Sunday Night Football anti-gun sermon

The issue with DUIs among celebrities is that, for large part, the celebrity is going to go unpunished. Very few celebrities step up to the plate and say "I messed up, so I'll pay the price."

I knew when I found out I had to watch the Cowboys on NBC there would be a risk of being subjected to liberal propaganda. And I was right! Liberals never give up! Same old crap over and over!
How much better would the world be if there was no such thing as the mental affliction of liberalism? What a beautiful dream!

Let's not forget that the origin of Costas comments were from a Fox News contributor.

The behaviors of pro athletes should not be held forth to justify or reflect the behaviors of the general populace.

I know of a case where a man killed himself with a safety pin...

It would make no sense to cancel a NFL game as has been suggested. The guy killed his girl friend! He is a murderer. He's a victim? The gun drove him to do this terrible deed?? Ridiculous. There is no excuse for it. As far as I'm concerned, he saved the tax payers money by popping himself off.

Let's not forget that the origin of Costas comments were from a Fox News contributor.

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Ahhhh, no. Fox News is not Fox Sports. Two different and seperate organizations.

Here is an open letter I saw. I thought it was beautifully written-

http://doubleplusundead.com/2012/12/03/an-open-letter-to-bob-costas-and-jason-whitlock/

I have an Ex. I have an Ex who, in the process of becoming my Ex, made credible threats to kill me. Why did I believe these threats were credible? Because among the primary reasons why I left him were that he had anger control issues, that he was a problem drinker well on his way to full blown alcoholism and that the things he was throwing at me were getting ever closer to my head. I decided to leave before finally snapped and actually hit me. He was displeased by this and made such displeasure known.

Do you know what kept me safe? Not some piece of paper. Not a judge tut tutting at him and shaking his/her finger and telling him to leave me alone. Not the police, who, after all, would only be able to respond once he had caused me harm. No, what kept me safe was my Glock. What kept me safe was my Glock and the fact that he knew I had both the ability and the will to empty a clip into his chest if he made good on his statements that if I did not come back, I would not see the next week. He never tried to do any of the things he screamed he would because he knew that not only would I defend myself but that I could. My Ex was nearly a foot taller than me and, at the time, had about 150 pounds on me. If he had been able to get close enough to me to harm me, there were very few options I had to protect myself. But with my Glock, well, I would be able to stop him before he got that close. I am alive today because he knew that if he tried to make that otherwise, there was a better than even chance he would be the one lying there in a pool of blood instead of me.

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It doesn't get any more beautiful than that, Farson. She presents herself as an individual with a legitimate fear, and a rational method of defending herself. Doesn't sound like she would actively pursue the man in order to shoot him down, but that she knew full well what to do if he sought her to beat her down.

Any responses to the emails yet, guys? Or just the standard boilerplate "thank you for contacting us" email?

youngda9 said:

John Lott responds.

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Thanks, that was a good read

Another well stated view which opposes those expressed by Costas
http://www.caintv.com/for-crying-out-loud-bob-costas

Found this on another site.

Let NBC and Costas know what you think about his anti-gun comments. Remember, keep it short, civil and to the point!...
Leslie Byxbee
Publicist
NBC Sports Group
(212) 664-4539

Fax: (212) 664-6035
Project Assignment:
[email protected]

Adam Freifeld
Vice President, Communications
NBC Sports Group
(212) 664-6772
Fax: (212) 664-6035
Project Assignment: "2012 London Olympics" , "The Belmont Stakes" , "The French Open" , "NFL Kickoff Special 2012" , "The Preakness Stakes" , "NBC Sunday Night Football" , "Super Bowl XLVI" , "The Kentucky Derby" , "The 'Lights"
[email protected]

Greg Hughes
Senior Vice President, Corporate Communications
NBC Sports Group
(212) 664-6111
Fax: (212) 664-6035
Project Assignment:
[email protected]

Nisa Kiang
Communications Assistant
NBC Sports Group
(212) 413-6837
Fax: (212) 664-6035
Project Assignment:
[email protected]

Carol Ko
Director, Corporate Communications
NBC Sports Group
(212) 664-6256
Fax: (212) 664-6035
Project Assignment:
[email protected]

Chris McCloskey
Vice President, Communications
NBC Sports Group
(212) 664-5598
Project Assignment: "2012 London Olympics" , "Football Night in America" , "National Hockey League" , "Notre Dame Football" , "PGA Tour" , "Ryder Cup" , "Senior PGA Championship" , "U.S. Open & USGA Championships" , "Costas Tonight "
[email protected]

Alex Rozis
Director, Communications
NBC Sports Group
(212) 664-4154
Fax: (212) 664-6035
Project Assignment:
[email protected]

I've read a lot of posts from people saying Costas had every right to say what he wants in our free society. I don't disagree. What got me upset was that he used a public forum with tens of millions of viewers to actually say that without the gun there would be no deaths. He painted the gun as evil, not the guy who pumped 9 shots into his girlfriend. He painted the murderer as the victim to the gun. He portrayed the gun as the murderer. Millions of people trust him and now when they vote on candidates who support banning guns, Costa's words will jump out at them.... guns are the reason people are murdered.

