San Antonio Spurs coach Gregg Popovich has never been one to shy away from speaking his mind on politics. Which is a shame, because there’s not much in there.
Pop, as he’s affectionately referred to, may have been coaching his last game on Sunday (the Spurs are out of the playoffs and rumors have been swirling that this is his last season) when he went off on a rant about the school shooting in Nashville, Tennessee, during his pre-game press availability, according to the San Antonio Current.
Conveniently, of course, he left out the fact a Christian school was targeted or that a transgender 28-year-old woman who left behind a manifesto was the alleged attacker. Instead, he was especially angry about a quote from Tennessee GOP Sen. Marsha Blackburn saying she and other agencies were “ready to assist.”
“In what?” Popovich said. “They’re dead. What are you going to assist with? Cleaning up their brains off the wall? Wiping the blood off the schoolroom floor? What are you going to assist with?”
“Most of you in this room, when we were in school, we worried if Nancy would dance with us on Friday after the football game or something. That was our anxiety.”
Now, he has to worry about his grandchildren being shot up by a mass murderer — and he blamed what he believed was a mythical amendment for it.
“But they’re going to cloak all this stuff [in] the myth of the Second Amendment, the freedom,” he said, according to Fox News.
“You know, it’s just a myth. It’s a joke. It’s just a game they play. I mean, that’s freedom. Is it freedom for kids to go to school and try to socialize and try to learn and be scared to death that they might die that day?”
“But Ted Cruz will fix it because he is going to double the number of cops in the schools. That’s what he wants to do. Well, that’ll create a great environment. Is that freedom? Or is it freedom to have a congressman who can make a postcard with all his family holding rifles, including an AR-15 or whatever. Is that cool? Is that like street cred for a Republican? That’s freedom? That’s more important than protecting kids? I don’t get it.”
Here’s gun control expert Gregg Popovich, clearly speaking from a statistics- and evidenced-based perspective:
More Popovich. pic.twitter.com/rDknUTsC2b
— Brad Townsend (@townbrad) April 9, 2023
Cruz, on Twitter, pointed out the hypocrisy:
Liberal professional athletes, the coaches, and Hollywood elites are all surrounded by armed security.
But the Left doesn’t believe YOU have the right to defend yourself and keep your family safe.
It’s hypocritical and condescending. #Verdict
— Ted Cruz (@tedcruz) April 12, 2023
“Liberal professional athletes, the coaches, and Hollywood elites are all surrounded by armed security,” he wrote.
“But the Left doesn’t believe YOU have the right to defend yourself and keep your family safe.
“It’s hypocritical and condescending,” he added.
On his podcast “Verdict,” he had more to say about Popovich’s Second Amendment rant, according to the Daily Wire.
“We’ve seen for a long time that there are a lot of institutions in sports that don’t really like their fans very much,” Cruz said.
“You see this at the NBA, you see at the NFL, these incredibly rich athletes who hypocritically disdain their fans and customers and who lecture them almost inevitably from a point of ignorance,” Cruz said.
“For some reason, the protection that is suitable to ultra-wealthy, left-wing athletes is not suitable for our children. They deserve less protection.”
Well, to be fair, the Second Amendment isn’t mythical for them. Just you, Middle America. They’re special. Nobody cares if you get killed during a home invasion or by a stalker. But them? I mean, they pull down 10.8 rebounds a night. That’s what the framers had in mind, right?
If armed security can protect those athletes and coaches, perhaps an armed security guard or trained educator could have stopped the Nashville shooter. Instead, armed police were needed — and while their actions should be lauded, they couldn’t make it there before six were dead.
That’s what Cruz and Blackburn are trying to prevent. Calling the Second Amendment a “myth” will do nothing to protect children, even if it were true. Hardening targets, on the other hand, would go a long way to “protecting kids,” if indeed that’s what Popovich cares about.
Either way, it’s probably best he saved this for what might be his last game in San Antonio. Texans in particular don’t like being told their God-given rights to self-protection are mythical by those who live under the protection of men with firearms.
This article appeared originally on The Western Journal.
