Warriors' Steve Kerr pushes gun control measures, calls out Ted Cruz after Colorado shooting
Kerr has been an outspoken gun control advocate in recent years
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Golden State Warriors coach Steve Kerr is unafraid to speak out on controversial topics, and took a jab at some gun owners and Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, while talking about the recent mass shootings in the U.S.
Kerr on Tuesday offered his condolences to the victims of the recent shootings in Boulder and Atlanta. He had a backdrop of the victims' names in both shootings while he spoke to reporters, according to USA Today.
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"The reason to do it is to remind people these are human beings," Kerr said explaining the backdrop. "It’s important to humanize the victims, and not just count them. Too often, you pick up a story and you just read there were eight victims or 10 victims, whatever the number is.
"When you see faces and when you see names, it personalizes it, you put it together and you think about how many people are suffering – how many family members and friends and not to mention, of course, how many lives were cut short and how many dreams were shattered. If we don’t humanize it, it just continues to be a statistic and it makes it much easier for the idiots out there to say, 'This is the price of freedom in terms of owning guns.’"
He called that argument the "dumbest expression I’ve heard in my life" and theorized the best way to "protect each other" is to "humanize the victims" of mass shootings.
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Kerr also called out Cruz specifically.
"Ted Cruz, this could be your family. This could be your friend. This could be somebody very close to you. If this happened, would you not want something in place where there is a background check?" he added. "It's just mind-boggling to me that we can just continue to cater to the very small minority in this country. Again, 90% of Americans, regardless of political affiliation, support background checks. We go through drivers' school and drivers' safety. We have to apply for a license to drive a car. Nothing like that with a gun? We can just show up to Walmart, buy an AR-15 and murder 10 people, and that’s the price of freedom? Really, we’re going to keep saying that? So, a lot of us are just angry."
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Kerr, who won five NBA titles as a player and three as a coach, has been a supporter of strict gun control laws and was affected by gun violence himself when he was younger. Kerr’s father was shot and killed in Beirut, Lebanon, in 1984 by a group associated with the Islamic Holy War.
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He’s regularly spoken out against former President Trump and his administration and has previously predicted that young voters would deliver change on the issue.