Pastor Chuck Baldwin brings to light some things about Bob Costas’s comments about Jovan Belcher (the Kansas City Chiefs’ linebacker who murdered his girlfriend and then turned the gun on himself) that the national press, with rare exceptions, has not mentioned.
First he provides us with Costa’s full rant, (which it turns out he was quoting from Jason Whitlock):
Our current gun culture 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. 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…If Jovan Belcher didn’t possess a gun, he and Kasandra Perkins would both be alive today.”
Baldwin makes clear that Belcher didn’t really need a gun:
Since when would a 240-pound linebacker need any help killing a woman half his size and strength? Does one really believe if someone is intent on murder, the lack of a firearm would deter him or her? How many people are killed with knives, clubs, axes, “blunt objects,” or even bare hands?
Next, Baldwin refutes the lie that guns “do not enhance our safety. They exacerbate our flaws…” by showing that guns are used far more often to prevent tragedies than to cause them. He quotes Larry Pratt, president of Gun Owners of America:
Perhaps Mr. Costas would have been disappointed if Ms. Perkins had had access to a gun and shot Belcher first? Would he then have thought there were too many guns? Actually, he might not have even heard about a self-defense shooting. Outside of the local press, self-defense shootings rarely make national news.
There are so many self-defense shootings each year that the national news would be carrying several accounts a day. Guns are used over 4,000 times a day (using conservative research findings) in self-defense. In fact, using those conservative figures given us by the Clinton Justice Department, guns are used 50 times more often in self-defense than to illegitimately take life.
Next, he has discovered a source that tells us more about what actually happened:
A report in the New York Post more accurately describes the causes of this tragedy: “Kansas City Chiefs linebacker and former Long Island high-school star Jovan Belcher was allegedly battling football-related head injuries and booze, painkiller and domestic problems when he snapped and murdered his girlfriend before killing himself in front of two coaches Saturday.”
Here’s something I learned about Jason Whitlock whom Costas quoted, from Wikipedia:
On February 10, 2012, in the middle of the Knicks’ 92–85 victory over the Los Angeles Lakers, with Jeremy Lin scoring a career-high 38 points, Fox Sports columnist Jason Whitlock posted on Twitter, “Some lucky lady in NYC is gonna feel a couple inches of pain tonight.”[3]Hyphen wrote that Whitlock “reinforced the insipid and insidious ‘small Asian penis’ stereotype.[4] The Asian American Journalists Association demanded an apology. Later, Whitlock said, “I debased a feel-good sports moment. For that, I’m truly sorry.”
But not sorry enough to change his behavior or clean up his thinking:
In a follow-up interview with Roland Martin on December 3, 2012 Jason Whitlock stated: “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].”
Costas made the mistake of quoting someone with a bias without first checking to see if the bias had any merit. By not doing so, Baldwin is right in calling Costas “just another mindless gun control nut.”
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