Bob Costas Uses NFL Tragedy to Push Gun Control - Boycott NFL

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. Gun control is, of course, a controversial issue, with such rabid belief on both sides that even politicians tend to steer clear of it. And politics are so laden with potential conflict that most sports commentators give anything remotely political a wide berth, as well. So when you've got gun control and politics jammed right in the middle of your football game, well, you can see how that might get a few people a touch upset. Social media and comment sections across the Internet boiled over on Sunday night with vitriol both against Costas for his views, and against NBC for permitting any kind of political commentary on its broadcast.

sports.yahoo.com  Meanwhile, in real life;

Lock Your Doors And Prepare To Defend Your Family

Michael Snyder
Economic Collapse
December 3, 2012
Do you think that is an alarmist headline?  Well, I am not the one saying this.  Law enforcement authorities all over the country are telling citizens that they can no longer deal with all the crime and that people need to lock their doors and prepare to defend their families.  Just recently, the city attorney of San Bernardino, California told citizens to “lock their doors and load their guns” because there is not enough money to pay for adequate police protection any longer.  The murder rate in San Bernardino is up 50 percent this year, but the city is dealing with bankruptcy and has been forced to lay off 80 police officers.  But San Bernardino is not the only city dealing with this kind of a thing.  In Oakland, burglaries are up 43 percent so far this year, and to say that there is a “crime wave” going on in Oakland would be a massive understatement.  If you can believe it, in Oakland “more than 11,000 homes, cars or businesses have been broken into so far this year – translating to about 33 burglaries a day.”  Sadly, there simply are not enough police to keep up with it all.  Due to budget cuts, it is being projected that by February the size of the police force in Oakland will be about 25 percent smaller than it was back in 2008.  But what is happening in Detroit is perhaps even more frightening.  Today there are about 1,000 fewer police officers in Detroit than there was a decade ago.  But crime just continues to rise.  So now even the police are telling people to “enter Detroit at your own risk“.  With very little police protection, an increasing number of citizens are taking matters into their own hands.  As I noted in a previous article, justifiable homicide in the city of Detroit increased by 79 percent in 2011, and the rate of self-defense killings in Detroit is approximately 2200 percent above the national average.  But don’t laugh at what is happening in cities like San Bernardino, Oakland and Detroit.  What is happening in those cities will be coming to your community soon enough.
From coast to coast, criminals are becoming increasingly bold and increasingly desperate.  My sister lives near a large city in the middle part of the country, and a house across the street from the one her family just moved into was recently vandalized.  The criminals took all of the exposed copper pipe and copper wire that could be accessed easily.
Other criminals have become very focused on gold because it has soared in value and it is easy to resell.  For example, there have been more than 250 gold chain robberies in Stockton, California just since the month of April.  According to the CBS News affiliate in Sacramento, criminals are just ripping these chains right off of the necks of unsuspecting citizens, and many of the victims that have tried to resist have ended up getting hurt.  Normally the criminals sell off the jewelry within 24 hours, so solving these crimes is a real challenge…

Most victims of the robberies are female (65 percent), and 44 percent of victims are age 50 or older, the data showed. The most common time of day for the crimes were between 12 and 5 p.m., though this only accounts for about a third of the crime.
Parino said robbers took even police by surprise initially.
“When [criminals] do these crimes, they normally get rid of the items within 24 hours,” he said.
That’s why police are now checking up on secondhand stores and pawn shops on a weekly basis.

Many dismiss reports such as these as “anomalies”, but how many “anomalies” do we need before we finally admit that we have a widespread problem in our society?
Personally, there are many major U.S. cities that I would not want to be living right in the middle of right now.
Just take a look at Chicago.  It has become one of the deadliest major cities on the entire globe.  In recent years we have seen massive cuts to the police budget coupled with a dramatic increase in gang activity in Chicago.
The murder rate in Chicago is way up this year and the police force is massively outnumbered.
As I have written about previously, there are only about 200 police officers assigned to Chicago’s Gang Enforcement Unit.  It is their job to handle the estimated 100,000 gang members living in the city.
How would you like to be outnumbered 100,000 to 200?
When things really hit the fan, Chicago is going to be a complete and utter nightmare.
http://www.infowars.com/lock-your-doors-and-prepare-to-defend-your-family/
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