After Jovan Belcher shot the mother of his child, Kasandra Perkins, multiple times with a legally registered handgun, NBC sports commentator Bob Costas had this to say:
I suppose Mr. Costas would have preferred that Belcher slashed her throat instead.
Maybe he would have approved if Belcher had smashed her skull with a hammer.
Or perhaps he would've been satisfied if Belcher had repeatedly run over her with his car.
This is not a time for an anti-gun rant. Guns had little to do with this.
When a man or woman kills their partner, guns don't make them do it. Or knives. Or hammers. Or cars. They kill because violence is their way of controlling the people they "love."
And they will use whatever tool comes easily to hand.
Police records are now emerging that show Belcher had a history of violence and control issues with women. (His final words to Ms. Perkins were "You can't talk to me like that.") The Chiefs have already admitted that they "were bending over backwards" to accommodate Belcher's domestic problems and had put him in counselling.
At the end of his sermon, Costas quotes sportswriter Jason Whitlock: "If Jovan Belcher didn't possess a gun, he and Kasandra Perkins would be alive today."
That is incorrect. Dangerously so.
If Belcher habitually used intimidation and violence to control his girlfriends it's statistically likely that eventually he would kill one, whether he had a gun or not. Instead of being shot, Ms. Perkins would have bled to death from multiple stab wounds, or become comatose from head trauma, or drowned in a bathtub, or been strangled by ligature.
Banning guns won't stop domestic violence. Banning guns simply blames the gun instead of the abuser.
That doesn't solve anything or help anyone.
There are plenty of gruesome ways to die. A man like Belcher would simply pick another.
While the rest of us shout about guns and look the other way.
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