Steve Kerr Wants Gun Control; Father Killed by Islamists

During a Friday interview on the TK Show podcast, Golden State Warriors head coach Steve Kerr cited the fact that his father was killed by Islamists in Lebanon as motivation for calling for more gun control on law-abiding Americans.

He criticized Congress for not expanding background checks to cover all guns sales in the wake of the Pulse Orlando shooting, although the Orlando attacker had passed a background check for both of his firearms and passed a state-imposed waiting period for his handgun as well.

And according to the East Bay Times, Kerr was also critical of Congress for not banning the sale of “automatic weapons,” although the Orlando attacker did not use “automatic weapons.”

Kerr said, “Let’s have some checks. It’s easier to get a gun than it is a driver’s license.” He said these things while sitting in Oakland, California, perhaps unaware that California not only has universal background checks — the very kind of checks he is proposing — but also a 10-day waiting period on gun purchases, gun registration requirements, and gun confiscation laws.

Other things that California has: the May 2014 Santa Barbara attack, the December 2015 San Bernardino attack, the June 1 UCLA murder-suicide, nation-leading property crime stats in San Francisco, and what the Los Angeles Times described as a nearly 30 percent “jump in murders” during the first three months of 2016 alone.

The story is the same in other heavily gun-controlled areas of the country. Just look at Chicago, where an “assault weapons” ban, “violence tax,” state-imposed waiting periods, and city-imposed limitations on the number of gun stores (and locations of those stores) are all correlated with record violence and death. Over Father’s Day weekend alone. 56 people were shot in Chicago, 13 of whom died. And this violence followed a May in which the Chicago Tribune reported “nearly 400” people were shot and 66 killed Chicago.

Yet Kerr is criticizing Congress for not following in Chicago’s footsteps? For not mimicking the kinds of laws we see in California?

Kerr’s father was shot and killed by Iranian-backed Islamists while teaching at the American University in Beirut in 1984.

“Though several factions initially took credit for the murder, the family eventually traced it to Hezbollah, the Iranian-funded Islamic organization within Lebanon,” USA Today notes. The Kerr family attempted to sue the Iranian government.

AWR Hawkins is the Second Amendment columnist for Breitbart News and political analyst for Armed American Radio. Follow him on Twitter: @AWRHawkins. Reach him directly at awrhawkins@breitbart.com.