Update: Costas Sparks Guns (and Football) Debate

Two major related pieces for the Tuesday NYT.   First, TV writer Bill Carter talks to Bob Costas about his controversial halftime commentary last time hitting gun mania in the wake of murder-suicide starring KC Chiefs linebacker.  Costas now says, “I am emphatically not backing off from anything I said.” He called for “a combination of enlightened legislation and controls, coupled with an adjustment in our attitude toward guns.” He added, “Common sense tells us the culture is overrun by guns and that many people who possess them are dangerous or careless."  He also rejected criticism of his comments as inappropriate for a football audience.

He said the criticisms of his commentary “hold no weight with me” because the same people saying that that was an inappropriate time and place to talk about the gun issue “would have thought it was fine if they agreed with what I was saying.”

Then columnist Frank Bruni explores larger issue of football's violent culture. "There’s something rotten in the N.F.L., an obviously dysfunctional culture that either brings out sad, destructive behavior in its fearsome gladiators or fails to protect them and those around them from it."

Here's my post with text of Costa remarks yesterday and critism from the likes of "Fox & Friends."

Greg Mitchell is the author of more than a dozen books (see right rail of this blog).  His latest, on the Obama-Romney battle, is "Tricks, Lies, and Videotape."