The post-shooting playbook in the U.S. has sadly become far too predictable

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Shortly after someone opened fire at Kansas City’s Super Bowl victory parade on Wednesday, the mayor of that city gave an unusually unsentimental précis of how this kind of thing works in the United States.

“When you have people who decide to bring guns to events … all of us start to become members of this club that none of us want to be part of,” Quinton Lucas told The New York Times.

Like others who were there, Lucas didn’t speak in terms of shock or bewilderment. No one was surprised that a 38-year-old mother of two was killed and 22 others – half of whom were under 16 – were injured. Because this is how it goes.

You get enough Americans together in a place that doesn’t have metal detectors and, just as likely as not, everyone’s armed. Then you’re rolling the dice.

When the Boston Marathon was bombed in 2013, that felt like a watershed. The images were so appalling, the number and type of injuries so shocking, that you could convince yourself it would never be allowed to happen again. I imagined sports events being turned into airport-style checkpoints.

That didn’t happen. Maybe it’s that people will put up with being treated like cattle on their way to the Mexican Riviera, but they absolutely will not tolerate missing 10 minutes of the first quarter.

In my experience in the years since the Boston Marathon, security at global sports is a mixed bag. It’s everything from the full sniffer-dog routine to being waved through without a cursory bag check. It’s hard to be on high alert for years at a time.

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So instead of safety, what sports is able to provide is a seamless post-tragedy program.

The first step is to pretend surprise. This phase doesn’t last long. Just long enough so that a few keeners whose phones are attached to their hands can turn to friends and colleagues and say, “Did you hear what happened in Kansas City?”

Then there is the comparison game. It’s a shooting, but is it a major shooting? Is it a clear-the-front-page shooting? To guarantee more than a few hours of coverage, double digits are required.

The United States no longer registers gunfire at a post office or when someone’s pulled over on the side of the highway. You have to hit them where they live – schools and arenas. And even that doesn’t mean people will pay attention.

Next thing, and obviously the most important – were there famous people there?

On Wednesday, the Super Bowl parade hit these benchmarks. This paper went with an A1 photo of fleeing revellers over the headline: Carnage in Kansas City.

Now that we know there were famous people there, are they okay? An A-lister has yet to die in a U.S. mass shooting. When it happens, it will be this generation’s moon landing.

If you believe you are famous, you must immediately go to social media and sound off.

Here’s Brittany Mahomes, wife of Super Bowl MVP Patrick Mahomes, in her Instagram stories: “Highly embarrassed and disappointed in this, Super Bowl wins will never be the same because of this, it’s devastating.”

Now that the famous people are fine, the climbdown from panic stations may begin.

It’s important to find a hero. Some average person who was there when the victims succumbed, or somebody who gave chase when the peril was at its greatest. This reminds America that they are all in this together, even if they aren’t willing to do anything about it.

The heroes in Wednesday’s case were myriad. The nurse who tended someone with a head wound. The people huddled protectively around a prone body. The ones hauling strangers over barricades.

Phones allow the rest of us to live the terror and pathos along with those who were there, turning mass murder into a form of entertainment.

If you watch enough of this content, you can see a precision in American panic now. It’s chaotic, but it’s not hysterical. People have thought hard about what they will (not would) do when it happens to them. Get low, move away quickly, huddle in place, turn your phone off. Maybe their kids have come home and taught them what they learned in school.

By Wednesday evening, the hero consensus was forming around a local dad who chased down a suspected shooter and tackled him to the ground. You may have seen the video. It’s everywhere.

“I was just yelling, ‘Eff your gun’ and I was just hitting him in his ribs,” Trey Filter told the New York Post. “It was great. You know, America stuff.”

As the hours passed, more heroes emerged. Kansas City coach Andy Reid hugged a teenager. Mahomes’s famously ne’er-do-well brother, Jackson, helped a lost child.

Then the final reminder that the danger has passed – a famous survivor posing with emergency-services personnel.

In this case, it was Kansas City tight end Travis Kelce stopping to flash the V for Victory sign while taking selfies with local cops. In the immediate aftermath, Kelce had gone online to declare himself “heartbroken.” This was a few hours later. He was on his way into a bar.

Now everyone waits, hoping for new titillations. Is there some great mystery behind the shooting? Can it be turned into a podcast or a quickie Netflix doc? Was the suspect after someone famous? Is there a way to make it political?

If not, this story will be done by tomorrow.

The post-post-program is even more traditional. After a moment to reflect, a raft of features about ‘a day no one will ever forget’. There will be a few nods at gun violence in the United States from the usual complainers. Maybe the president will talk about it, but that’s risky. It’s an election year and he’s got enough problems.

At least one person in football will bring up the Second Amendment, at which point everyone in an official position will stop talking about it.

In September, they’ll do a celebration of life at the home opener. Someone will say, ‘All I could think about is what if this happened to someone I love.’

Then everybody can go back about their business, until they next time they have to refer to their post-shooting playbook.