Spurs' coach calls Second Amendment "myth"

(AP Photo/Eric Gay)

I get that not everyone likes the Second Amendment. Some people really want to be able to restrict guns as heavily as they want and they really do believe gun control is a good thing.

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I get that. I disagree with it, but I get it.

What I don’t get, though, is when someone just ignores reality in favor of what the voices in their head seem to say. It’s especially bothersome when the person talking about such things is someone who is paid to tell people how to play with a ball.

San Antonio Spurs coach Gregg Popovich has slammed, in his view, ‘cowardly legislators’ for not implementing gun control measures, ostensibly suggesting the Second Amendment’s is a ‘myth’ used to deny restrictions on firearms.

Popovich’s furious pregame speech Sunday is hardly a surprise his long-held and forthright views on gun control, alongside other political and social issues.

Speaking to reporters ahead of the Spurs’ win vs. Dallas, Popovich asked reporters if they were carrying while working at the American Airlines Center in Dallas.

‘I just wondered because we have a governor [Greg Abbott] and lieutenant governor [Dan Patrick] and an attorney general that made it easier to have more guns,’ Popovich said.

‘That was a response to our kids getting murdered,’ he said, referring to the mass murder of six – including three children – at a private Christian school in Nashville by a 28-year-old transgender ex-student. ‘I just thought that was a little bit strange decision. It’s just me, though.’

‘They’re going to cloak all this stuff [in] the myth of the Second Amendment, the freedom. 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?’

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Now, first, note that this was Sunday when he said this, so it wasn’t even spurred on by events in Louisville.

That said, it’s amazing that Popovich can claim that the Second Amendment is a myth, that freedom itself is a myth. I’d like to believe that’s not what he meant, but I don’t see what else he could have intended.

Popovich has every right to his opinion. He has a right to voice that opinion, too. Not only would I not want to rob him of that, but I’d also die to defend his right to voice that opinion, no matter how much I disagree with it.

What he’s not entitled to, however, are his own facts.

The Second Amendment preserves our right, our freedom, to keep and bear arms. This is an indisputable fact. It’s no myth. It clearly states “the people’s right to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed.” Whether Popovich thinks that means a collective right–which “the people” doesn’t refer to anywhere else in the Constitution–or something else is irrelevant.

It’s not a matter of opinion that the Second Amendment preserves our right to own and carry firearms. That is a fact, as the Supreme Court has repeatedly ruled.

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Popovich should probably stick to telling people how to bounce a ball because he sucks as a constitutional scholar.

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