“When are we going to do SOMETHING?!” a furious Golden State Warriors coach Steve Kerr, his voice breaking, asked the assembled media before the game four Western Conference Finals matchup between his team and the Dallas Mavericks.
Five-time NBA champion Kerr started by saying he would not talk basketball during his usual pre-game media availability.
“Since we left shootaround, 14 children were killed 400 miles from here — and a teacher — and in the last 10 days we’ve had elderly Black people killed in a supermarket in Buffalo, we’ve had Asian churchgoers killed in Southern California, and now we have children murdered at school.”
As he fought back tears he said, “I’m so tired of getting up here and offering condolences to the devastated families that’re out there. Excuse me. I’m sorry. I’m so tired of the moments of silence. Enough!”
Warriors coach Steve Kerr spoke about the mass shooting at a school in Uvalde, Texas.
(via @warriors)pic.twitter.com/gA02m5FJsO
— ESPN (@espn) May 24, 2022
Kerr, whose own father Malcolm was shot and killed by two gunmen in 1984, went on to rip into American politicians.
“There’s 50 senators, right now, who refuse to vote on HR-8,” he said in reference to the Bipartisan Background Checks Act of 2021, “which is a background check bill that the house passed a few years ago that’s been sitting there for two years. There’s a reason they won’t vote on it: to hold onto power.”
“So I ask you — Mitch McConnell, and all you senators who refuse to do anything about the violence and school shootings and supermarket shootings — I ask you, Are you going to put your own desire for power ahead of the lives of our children and our elderly and our churchgoers? Because that’s what it looks like.”
I want every person here, every person listening to this, to think about your own child or grandchild, mother or father or sister, brother. How would you feel if this happened to you today? We can’t get numb to this.”
Texas School Shooting Prompts Online Outrage, Calls To Action By Hollywood & Media Figures
