Bob Costas Portrait Cover Shoot Main Image - H 2012
Wesley MannBob Costas made his case for gun control during halftime of NBC’s Sunday Night Football game.
His comments were spurred by Saturday’s murder-suicide, in which Kansas City Chiefs starting linebacker Jovan Belcher, 25, fatally shot his 22-year-old girlfriend Kasandra Perkins — also the mother of his 3-month-old child — then drove to Arrowhead Stadium and shot himself in front of team personnel including coach Romeo Crennel and GM Scott Pioli.
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“Well, you knew it was coming,” he began during halftime of the Philadelphia Eagles-Dallas Cowboys game. “In the aftermath of the nearly unfathomable events in Kansas City, that most mindless of sports cliches was heard yet again: Something like this really puts it all in perspective. Well, if so, that sort of perspective has a very short shelf life since we will inevitably hear about the perspective we have supposedly again regained the next time ugly reality intrudes upon our games. Please. Those who need tragedies to continually recalibrate their sense of proportion about sports would seem to have little hope of ever truly achieving perspective.”
He went on to quote Kansas City-based writer Jason Whitlock, who in a column for Fox Sports argued that such tragedies will continue to occur as long as America’s “current gun culture” continues to exist.
” ‘But here,’ wrote Jason Whitlock, ‘is what I believe,’ ” Costas concluded. ” ‘If Jovan Belcher didn’t possess a gun, he and Kasandra Perkins would both be alive today.’ “
It’s not the first time Costas has used an NBC sportscast as a platform to express his opinions. During the London Olympics Opening Ceremony in August, he fulfilled his promise to acknowledge on national TV the International Olympic Committee’s refusal to honor the 11 Israeli athletes and coaches murdered at the 1972 Munich Olympics.
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Watch video of Costas’ anti-gun remarks below.
