Every since Kansas City Chiefs linebacker Jovan Belcher shot his girlfriend to death and took his own life last weekend there have been several high profile people that have weighed in on the situation as it relates to gun control. Bob Costas of NBC Sports remains front in center after he weighed in on the topic and now Pittsburgh Steelers linebacker James Harrison has made his thoughts known on where he stands on the topic of gun control.
Harrison, who is a known gun collector, recently said that Belcher is responsible for tragedy that took place last weekend, not the gun.
“It\’s a big issue as far as what happened and everything, it\’s a sad story,” Harrison told Jim Corbett of USA Today. “But the fact of it being part of the guns. …They want to say it\’s guns and all this other stuff. It\’s ridiculous. He did it. And he alone is responsible for it. It has nothing to do with the guns.”
Many high profile members of the mainstream media insist that if Belcher didn\’t possess a gun, that both he and his girlfriend would both still be alive today.
Harrison of course thinks the opposite and told Corbett as much. “Somebody goes out and kills somebody with a knife, you going to blame the knife?” asked Harrison. “Somebody goes out and kills somebody by pushing somebody in front of a train, you going to start cutting off the guy\’s arms? You going to start blaming people\’s arms now? It\’s the person who did it who is responsible.”
Harrison, as many will remember, took a lot of criticism when a picture of him surfaced holding two handguns in a 2011 issue of Men\’s Journal titled “Confessions of an NFL Hitman.”
Neither the backlash that he received for that, nor the Belcher incident has changed his opinion on whether or not to keep his guns.
“No, no,\’\’ Harrison said. “I have my guns. I\’m going to keep my guns. I\’m going to use my guns responsibly and go from there. It\’s not as far as athletes needing guns [for protection]. It\’s the right to bear firearms.”
Harrison loves to hunt and shoot guns as recreation, so it is not surprising that he weighed in on the side that he did. Every time a high profile case like this takes place the gun control issue usually always overtakes the original tragedy just as it now has in this case.
Harrison makes solid points and nobody is going to convince him otherwise that he should give up his right to bear arms and I doubt that anyone anytime soon is going to be knocking on his door to try to take them away from him.
