This past Friday night in Raleigh, North Carolina, multiple fights broke out after Southeast Raleigh Magnet High’s game, and someone decided to punctuate the evening with gunshots in the parking lot. No injuries, no arrests, just the same old story. Chaos, panic, and cops racing in like it’s a war zone. The school even had to end the event early after fans started rushing the field.
And yet, nobody’s going to treat it as part of the broader problem of “school shootings,” even though high school football games and other sporting events are where a disturbing percentage of them take place. The conversation never includes Friday night lights. Pundits and politicians love to argue over school safety during the academic day, but when bullets start flying after a touchdown, it’s as if it doesn’t count.
You never hear anyone telling parents to send their kids to football games with bulletproof backpacks. You don’t see headlines demanding that a season be suspended until things calm down. Schools spend money on AI gun detection systems, and lobbyists brag about installing metal detectors at entrances, but they’re never at the football field when these shootings actually happen. It’s as if the stadium is some untouchable sacred ground where “community spirit” is supposed to outweigh the bloodshed.
The reality is that parents keep sending their kids into these environments like everything’s normal. They’ll brush it off as an isolated incident. The schools will talk about “positivity and respect.” Meanwhile, the gunfire continues to echo over scoreboards across the country.
Football culture is too powerful to touch, and too many people are willing to gamble with their kids’ safety in order to preserve the illusion of Friday night tradition. Until that changes, we’ll keep getting stories like Raleigh’s. A night out for the community turning into yet another near miss.
What kind of person brings a gun to a high school football game anyway?
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Real Crime with Trench Reynolds 
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