Kerr has me thinking about guns

SPORTS journalists operate in a privileged position at times, far removed from the socio-economic or political considerations that our peers in news must endure.

It’s cosy here, but sometimes there are moments outside our ambit that we cannot ignored. That is how Golden State Warriors coach Steve Kerr, a victim of gun violence himself, saw it after another horrific mass shooting at a Texas school in the early hours of yesterday.

Twenty-one people were confirmed dead, 19 of them children between the ages of 7 and 10.

Kerr, during his pre-match media briefing, was visibly shaking; almost apoplectic with rage, as the emotion of the massacre flowed out of him before Warriors’ playoff loss to Dallas Mavericks.

“When are we going to do something,” Kerr raged. “I’m tired. I am so tired of getting up here and offering condolences to the devastated families that are out there. I am so tired of the ‘excuse me, I am sorry’. I am tired of the moments of silence. Enough!”

As a citizen of one of the most dangerous countries in the world, I am largely unsympathetic to the US and it’s continued defence of its guns, but seeing Kerr so emotional, hit me in a different way and I felt his anger take hold of me as well.

I cannot understand, nor fathom, how the paragon of the world refuses to rectify a system that it knows is broken, that we know is broken; but keep defending it through inaction, while the politicians line their pockets with backhanded deals, while entertaining a small but vocal group of lobbyists.

Instead, they hide behind a document written in 1787 before the bullet was even invented. A constitution, whether codified or not, is not some sanctified document that must remain untouchable. It is a living thing that must dynamically change with the times and modern sensibilities.

It is this facet of the US that frightens me. If they cannot grasp such a simple concept as the most advanced and powerful nation-state the world has seen, what chance do little old us have at the southern tip of Africa?