Bob Costas admits mistake in making gun control comments

On Sunday night, Bob Costas decided to drift away from football for a moment to address Jovan Belcher, the Kansas City Chiefs linebacker who murdered his girlfriend and then later committed suicide. Costas quoted a column written by Jason Whitlock, a Kansas City-based writer, condemning our “gun culture” and claiming that Belcher’s victims would be alive.

But since making the remarks, Costas has said that his mistake was leaving them open for interpretation, though he hasn’t backed down at all from substance of the comments he made:

Costas told “The Dan Patrick Show” that his spot during the Sunday Night Football halftime show didn’t give him “enough time” to discuss his thoughts on gun control in the wake of this weekend’s murder-suicide of Kansas City Chiefs linebacker Jovan Belcher and girlfriend Kasandra Perkins.

“I think that my mistake there was that I left it open to too much misinterpretation,” Costas said.

“And what I was trying to say was that if you want some perspective on this, there are a number of issues related to this that we could begin to talk about and think about. The problem was that I didn’t have enough time to get to many of them,” Costas said. “And that, I think, was my mistake, to be quite honest, Dan. A friend of mine in broadcasting pointed this out to me yesterday, and I agree with him. He said, ‘you violated your own rule.’ Because we have had this discussion before — I’ve always said, if you’re going to get into touchy topics, nuanced topics, make sure that you have enough time to flesh them out, that you have enough time to make yourself fully understood, or save them for forums where you do. In this particular situation, the timeliness of it was, if you’re going to comment on it at all, it had to be this Sunday because this was when the Belcher situation had played itself out.”

Costas is also apparently shocked that people may be outraged when you say something with which they disagree. He told Dan Patrick that there are people who “apparently [have] much more regard for the Second Amendment than the First.”

Belcher could have, and perhaps would have, killed his girlfriend without a firearm. A gun isn’t the only weapon around, you know? Costas knows that, but there is, of course, another agenda here.

Don’t get me wrong. Costas has a right to say what he wants, even though it’s naive. It’s his right, and I’ll defend his right to say it; even though he apparently wants to take away my right to carry a firearm.