Open Letter to Bob Costas, Sunday Night Football, NBC Sports, and NBC

Second Amendment to Blame for KC Chiefs Player’s Murder/Suicide?

Today, columnist Jason Whitlock of Fox Sports and formerly of the Kansas City Star, blamed the Second Amendment to the United State Constitution for the murder/suicide of Jovan Belcher, linebacker for the Kansas City Chiefs. Calling for the NFL to have cancelled the Chiefs’ Sunday game, Whitlock wrote:

I would argue that your rationalizations speak to how numb we are in this society to gun violence and murder. We’ve come to accept our insanity. We’d prefer to avoid seriously reflecting upon the absurdity of the prevailing notion that the second amendment somehow enhances our liberty rather than threatens it.

Our current gun culture simply 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.

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By this time you have probably heard about Bob Costas editorial at the end of the half time period in last nights Sunday Night Football game. I was all set to write this then, but thought better of it knowing I should never write and publish anything while I am that angry.

I find his politicizing the above tragedy deplorable. Anyone taking such a major heart-rending event and using it to preach your political position on gun control is horrendously abusing the power of the press. To make matters worse, his quoting a sports writer from Kansas City, Jason Whitlock, is an act of a coward. NBC should be ashamed of that part of the broadcast, yet I have heard nothing from NBC about it, so I can only conclude that they approve of such misuse of their broadcast.

Mr. Costas has the right of any American to give his opinion. However, to misuse the forum of a football broadcast is unarguably wrong. Beside that, I have a few things to say to Mr. Costas and those that agree with him:

1. “Mr. Costas, your conclusion that if Jovan Belcher had not had a gun, then he and his girlfriend would still be alive. Your argument that guns make it too easy is absurd. When any person has murder in their heart, they will use whatever means to exact that impulse. If he had used a baseball bat to beat her to death and then crash into anything unmovable causing his death, would you have made the same comments about baseball bats, cars and unmovable objects?”
2. Guns are as inert as any knife, rock, brick, bat, vehicle or any other means of committing murder. Each are not bad unto themselves. It is the contents of a person’s heart that turns these otherwise useful things as weapons of mayhem. It is the PERSON MAKING MURDEROUS DECISIONS USING SOMETHING THAT CAN CAUSE DEATH THAT IS THE PROBLEM, NOT THE THING ITSELF!
3. You also made another mistake. Testimony abounds of lives saved because of an armed citizen. Don’t reply that there are also stories of people having their guns taken from them and used on them. Such examples are in the extreme minority compared to those of success (meaning the gun owner is alive and well, as well as their families and friends).
4. Until more is known about Jovan Belcher, his mental condition at the time, and all other stress sources, everyone needs to follow the example of the Chief’s coach and say nothing.
5. Let us NOT forget there is now a three-month old little girl without mom or dad.

Unless Bob Costas is announcing that he is leaving sports and turning to politics, he should keep such personal convictions to himself instead of misusing a national broadcast to spew his rhetoric.