Something Has To Be Done

This is a sports show and of course everything that I talk about here today pales in comparison to the murder of at least 17 people at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida yesterday. It’s really hard to care about the Lakers and Pelicans or the Olympics or anything in the world of sports when you see the kind of horror and devastation, when you see children running for their lives, when you see parents in the kind of pain no parent should ever experience, or when you hear the story of assistant football coach Aaron Feis who was killed while protecting and helping students, reportedly using his body to shield three students. Golden State head coach Steve Kerr was asked about it yesterday and yet again, he summed it up perfectly. And as horrifying as that was yesterday, it’s even more horrifying to remember how many times this has happened. How many times have I been on this show and said “this is a sports show, but” and then talked about a shooting in Las Vegas, Orlando, Virginia Tech, Sandy Hook, the list goes on and on and on. And you know what happens next. You know the drill because we’ve been here before. There’s a mass murder in a school, or a movie theater, or at a concert. News crews set up. Interviews are done. Everyone says thoughts and prayers, we read about the people whose lives have been ripped away, and nothing changes. We say never again and then it happens again. And again. And again. How many times do we have to see this? How many kids need to be murdered in schools before we say enough is enough? And for those of you who want to say, hey, this is sports radio, I come here to escape from that kind of stuff  - I hear you. I would like nothing better than to be talking about sports all three hours today. I would love to never have to talk about another shooting ever again. This is a sports show and not a news show, but it’s also not an ignorant show and I can’t ignore what’s happening in the real world. I’m not going to sit here and say nothing. Because saying nothing and doing nothing leads to this happening again and again and again. Something has to be done. Because we’ve done nothing every time and more and more people are dying. I’m doing a lot of soul searching to figure out what I can do and I hope you’re doing the same. And I still don’t have the answer. But I know what isn’t an answer: just saying thoughts and prayers and not changing anything. Something has to be done. This isn’t normal. And we’re allowing it to become normal. It is not normal for parents to wonder if their children are going to come home from school today. It is not normal for football coaches to be shielding students from bullets. It is not normal for children to go to school with the possibility that they’ll be gunned down in a classroom. But we’re making it normal. And we cannot do that.