After tragic death of NFL player Bob Costas speaks out on gun control during Sunday Night Football.

Courtesy of Yahoo Sports:

 In the wake of Saturday's horrifying tragedies at Kansas City, you knew the pundits would get their laptops rolling. The first wave involved the decision to play the game; some said it was a terrible idea, while others advocated it as a proper method of healing. Once the game was in the books, talk turned to Bigger Issues, as in How Could This Happen? Concussions and head injuries will come under the microscope, as will the NFL's approaches to counseling depression. Sunday night, NBC commentator Bob Costas, echoing a column by Fox Sports' Jason Whitlock, took on another aspect of the tragedy: gun violence. 

Costas quoted with approval from Whitlock's column, which states, in part: 

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. 

In the coming days, Belcher's actions will be analyzed through the lens of concussions and head injuries. Who knows? Maybe brain damage triggered his violent overreaction to a fight with his girlfriend. What I believe is, if he didn't possess/own a gun, he and Kasandra Perkins would both be alive today. 

That is the message I wish Chiefs players, professional athletes and all of us would focus on Sunday and moving forward. 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.

As you might expect such a statement coming from Bob Costa, an icon in the world of sports, in the middle of Sunday Night Football, which millions of Americans tune into like clockwork, has many on the Right in virtual hysterics over the remarks.

So of course the "intellectuals" on Fox and Friends spewed their nonsense this morning.

Followed closely by the Right Wing pundits who threw in their sweaty, beer soaked two cents into the mix:

“Can someone remind me what caliber weapon OJ used on Nicole and Ron Goldman?” Maybe someone should ask Costas. Honestly, he should be taken off the air for such a rant. But he probably won’t be, given his employer.

And of course where there is a mention of possible gun control can Ted Nugent be far behind?

I have to imagine we are only minutes away from having the Lunatic from Lake Lucille babbling incoherently about this as well.

However none of them can negate the truth of what Mr. Whittlock wrote, and Bob Costas so eloquently repeated in his broadcast. If Jovan Belcher had not had access to a handgun, both he and his girlfriend my still be alive today.

Sure he could still have killed her I guess, but it is unlikely he could have taken his own life in that locker room surrounded by burly fast moving NFL players with a simple knife without them stopping him. And then the question is without a gun, would he have even tried?

Let there be no debate, guns are manufactured to take lives. THAT is their sole function.

Comparing them to a car, or a knife, or an ax, or any other item whose primary function is something BESIDES the killing of a human being is ridiculous, and I am goddamn sick and tired of hearing that argument!

Of COURSE they should be kept out of the hands of the criminal and mentally ill, but they should also not be something that every asshole feels is their right as an American, or even their patriotic duty, to possess.

Yes people kill people, but people with guns kill a hell of a lot MORE people, than people without guns.