Costa may have used the words of another but by quoting him on his platform, the words became his. He had plenty of time to write what he was saying, reading and rereading it until it was exactly what he wanted to say and then he said the words he wished to say. He painted guns as the evil. he said they'd be alive today if there were no guns. He told us that the guns shot both of the victims, not some crazed killer bent on murder and suicide. If he was mad enough to put 9 rounds into his ex, if he didn't have a gun he could have used a bat, among other things. Would Costas have used SNF as his platform for bat control? If the murderer beat her 9 times with a bat or stabbed her 9 times with a knife, would he even said a word? No. He used this tragedy to lie to the public about handguns. He didn't use his freedom of speech to make a statement, he used lies and deception to distort the truth to further his stand on gun control. That is what is so wrong here. The lies.

You've hit the nail on the head.

Special Report with Brett Baier on fox news is fixing to have this as a topic of discussion after the commercial break right now.

JBrady555 said:

Special Report with Brett Baier on fox news is fixing to have this as a topic of discussion after the commercial break right now.

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well that wasn't very good. the piece was about 30 seconds long basically replaying costas's rant. thats it. oh well

The article I linked to pretty much states that Costas should stick to Sports Talk and let the Grown Ups whose lives deal with more important and real world issues Talk about Guns and Politics. While he has an opinion and a bully pulpit preaching to the rest of us about this was a seriously bad choice. In particular the fact that he used sophomoric logic to state his opinion leads me to believe that he would have been better served to stick to football rather than Gun Control.

Jovan Belcher shot Kasandra Perkins nine times with a hand gun, killing the Mother of his Daughter and then killed himself leaving his daughter and Orphan.

This isn't about guns, this is about nuts, Jovan Belcher was a mentally unbalanced. You just dont come home and decide to kill your baby momma by shooting her, you decide to empty the magazine.

If you get to that point mentally, it doesn't matter if there is a handgun or a Knife (O.J. Please stand up) or a blunt object in the room, She is going to die.

All Costas did was again make excuses for a failed way the press and public idolize athletes in America. Costa's is as guilty as anyone of fostering that culture.

Costa is the same guy who interviewed Jerry Sandusky at the peak of his controversy while being charged as a pedophile.

So after the interview with Sandusky what should Bob have blamed that crime spree of perversion on? After all if guns cause murders, then what is the weapon of choice when Men rape Boys? Just how do we eliminate it Bob?

The point is guys like Bob Costa and the entire Sports Press, College Football Programs, even High School Football programs can leave a lasting effect on a young Man that, because I am so gifted at this sport the rules of normal life and society do not apply to me.

You make them Gods, the trouble is they are not Gods and some never learn to live a normal life with rules and responcabilities.
Bob, you are a part of the problem, and your opinion wasn't a part of the answer. Had Kasandra Perkins been armed She might be alive tonight.

Averageman is right. If he wasn't a pro football player, it would have been just another story about some low life murdering a woman.

Blame it on guns, blame it on social media, blame it on not noticing the signs.... blame it on everything except the murderer.

I was already in the habit of switching the channel when Costas comes on so I missed it.

I hope he gets removed before the next Olympics, he just grates on my nerves.

I fear we're on the verge of another politically bad decade for gun owners (similar to the mid-90's when the now defunct AWB was put into place). Lately we're hearing one story after another that talks about how guns are responsible for crime. We all know it isn't the case, but the mainstream media seems to eat up any opportunity to demonize guns, as if inanimate objects are responsible for violence.

Now we have a left-leaning president and congress, and many of these elected officials (including the president) have made campaign promises which included more stringent gun control laws. It's a scary combination of events that I think may begin to conspire against lawful gun owners. I also believe that any new legislation against guns will probably be implemented as permanent laws (minus the 'sunset provision' that was written into the last AWB).

Strangely, in the same week when this NFL linebacker murdered his wife, a young (and equally disturbed) individual killed a couple of people with a compound bow. That incident barely made the news, while the NFL GUN killer has been a headline story ever since he murdered his wife. It seems that any story involving gun violence gets to headline for weeks, while incidents of violence using other tools (including novel ones, like a compound bow) barely get noticed by the general public. Similarly, incidents of guns saving the lives of good people are rarely deemed interesting enough to go on the evening news, while every story of violence is told over and over again.

