Golden State Warriors coach Steve Kerr didn’t hold back during his pregame news conference before Game 4 against Dallas, pushing basketball concerns to the side to speak on the latest national tragedy.
“When are we going to do something?” Kerr shouted in response to the mass shooting that occurred hours earlier at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, Texas, just a few hundred miles away. “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. I am sorry. I am tired of the moments of silence. Enough!”
According to the Texas Department of Public Safety, 19 students and two teachers were killed in the second-deadliest school shooting in United States history.
All injuries and fatalities took place inside one classroom, and the shooter was killed on the scene by law enforcement.
“There’s 50 senators, right now, who refuse to vote on H.R.8, which is a background check rule the House passed,” said Kerr.
H.R.8 passed in the U.S. House of Representatives in early 2021 but never reached the Senate floor.
The bill would tighten background check rules for firearm transfers by private parties.
“So I ask you: [Senate Minority Leader] 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. It’s what we do every week.”
Kerr’s own father, Malcom Kerr, was assassinated by terrorists in Beruit, Lebanon when Kerr was a freshman at the University of Arizona in 1984.
The Warriors coach has consistently spoken out against gun violence and social injustice.
“We can’t get numb to this,” said Kerr.