Bob Cost-hole

During halftime of Monday night's NYG-WAS game, Bob Costas chose to get on his soapbox and use this tragedy to tsk-tsk America: specifically, the 2nd amendment gun-culture, for allowing this tragedy to happen. Quoting an article by the ever-vapid Jason Whitlock, Costas said:

“Our current gun culture,” Whitlock wrote, “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. 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.”

Oh really, Bob, you sanctimonious gasbag?

John Hayward has a great response:

Instead of listening to Bob Costas fulminate about Constitutional rights he doesn’t think we should have, shouldn’t he be talking about banning professional football, as a growing number of liberals are doing? Belcher’s gun was the instrument of his violence, not the cause. And if we ban football, shouldn’t we seize the vast fortune Bob Costas and others have made from it, and put that money toward deficit reduction?

It might be a little easier to swallow these little rants from pampered millionaire leftists if they had some “skin in the game.” But they don’t, in any sense of the word. Bob Costas enjoys professional security protection at home and work, including armed security. He doesn’t have the same self-defense needs that average people do, particularly those who live in high-crime areas. ”Handguns do not enhance our safety” is the kind of nonsense only someone who doesn’t need a handgun to enhance his safety would spew. Of course, plenty of the liberals who chant this mantra actually do own handguns, legally or otherwise; they just keep it quiet, to avoid charges of hypocrisy.

Now, aside from the timing and improper venue, I don't have a problem with him sharing an opinion; I have a problem with him sharing an opinion that is so quantifiably and verifiably WRONG. Rest assured had Costas espoused a pro-gun opinion that was equally vapid, I would have taken him to task for it as well.

America's 2nd amendment gun culture is not only more prevalent now than in times past, but it also coincides with historically low crime rates. More guns, less crime. There are more people owning more guns than ever - something on the order of 250m+ guns in ~70% of households. Yet, violent crime (outside of Chicago) has diminished.

We have DECADES worth of data showing that stricter gun control leads to more crime - one need only point to the UK, or Canada, or Australia; or even closer to home, gun-banning meccas such as NYC, DC, or Chicago; or even historically, with pre-WW2 Germany.

In this day and age, using these farcical arguments for gun control is the equivalent of claiming the earth is flat.

So not only were Costas/Whitlock using the same tired old cliches that are the hallmark of lazy thinkers - but they also painted with a wide brush and castigated a lot of law-abiding gun-owners in the same stroke.

They are right that this is an issue of culture: but instead of blaming, say, thug culture, celebrity culture, a culture of crime, cultures of domestic violence - no, they specifically blamed "gun culture" and America's 2nd amendment. Gee, way to go NBC, hopefully this won't affect you because there's not much overlap between those who love football AND guns ... oh wait.

It's like saying all musicians are horrible because Rebecca Black sang "Friday".

For those of you who've been paying attention, Costas' inanity is nothing new. He is merely a common footsoldier in the long tradition of elite liberal media types who believe they know what is best for the world, despite living completely disconnected from it. He is free to espouse to his inane opinions - just as we are free to call for his sanction. Let's let him know there is a cost to stupidity - and if we're lucky, soon he'll be as irrelevant as Olbermann.

Fire Bob Costas