Public safety is paramount to a thriving community

We lift up prayers for all involved with graduation at Cape Central High School: students, families, teachers, administrators and friends. A shooting with details still to be understood devastated what should have been one of the happiest, proudest community events of the year. Special appreciation goes to the school resource officers who detained the person who shot two others in the concourse of the Show Me Center, where the ceremony took place, and to the first responders who provided medical care and order, and who began the investigation into the crime. What happened Sunday could have been a lot worse. There were no fatalities when the person fired a shot and hit the two others, causing many of those in the arena to race to the exits. But what did happen was frightening, sad and highly concerning.

Gun violence is marring our community, and it is endangering our children. If not addressed more seriously and comprehensively, it threatens to derail the entire area. Public safety is paramount to a thriving community.

Elsewhere on this page, Mayor Stacy Kinder, who was at the event to celebrate the graduation of her son, writes poignantly about the effect on her and her family, as well as to encourage this as a time to pray for and support those directly impacted. We agree. We also expect that the details be shared in full and that careful, deliberate and incisive scrutiny be made about the event, the immediate response, as well as what is taking place in our community and state around guns and violence. It is important to determine what safety precautions should have been implemented before — and must be implemented in the future — for such gatherings.

Gun violence is a complex problem, which troubles our entire nation, and it won’t be solved by any one group: schools, police, government, businesses, neighborhoods. It will take all of us. What happened on Sunday was disturbing. It could have been much worse. We pray — and must all work to ensure — that there is no next time. It starts with confronting that Cape Girardeau has a problem.