Besides, does anyone really reasonably believe that a professional linebacker would have been unwilling or unable to kill his wife if he hadn't had access to a firearm? I think not.

The obvious point I'm driving at here is the fact that we are losing the media battle in too many ways, as nearly every applicable story of human failure is twisted into an anti-gun argument.. The one thing we really have going for us is the fact that gun ownership is at an all-time high. But, that'll only carry us so far if public sentiment turns cold to the rights of gun owners.

Jovan Belcher was a 25 year old spoiled brat, and like a spoiled brat he had a tantrum. Rot in hell Jovan!

Just got a NRA-ILA special alert email about this, here it is for those who want to hear what Chris Cox has to say:

"Bob Costas interrupts football game
to bash American gun owners "



When celebrities and media personalities attempt to plumb the depths of our social consciousness, the result is rarely pretty. Such was the case Sunday night when NBC sportscaster Bob Costas shamelessly tried to capitalize on the recent and tragic murder-suicide involving the NFL’s Jovan Belcher to score personal political points against law-abiding gun owners.

For anyone who missed it, in his halftime segment during Sunday night's NFL game between the Dallas Cowboy and the Philadelphia Eagles, Costas hit his captive audience of football fans over the head with this absurd rant:

You want some actual perspective on this? Well, a bit of it comes from the Kansas City-based writer Jason Whitlock with whom I do not always agree, but who today said it so well that we may as well just quote or paraphrase from the end of his article...

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. In the coming days, Jovan Belcher's actions, and their possible connection to football, will be analyzed. Who knows?

But here, wrote Jason Whitlock, is what I believe. If Jovan Belcher didn't possess a gun, he and Kasandra Perkins would both be alive today.

Only a media elitist, living a cloistered life inside the NBC newsroom, could let loose with such a woefully ignorant, ill-timed and irresponsible statement. Furthermore, the fact that Costas tried to partially hide behind a fellow journalist borders on cowardice.

According to criminologist Gary Kleck, 2.5 million Americans use firearms to defend their lives and the lives of their loved ones each year. The obvious truth is that if Bob Costas and his gun-ban buddies at NBC had their way, many of these innocent men and women would not be alive today.

Seemingly, Costas has absolutely no knowledge of the fact that good men and women — and oftentimes, the physically weakest among us — rely on firearms as the only reasonable means of protecting themselves from would-be murderers, rapists and thugs.

Take the case of the elderly woman in Sarasota, Florida, who, earlier this year, used a handgun to fend off an attacker who broke through her kitchen window. "I was fearful of my life," the grandmother tearfully told a 911 operator after she fired two shots at the intruder, causing him to flee.

Or the case of a young Oklahoma mother, who used a firearm to successfully defend herself and her three-month-old baby this past New Year's Eve from a man armed with a 12-inch hunting knife who kicked in her door and came straight for her and her child.

On the other hand, consider the tragic reality of Bob Costas' and Jason Whitlock's gun-ban utopia.

In 2007, Amanda Collins was a student at the University of Nevada, Reno. Although she possessed a legal permit to carry a handgun, the university prohibited her from doing so on campus property.

Late one night, after taking a mid-term exam, Collins was attacked and brutally raped in a campus parking garage located just 100 yards from a police station. And although she escaped with her life that night, another young woman abducted near the same campus would not be so lucky.

Brianna Denison had been staying with a friend during winter break when she went missing in the middle of the night. After a frantic, four-week search, authorities finally found Brianna’s naked, frozen body, crudely hidden underneath a discarded Christmas tree. She had been kidnapped, raped and strangled to death — savaged by the same monster who attacked Amanda in the parking garage just a few months earlier.

As is often the case with media talking heads, it’s doubtful that Bob Costas has any real understanding of the recklessness of his statements. However, ignorance is never a good excuse, and that’s especially true for someone like Bob Costas, who prides himself on being a responsible journalist.

Bob Costas offended millions of law-abiding, gun-owning football fans with his gun-ban rant. He not only owes every one of us an apology, but also a promise that, in the future, he’ll stick to doing what he’s paid very well to do: talk about sports.

-Chris W. Cox is the Executive Director of the National Rifle Association Institute for Legislative Action (NRA-ILA) and serves as the organization’s chief lobbyist.

Thanks for those email addresses Just one shot. I hope those in boxes get clogged up.
I don't grudge Costas for his right to free speech. Just that what he said was uncalled for and agenda driven. They (NBC) need to be called on it.