Many of you may have heard of NBC Sportscaster Bob Costas’ editorializing on Saturday’s murder-suicide involving former Kansas City Chief linebacker Jovan Belcher.   The degree of naiveté and/or willful ignorance demonstrated by someone with Mr. Costas’ reputation was astonishing.  Significantly, he said:

“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.” (Emphasis mine.)

This is the gun-control mantra in a nutshell.  Trouble is, this drivel is absolute nonsense, and makes the gun the agent of criminality instead of the shooter.  This error was even more egregiously displayed by Jason Whitlock, the FoxSports.com columnist who Mr. Costas had quoted in his commentary.  In Jason’s words:

“You know, I did not go as far as I’d like to go because my thoughts on the NRA  and America’s gun culture — I believe the NRA is the new KKK. And that the arming of so many black youths, uh, and loading up our community with drugs, and  then just having an open shooting gallery, is the work of people who obviously  don’t have our best interests [at heart].”

“I think it’s obvious if you’ve traveled abroad, and traveled to countries  where they have legitimate gun laws, that we don’t have to have what we have in  America, where people somehow think a gun enhances their liberty, and that  people somehow think a gun makes them safer,” he continued.

“It just doesn’t.  A gun turns some kids listening to music into a murder scene. And uh, you know, if you don’t have a gun, you drive home. You know, kids listening to some loud music, you don’t like it, you go home and complain to  your wife.  But when you have a gun, you open fire, potentially, and take the  life of a child.” (Emphasis mine; quotations courtesy ofThe Daily Caller website.)

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