Bob Costas Mistakenly Thinks America Cares About His Views

by Nate Winkler (@natewinkler)

CHFF Second Amendment Upholder

Bob Costas is a sports journalism icon and he has been broadcasting for NBC in some form since 1980 (according to Wikipedia.) He's covered every major sport including the Olympics and has been the voice of some of America's greatest sports moments.

He also has been known to stick his size 6.5 foot in his mouth when it comes to mixing sports and politics, and he did it again at the beginning of the second half of Sunday night's Philadelphia Eagles at Dallas Cowboys game.

During the intermission NBC aired a story that highlighted the Kansas City Chiefs victory today and the responses, individually and as a whole, to the tragic events that occurred yesterday when Jovan Belcher took the life of 22 year old girlfriend Kassandra Perkins then turned the gun on himself at the Chiefs' complex. NBC highlighted the extraordinary responses Romeo Crennel and Brady Quinn and left it on an uplifting note. Enter Costas.

In his weekly Mr. Rogers moment before the second half kickoff, Costas decided to use his soapbox to give us his viewpoints on gun control, implicitly stating that had Jovan Belcher not had access to and possession of a handgun that he and the mother of his 10 week old daughter, Zoey, would still be among the living. 

Costas decided to give us a lesson on what "perspective" really is, although he himself has never had to worry about where his next meal was coming from. Unable to sustain his own voice, Costas  used Kansas City's Jason Whitlock's latest article as a shield to his comments, but echoing the sentiment that gun control laws should be stricter in this country and travesties like this would be prevented.

Saying as much is akin to blaming McDonald's, or forks for that matter, for the obesity problem in the United States. The second amendment is sacred among those who have defended the constitution like myself and often disregarded by those like Costas. As I learned in my nearly six years in the Marine Corps, the bad guys never play by the rules anyways. His former colleague, O.J. Simpson, didn't need a gun, did he?

Costas is a sportscaster and should have avoided the subject altogether. Many people tune in to football games for the very same reason the game went on in Kansas City, to forget about life's real problems for a moment and enjoy the game for what it is.

Nobody wins when the narrator capitalizes on a horrible crime that left two people dead and an orphaned child to thrust his political views onto his audience.

 

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