Bob Costas Is A Moron

But if you're a big sports fan and you've had to sit through him during a baseball game, you probably already knew that.

By now, you probably heard the story of the NFL player who shot the mother of his child and then shot himself. It's really sad.

Bob Costas decided that he would talk about that during halftime of last night's Sunday Night Football game and give his editorial on the subject. Keeping it to something like "We pray for the families and the surviving child." would have been fine. However, that's not what he did. Ol' Bobby decided that he was going to assign blame for why this tragedy happened. Guess who he blamed?

You might think that naturally the person, you know, the sentient being who decided to actually kill the other person and then commit suicide. Sure, that would be one way to go. Pretty predictable and logical, though. Where's the fun in that?

But if you don't want to blame the killer, you could go Costas-Crazy and blame the inanimate object that happened to be the instrument of death. You know, the gun.

Here's the problem with Costas blaming the gun: it's weapons-grade stupid.

The gun didn't do anything wrong. It didn't do anything right. It's just a gun. It doesn't have a good or evil spirit, it doesn't make people do things, it doesn't do anything other than make a small piece of lead go really fast. It's a dangerous tool, but hey, there are lots of dangerous things out there. A gun is not a good thing, and it's not a bad thing. It's just a thing. Inanimate objects don't get moral status.

Costas specifically went on to blame the "gun culture".

Ok, let's talk about that. With all due respect to Bob Costas, he has no freaking clue about the "gun culture". I bet you a silver dollar that Bob Costas has never done much shooting (if any), or even knows people who shoot. Accordingly, he is about as much of an authority on the "gun culture" as I am on the "Chinese Culture". (Side-note: Ever notice how people with no idea what they are talking about have the strongest opinions?) Just a thought.

Not to be deterred by something as insignificant as facts, knowledge and experience, ol' Bobby tells us what the gun culture promulgates and stands for:

"Our current gun culture, 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."

If you're going to shoot someone because you're in a domestic dispute or their music is too loud, you need to sit down and examine yourself. Also, I'd like to note that it's illegal for teenagers (boys or girls) to own handguns. Am I to understand that law is ineffective? Where is my fainting couch? Try removing the word gun and re-read the sentence. That's actually something worth discussing.

Costas goes on to further illuminate us with the light of his genius:

"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?"

Let's take this piece by piece. "Handguns do not enhance our safety." Do I really need to explain why this is a moronic statement? Next time you see a police officer, ask him if his sidearm enhances his safety.

The second sentence: "They exacerbate our flaws, tempt us to escalate arguments, and bait us into embracing confrontation rather than avoiding it." A gun is an inanimate object: like a rock, or a pencil, or a necklace. It doesn't enhance your flaws. A person's flaws are what they are. This is probably the most insidious line of the whole piece. Right here, Costas is shifting blame from the murderer to the murder weapon. The killer is not less guilty because he killed someone with a gun. The gun didn't make him kill someone. If inanimate objects can enhance our flaws, can any objects minimize them? Does carrying around a pocket Bible make you a less flawed person?

In his soaring crescendo of stupidity, Costas closes with:

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

Apparently, no guns = no murder in Costas-Land. Unfortunately, that's not true. It would be nice if that were true, but it's not. Maybe it makes Bob feel better to believe that. I wonder if he still believes in the Tooth Fairy.