Warriors Coach Steve Kerr Who Demanded Strict Gun Control Laws Has A Reason For His Passionate Plea

The video of Golden State Warriors Coach Steve Kerr’s emotional reaction to the mass shooting at a Uvalde Texas elementary school on Tuesday was not a media antic.

Steve Kerr – a notable member of the team who won several titles with the Chicago Bulls (and the San Antonio Spurs) featuring Michael Jordan, Scottie Pippen and Dennis Rodman among others – is a longtime advocate of gun control and there is a personal reason for that (more on that later).

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During his press conference, Kerr was visibly emotional. At one point he thumped the desk and demanded that action needs to be taken.

“When are we going to do something?  I’m so tired of getting up here and offering condolences to the devastated families that are out there. I’m tired of the moments of silence. Enough,” he said.

“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. Now we have children murdered at school,” Kerr said, thumping the table to emphasise.

Kerr also lashed out at veteran Republican and House Minority leader Mitch McConnell and said that he and some 49 other lawmakers are holding the US hostage.

“There are 50 senators, right now, who refuse to vote on HR 8, which is a background check rule that the House passed. There’s a reason they won’t vote on it: to hold on to power,” Kerr said.

Kerr was referring to Bipartisan Background Checks Act of 2019, under the ambit of which background checks would be performed on all gun sales, including firearm purchases made privately, whether it be online or at gun shows, according to a report by NPR.

Kerr Lashed Out Because Of Personal History With Violence

It was during his college years that Dr Malcolm Kerr, Steve’s father, was gunned down by two unknown assailants on January 18, 1984  at the American University of Beirut during the Lebanese Civil War.

Steve Kerr recounted the events during the Netflix documentary The Last Stand – which documents the title-winning years of NBA team Chicago Bulls and Michael Jordan’s role – where he said that the event shaped him as a person. The killers were never identified.

“My phone rang in my dorm at 3 o’clock in the morning, so I knew something was up. A family friend just said, ‘Steve, I have terrible news.’ So… yeah. Basketball was all I could do to take my mind off what happened. So I went to practice the next day. I didn’t know what else to do,” Kerr said.

Later, basketball legend Michael Jordan would also recount in docuseries how this helped him and Kerr forge a strong bond ahead of 1997, 1998 and 1999 NBA Championship victories with the Bulls.

‘Don’t Become Numb To This’

Through Kerr, the American sports fraternity and NBA showed that sports can act as a platform to send a social message. “I want every person here, every person listening to this, to think about your own child or grandchild, mother or father, sister or brother,” Kerr said.

“This is us using our platform. The game doesn’t matter,” he said. Kerr even went on to say that the government is not keen to bring gun control laws even after 18 children lost their lives to gun violence.

(with inputs from The Washington Post, Chicago Bulls website, Netflix’s The Last Dance and Fadeaway World)