Bob Costas: Idiot

So, during his spot in last night's Sunday Night Football game between the Dallas Cowboys, who should still fire their GM, and the Philadelphia Eagles, Bob Costas decided to wax eloquent on Gun Control.  In a spot in which he quoted heavily from noted intellectual light-weight Jason Whitlock, Mr. Costas essentially blamed the existence of guns for the deaths of Kansas City Chiefs Line Backer Javon Belcher (suicide) and his live-in girlfriend (and mother of their child) Kasandra Perkins.

If they hadn't owned a gun, Costas opined with Whitlock's words, they might still be alive.  Yes, Mssrs-Highly-Paid-Media-Personalities-Who-Live-In-Very-Safe neighborhoods, because there is no way on earth a six foot tall, or taller, man weighing well north of 200 pounds (and probably not far south of 300) could possibly have killed his girlfriend with, say, a knife.  Nicole Brown Simpson was unavailable for comment.  Failing a knife, he could have used his hands and feet- a means by which you are much more likely to die than any firearm. 

Whatever happened that night, Javon Belcher attacked and murdered his girlfriend.  He then drove to his team's offices, where he shot himself in front of whitnesses.  A man so out of his mind is not suddenly going to reach clarity just because he has to grab a knife, a pipe, a rope, or use his bare hands instead of a gun.

You want to talk about "gun culture?"  Let's look at Virginia, where high fire-arms sales correspond (just coincidentally, I'm sure) with dropping violent crime rates.  Let's look at Texas, Oklahoma, and Arizona, where a "gun culture" of routine ownership has not, somehow, lead to mass murders and the streets running with blood.  Let's look at Michigan, with it's own open-carry law where, excepting the cesspools of Flint and Detroit, you don't exactly have to be afraid to walk to your car at night.

Guns do not cause violence.  Guns do not cause us to "escalate confrontation."  Whatever your beliefs about the Wild West, it wasn't like the movies.  A well armed populace actually decreases violence.  This is especially true when the nature of those weapons is that of the gun- the great equalizer.  As written by Robert E. Howard "Civilized men are more discourteous than savages because they know they can be impolite without having their skulls split, as a general thing."

So spare me your holier-than-thou pontifications about the state of our "gun culture."  Don't try to tell me that violence and murder never existed before the firearm.  Don't try to lay the blame of young Mr. Belcher's actions on the tool he used in their commission.  The blame lies solely with Mr. Belcher, who, for whatever reason, killed the mother of his child, and then himself.