Gun Control One More Time

The murder and suicide by Jovan Belcher leads yet again to the gun control debate. Bob Costas, siding with by citing Jason Whitlock, says it well:

“Our current gun culture,” Whitlock wrote, “ensures that more and more domestic disputes will end in the ultimate tragedy, and that more convenience-store confrontations over loud music coming from a car will leave more teenage boys bloodied and dead.”
“Handguns do not enhance our safety. They exacerbate our flaws, tempt us to escalate arguments, and bait us into embracing confrontation rather than avoiding it. In the coming days, Jovan Belcher’s actions, and their possible connection to football, will be analyzed. Who knows?”

“But here,” wrote Jason Whitlock, “is what I believe: If Jovan Belcher didn’t possess a gun, he and Kasandra Perkins would both be alive today.”

Costas now says, “I am emphatically not backing off from anything I said.” He called for “a combination of enlightened legislation and controls, coupled with an adjustment in our attitude toward guns.” He added, “Common sense tells us the culture is overrun by guns and that many people who possess them are dangerous or careless.”  He also rejected criticism of his comments as inappropriate for a football audience.

He said the criticisms of his commentary “hold no weight with me” because the same people saying that that was an inappropriate time and place to talk about the gun issue “would have thought it was fine if they agreed with what I was saying.”