Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
Incredible. We know that a professional athlete has NEVER killed anyone with a gun, right? * cough * cough * OJ * cough cough. *cough * Ray Lewis * cough *
It's incredibly sad, but this guy would have done killed her with a knife. Or maybe bludgeoned her to death if he hadn't used a gun.
I haven't been interested in anything Costas has had to say for many years but I would have bet that he wasn't dumb enough to take up such a naive argument. Here's an email I received on the subject from the NRA:
When celebrities and media personalities attempt to plumb the depths of our social consciousness, the result is rarely pretty. Such was the case Sunday night when NBC sportscaster Bob Costas shamelessly tried to capitalize on the recent and tragic murder-suicide involving the NFL’s Jovan Belcher to score personal political points against law-abiding gun owners.
For anyone who missed it, in his halftime segment during Sunday night's NFL game between the Dallas Cowboy and the Philadelphia Eagles, Costas hit his captive audience of football fans over the head with this absurd rant:
You want some actual perspective on this? Well, a bit of it comes from the Kansas City-based writer Jason Whitlock with whom I do not always agree, but who today said it so well that we may as well just quote or paraphrase from the end of his article...
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.
Only a media elitist, living a cloistered life inside the NBC newsroom, could let loose with such a woefully ignorant, ill-timed and irresponsible statement. Furthermore, the fact that Costas tried to partially hide behind a fellow journalist borders on cowardice.
According to criminologist Gary Kleck, 2.5 million Americans use firearms to defend their lives and the lives of their loved ones each year. The obvious truth is that if Bob Costas and his gun-ban buddies at NBC had their way, many of these innocent men and women would not be alive today.
Seemingly, Costas has absolutely no knowledge of the fact that good men and women — and oftentimes, the physically weakest among us — rely on firearms as the only reasonable means of protecting themselves from would-be murderers, rapists and thugs.
Take the case of the elderly woman in Sarasota, Florida, who, earlier this year, used a handgun to fend off an attacker who broke through her kitchen window. "I was fearful of my life," the grandmother tearfully told a 911 operator after she fired two shots at the intruder, causing him to flee.
Or the case of a young Oklahoma mother, who used a firearm to successfully defend herself and her three-month-old baby this past New Year's Eve from a man armed with a 12-inch hunting knife who kicked in her door and came straight for her and her child.
On the other hand, consider the tragic reality of Bob Costas' and Jason Whitlock's gun-ban utopia.
In 2007, Amanda Collins was a student at the University of Nevada, Reno. Although she possessed a legal permit to carry a handgun, the university prohibited her from doing so on campus property.
Late one night, after taking a mid-term exam, Collins was attacked and brutally raped in a campus parking garage located just 100 yards from a police station. And although she escaped with her life that night, another young woman abducted near the same campus would not be so lucky.
Brianna Denison had been staying with a friend during winter break when she went missing in the middle of the night. After a frantic, four-week search, authorities finally found Brianna’s naked, frozen body, crudely hidden underneath a discarded Christmas tree. She had been kidnapped, raped and strangled to death — savaged by the same monster who attacked Amanda in the parking garage just a few months earlier.
As is often the case with media talking heads, it’s doubtful that Bob Costas has any real understanding of the recklessness of his statements. However, ignorance is never a good excuse, and that’s especially true for someone like Bob Costas, who prides himself on being a responsible journalist.
Bob Costas offended millions of law-abiding, gun-owning football fans with his gun-ban rant. He not only owes every one of us an apology, but also a promise that, in the future, he’ll stick to doing what he’s paid very well to do: talk about sports.
The fix is simple folks, complain to the sponsors and the network that any program he is on you are not going to watch. He'll be out of a job pretty quick.
And just to mention this, MSN had a thread in regards to Zimmerman. He's the guy that shot the kid Martin in a fight and it turned into a black/white racial cluster. The title of the pic says "Lawyers post shot of bloodied killer". I'm taking MSN off of my websites I frequent. Suggest you do the same. Bloody new photo of Trayvon Martin's killer released
In the years I've heard gun control/outlaw advocates vs. gun freedom advocates dispute this issue, I've not seen very many use actual statistics for gun violence; only emotional case studies or, at best, anecdotal evidence and wild "what if" scenarios.
What Bob Costas vs. the NRA statement on Bob's comment highlight is just that. Bob's paraphrasing of a sports writer's article leads to the assumption that had guns been illegal to own, then the tragedy would not have happened. This is a dead-end argument because we will never know whether the man would have followed through with his threats rather with a knife. This wasn't a madman. He was highly emotional and clearly unable to control his emotions, and in this one specific case study, arguing a gun exacerbated the issue is an easy conclusion to make, but it is leading. I would argue the opposite - ANY emotionally unstable person shouldn't be allowed near ANY dangerous weapon, but since we all use knives to cut our food, it makes little sense to make that argument.
On the other side of the coin, we have the NRA pandering to our xenophobic and emotional sides, and leads to the conclusion of the "what if" scenario ... "what if" those girls had guns? Then the monster that raped one and raped and murdered another would have died? I find this sickening. Further, it is pointless to argue such things - the vast majority of cases where a crime would have been committed could have been prevented using other weapons. A bat, club, mace, taser, etc. Only in a small sliver of cases would having a gun be effective defense.
I prefer reality, and reality is in most societies that have gun ownership rights, murder by gun and the murder rate, is in positive correlation. Meaning, in societies that allow gun ownership, murder rates are higher, statistically speaking. Though this is dangerous too, so I will narrow it further - in societies where gun ownership is legal AND the population is "diverse" the murder rate is higher. A great example is Canada next door. Much lower crime rate, much lower murder rate, and guns are very tightly controlled.
To me the answer is simple - one felony, you're out for life from guns, arrows, etc, and require people who wish to own guns undergo strict psychological testing each six months at their own expense and outlaw open carry AND concealed carry - that is, you can have it in your truck, car, home, or inside a nondescript box, but that's it. True, it won't stop all crimes like this from happening.
But we need to get one thing straight here. Gun ownership is NOT a right. It's a privilege. Society has already rules on this and most states have gun restriction laws. It's time to harmonize it and get on with our lives.
Please register to post and access all features of our very popular forum. It is free and quick. Over $68,000 in prizes has already been given out to active posters on our forum. Additional giveaways are planned.
Detailed information about all U.S. cities, counties, and zip codes on our site: City-data.com.
Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
