Golden State Warrior head coach Steve Kerr is all-too-familiar with terrorism and senseless killing. His parents were academics in the Middle East in the 80s. Kerr attended American schools in Egypt and Beruit, Kerr personally knew some of the U.S. Marines that died in the bombing at the Beruit barracks. And then in 1984, when Kerr was a freshman basketball player at the University of Arizona, his father, 52-year-old American University president Malcolm Kerr, was killed by two gunmen from the Islamic Jihad in the hallway just outside his office at the university.

Kerr understands the way the families in Texas feel right now. He’s been there. He is also very politically outspoken on other matters, particularly civil rights for POC, who make up a big percentage of the men he coaches. But tonight Kerr went off on the fact that terrorism and violence don’t just happen “over there,” the Republican party is doing nothing to ensure that terrorist acts, or random shootings that aren’t based on racism, continue to happen here, more often and regularly than the 1980s Beruit.

Golden State plays the Dallas TEXAS Mavericks tonight in a huge playoff game that now seems trite. It is customary for the coaches to do a pre-game press conference. Kerr sat down at the microphone and immediately said he would not talk basketball nor take basketball questions, not with the shooting just 400 miles away. He then proceeded to call out the Republican party in a far more direct way than what the American electorate is used to. Rather than decry the inability to “do something,” Kerr called out the 50 people in the Republican Senate who are holding up a bill that Kerr says is supported by 90% of the American people. That figure may or may not be precise but a vast majority of Americans favor universal background checks, limits on sales, and regulation of the most dangerous weapons. Kerr made sure Americans knew exactly who was holding up the will of the American people.

Steve Kerr on today's tragic shooting in Uvalde, Texas. pic.twitter.com/lsJ8RzPcmC

— Golden State Warriors (@warriors) May 24, 2022

One last thing, the Republican assertion of 2nd Amendment rights is yet another example of white entitlement. Despite the fact that the MAGAs believe that the Second Amendment guarantees every American the right to carry these things wherever they want, it actually only applies to certain white men and a few women. A black man embracing his “2nd Amendment Right” to openly carry an assault rifle would likely be dead before sunset, presumed to be the bad guy. No, in this country, many of Steve Kerr’s players do not have a 2nd Amendment right. The few that do, the MAGA-type, have shown that this is yet another means to demonstrate white supremacy and everyone knows it.

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[email protected], @JasonMiciak