only slightly need to rewrite the script from their “Vote Yes on Question 1” ad.

That spot begins with Chiefs tight end Travis Kelce saying, “We need you …” He could finish that sentence any number of ways, like “to think about why last year in Kansas City, we broke some records that should never be broken again, such as the one making it the deadliest year yet, mostly because of gun violence. And we need you who make our laws to think about what you can do to change that, instead of what you can do to help us shatter that record again next year, and the one after that.”

In the ad about Question 1, Reid says, “We’ve all made Kansas City a major-league city.” He could add this: “And now, we need to make it a safer one.”

In the ad he’s already made, Mahomes says, “There’s no place better in the world to play than Arrowhead Stadium.” If he would, he could then talk about how, thanks to some of the most relaxed gun laws in the country, there are many safer places to live.

Already in 2019, FBI crime stats showed that Kansas City was the eighth deadliest city in the country, compared to No. 1 St. Louis and No. 28 Chicago.

This is your moment, guys, and you can do this. Go, Chiefs.