UPDATED Dec. 4th, 2012
Costas Doubles Down on Gun Control Remarks, Attacks Those Who Critized Him
After saying it was a “mistake” to mention gun control during Sunday Night Football, Costas is apparently doubling down on his pro-gun control rhetoric, and used the opportunity on The Dan Patrick Show to attack those who have criticized his remarks.
USA Today has this:
“Sometimes the quality of those who oppose you speaks for itself,” Costas said. “I was told — I didn’t see it — that someone compared (the halftime segment) to blatantly racist comments. This is simply a case of people who don’t agree with this or they don’t agree with what people think I was saying.
Costas raised the Aurora (Colo.) shootings at the movie theater at the end of his explanation.
“There are those who believe that denying a semi automatic weapon or an assault rifle is the first step down a slippery slope in denying an old lady a gun for her own protection,” Costas said Tuesday. “There are people who honestly believe that in Aurora (Colo.) if only a dozen or so people there to watch the Batman movie had been packin’, they would have been able to take down the nut job in full body armor with military-type guns.
“I think any police officer if you told them that would roll their eyes.”
INITIAL POST
As The Daily Caller, DrudgeReport, Politico and others are noting, NBC Sports’ Bob Costas used the bully pulpit of the Sunday Night Football halftime show to advocate further gun control measures. (Full video below)
Costas quoted, on-air during the official half time show, a suggestion that a gun ban would have prevented the tragic murder-suicide committed by a Kansas City Chiefs football player:
“‘Our current gun culture,’ Whitlock wrote, ‘ensures that more and more domestic disputes will end in the ultimate tragedy. And 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 Cassandra Perkins would both be alive today.’”
Closer to home, Montanans are familiar with another murder-suicide instance in Casper, Wyoming. In this instance; however, no guns were used, as FoxNews.com reports:
Gravely wounded by an arrow fired into his head, a Wyoming college instructor still managed to wrestle with his 25-year-old son who carried out the attack and give his students time to flee the classroom, say police who hailed the actions as heroic.
Christopher Krumm had just stabbed to death 42-year-old Heidi Arnold at the home she shared with James Krumm two miles away.
Tom LaRoque
Tuesday, December 04, 2012 5:08 PM
Being a sportscaster at heart, I normally agree with Bob Costas on just about everything. He is one of the best in the business, coming from the best broadcast school in the country (Syracuse University). But he is wrong as wrong can get on this. It’s education and common sense that people need in this country, not gun control laws. I own and possess guns and I have disagreed with my wife from time to time very strongly. Not once did I ever think of using any type of weapon or think about hurting her or my children. People try to legislate morality and now common sense with gun control laws. The real criminals and insane will still be motivated to use a weapon and will get that weapon if they really want to have it. We saw that with prohibition in the 30’s… a law that literally started and grew organized crime to the power that it was in the 40’s, 50’s and 60’s. More gun laws will mean more black market gun sales and more untaxable revenue to the gangsters, and those guys don’t care about laws….