Bob Costas Calls for Increased Gun Control After Jovan Belcher Murder-Suicide
Bob Costas
It was anything but a typical halftime report on Sunday Night Football this week, one day after a Kansas City Chiefs linebacker killed his girlfriend and then shot himself in the head in front of two coaches and the team's general manager.
During his Sunday Night Football halftime report, NBC commentator Bob Costas used the opportunity to advocate for increased gun control — and to seemingly criticize the team's decision to play over the weekend.
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"Our current gun culture," said Costas, reading from a column by sports writer Jason Whitlock, "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. ... If Jovan Belcher didn't possess a gun, he and Kasandra Perkins would both be alive today."
Despite the incident, the Chiefs played their regularly scheduled home game earlier in the day on Sunday, defeating the Carolina Panthers 27-21. Whitlock called the league's decision to let the team stick to its schedule "embarrassingly tone deaf." Costas apparently agreed.
Kansas City Chiefs' Jovan Belcher commits suicide after fatally shooting girlfriend
"In the aftermath of the nearly unfathomable events in Kansas City, that most mindless of sports clichés was heard yet again, 'Something like this really puts it all in perspective,'" Costas said. "Please. Those who need tragedies to continually recalibrate their sense of proportion about sports, would seem to have little hope of ever truly achieving perspective."
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Do you think the Chiefs should have played on Sunday? And was Costas right to bring up gun control during the halftime report? Watch his report below: