Bob Costas Gun Control, Bob Costas made his case for gun control during halftime of the Philadelphia Eagles and Dallas Cowboys game Sunday.
His comments were spurred by Saturday's tragic 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 the stadium and shot himself.
"Well, you knew it was coming," he began during halftime of NBC's Sunday Night Football telecast. "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"
"'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.
In August during the London Olympics Opening Ceremony, he fulfilled his promise to acknowledge on national TV the International Olympic Committee’s refusal to honor Israeli athletes and coaches murdered nearly 40 years ago at the 1972 Munich Olympics.
His comments were spurred by Saturday's tragic 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 the stadium and shot himself.
"Well, you knew it was coming," he began during halftime of NBC's Sunday Night Football telecast. "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"
"'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.
In August during the London Olympics Opening Ceremony, he fulfilled his promise to acknowledge on national TV the International Olympic Committee’s refusal to honor Israeli athletes and coaches murdered nearly 40 years ago at the 1972 Munich Olympics.
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