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Warriors coach Steve Kerr refused to talk about basketball before the team’s playoff game against the Mavericks in wake of the Texas elementary school shooting that occurred hours before.
“Since we left shoot-around, 14 children were killed 400 miles from here and a teacher. And 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, and now we have children murdered at school.”
At least 19 children and two adults have died after the shooting at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, Texas as of Tuesday evening according to the Texas Department of Public Safety. The suspected gunman was an 18-year-old man who abandoned his vehicle and entered the school with a handgun and possibly a rifle, governor Greg Abbott said. The suspect is dead and acted alone, police later said in a press conference.
This comes nearly a decade after a shooter killed 20 children and six staff members at Sandy Hook Elementary.
Kerr hit the table several times when he said, “When are we going to do something?” adding, “I’m tired, 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.”
The Warriors coach then commented on how there’s “50 senators, right now, who refuse to vote on HR8.” The bill would implement background check requirements for firearms, and it was passed by the House in February 2019, per Congress.gov.
“So I ask you, Mitch McConnell, I ask all of you senators who refuse to do anything about the violence and school shootings and supermarket shootings I ask you—are you going to put your own desire for power ahead of the lives of our children and our elderly and our churchgoers because that’s what it looks like.”
He then asked for each person listening Tuesday to think about their “child or grandchild or mother or father or sister, brother.”
“How would you feel if this happened to you today? We can’t get numb to this,” Kerr said. “We can’t sit here and just read about it and go, ‘Well, let’s have a moment of silence. Yeah, go dubs. Come on, Mavs, let’s go.’ That’s what we’re going to do. We’re going to go play a basketball game.”
