During the Kansas City Chiefs' AFC Championship win on Jan. 26, 43-year-old Ashley Carlson and her partner were out celebrating a friend's birthday. After the game, she returned to her home in the Troost Plateau Neighborhood, between 54th and 59th Streets, Troost Avenue and Paseo Boulevard.
When she woke up the next morning to begin working from home, she discovered the window in front of her desk had been shattered by a bullet, which remained right there on her windowsill.
“When I realized the window was broken and that it was a bullet hole, it, like, took my breath away,” Carlson said.
The bullet hole is at eye level and exactly where her cat sits on a regular basis to look out over the street. She is terrified that more celebratory gunfire will follow if the Chiefs win the Super Bowl for a third time on Feb. 9.
Residents across the metro reported hearing guns going off in their streets, fireworks and hollering after the AFC championship game. Celebratory gunfire is illegal in Missouri. In July, 2024, the Missouri legislature passed SB 754, including a provision dubbed Blair’s Law.
It’s named for an 11-year-old girl, Blair Shanahan Lane from Kansas City, Missouri, who was killed by a stray bullet on July 3, 2011. The bullet came from the gun of someone celebrating the 4th of July.
But police say there are good reasons the law has proven difficult to enforce.

Widespread celebrating with guns
Further south in Kansas City’s Marlborough Neighborhood, residents said they also heard multiple gunshots after Sunday’s game. Diane Hershberger, executive director of the Marlborough Community Coalition, said she heard automatic weapons going off even when there was still a minute left in the game. She did not report the noise to the police.
At a neighborhood meeting the following Tuesday, she said community interaction officers told her to call 911 the next time she hears gunshots. But she said she hears gunshots all around her after every big win by a Kansas City sports team, on the 4th of July and on New Year’s Eve. She knows it’s difficult for police to address the problem.
“We know that they can't respond to it all and we know that it's even harder for them to log and look at where that all is coming from," she said.
But celebratory gunfire still scares her, and it pains her to see the highly touted Blair’s Law have so little impact. Hershberger said members of her community reported damages to their cars on the street after a citywide celebration. One woman even found a stray bullet on her pillow that had penetrated her wall.
Blair’s Law carries a Class A misdemeanor charge for the first offense. Future offenses carry felony charges. New Year's Eve of 2025 was the first major holiday since Blair’s Law went into effect. Kansas City police reported 122 ShotSpotter activations with 697 rounds of fire that morning. ShotSpotter is the department's technology that identifies the vicinity of a gunshot.
On the night of the AFC Championship, police reporter 25 ShotSpotter gunfire incidents, with nearly 145 rounds. No citations or felony charges were filed, according to Jake Becchina, with the KCPD. Detective Brandon Jeffery told KCUR the city of Raytown also received four calls about celebratory gunfire. KCUR reached out to several other police departments about celebratory gunfire, bud didn't hear back.
According to Jackson County Prosecutor Melesa Johnson, in 2024, a total of nine people were charged with a first offense under Blair’s Law. One person has been charged so far this year.
An ongoing problem
Following the 2024 Super Bowl win, ShotSpotter reported 52 activations with 328 rounds fired. KCPD received 65 calls on the sounds of shots in the city.
Dan Doty, a former commercial roof inspector, said he regularly saw the impact of shots fired into the air.
“It was not uncommon for us to find dozens of roof punctures from stray bullet fire," he said. “The worst example I ever saw was on a commercial building off Blue Parkway (in Kansas City, Missouri), after the Chiefs Super Bowl win (in 2024). I recovered 27 different projectiles that had penetrated the roof surface.”
Doty said he saw the greatest damage after the city celebrated, but shots landed on roofs all the time.
"They were a common enough occurrence where I needed to go out and inspect on a regular basis," Doty said.

So many shots. So few arrests
KCPD’s Captain Jacob Becchina said the biggest challenge in seeking citations and arrests under Blair’s Law is acquiring hard evidence. He said to make an arrest, the shooter must be caught in the act of shooting.
“The discharge must be directly witnessed by someone and with a witness willing to testify to it,” Becchina said.
He acknowledged that ShotSpotter technology, while helpful in measuring the number of shots fired, doesn’t offer precise information. ShotSpotter identifies a block or neighborhood where shots are fired, not an actual address.
KCPD’s Captain Becchina said Blair's Law is new but he's hopeful, over time, it will have an impact on reducing celebratory gunfire. "We always hold expectations that the community will follow the law.”
Prosecutor Johnson said reducing gunfire during celebrations and gun violence in general depends on the public coming forward. “If you see something, then say something," she said.
Marlborough neighborhood’s Diane Hershberger said there are other reasons Blair’s Law is hard to enforce. She said residents are afraid to speak out, concerned that a perpetrator, if caught, will assume a neighbor called the police. “People fear retaliation," she said.
She’s among those who worry about even more gun shots if the Chiefs win the Super Bowl on February 9, and that the gunfire will send residents inside, in fear, without calling the police.
Looking at the hole in her window, Ashley Carlson from the Troost Plateau neighborhood would like to see the Chiefs step up and make a statement on celebratory gunfire. She believes comments from the team are needed to persuade jubilant fans that shooting guns are not the way to celebrate a win. Meanwhile, Carlson said if the Chiefs win, she'll be drawing her curtains, bringing her pets inside and staying indoors.
“There's really not much you can do when there's people firing deadly weapons like that,“ she said. “You mostly sit around and hope for the best, and that's a shame.”
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