SACRAMENTO (CBS SF) — As Golden State coach Steve Kerr stood for a moment of silence before Sunday night’s tip-off of the Warriors-Sacramento Kings game, he knew in his heart and mind more needed to be done hours after a deadly salvo of gunfire claimed nine lives and wounded 12 others in the streets near the Golden 1 Center.
Kerr has lived with the devastating impact gun violence can take on a family. His father, Malcolm, was gunned down by an assassin while serving as president of the American University of Beirut in 1984.
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“We’ll have a moment of silence before the game,” he said in a pre-game news conference. “It’s the right thing to do, to have a moment of silence. But I’ll be honest, it’s probably the ninth or 10th moment of silence that I will have experienced as coach of the Warriors when we mourn people who have died in mass shootings.”
“I don’t think moments of silence are going to do anything,” he continued. “At some point – at some point – our government has to decide: Are we going to have some common-sense gun laws? It’s not going to solve everything, but it will save lives.”
Fueled by the lingering loss of his father, Kerr has been outspoken about the need for “commonsense gun laws.” He challenged lawmakers to come up with legislation to curb the violence.
“You think about all of the common sense laws we could and should put into place if we had any guts, if our government had any guts, if people put others in front of their own career paths, in front of their own re-election campaigns, in front of their own propaganda to manipulate people,” he said.
“It’s right there in front of us,” he continued. “This happens in churches, it happens in schools, in happens right downtown here in Sacramento.”
Kerr said their are tougher laws in place to drive a car than to own a gun.
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“At some point,” he said, “I would hope that we would actually think about our fellow citizens and do something about it, instead of play politics. We have more regulations for driving a car than we do for carrying a weapon.”
Source: sanfrancisco.cbslocal.com.