The Washington Post’s editorial board hailed the National Basketball Association’s decision to team up with an anti-gun group to speak out against firearm-related violence, saying the move was pretty “brave.”
“Sports figures are supposed to be role models, but too often they disappoint. Not so with the National Basketball Association and its brave decision to speak out against gun violence,” they wrote this week. “In charting a new course in civic responsibility, the NBA sets a standard that we hope other organizations follow.”
The NBA announced this year that it would partner with former New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s anti-gun group, Everytown for Gun Safety, to speak out against gun violence. Together, the two groups have produced a series of public service announcements that aim to raise awareness about the dangers posed by guns in America.
The videos, directed by filmmaker Spike Lee, feature professional basketball players and people whose lives have been affected by gun violence.
“The words ‘gun control’ don’t appear in the ads,” the Post’s editorial board noted, “but the decision to team up with Everytown for Gun Safety … sends an unmistakable and important message about the need for action.”
But the NBA’s decision to pair with Everytown for Gun Safety was apparently an easy one.
“[W]e know far too many people who have been caught up in gun violence in this country. And we can do something about it,” an official with the league told the New York Times.
One video shows Stephen Curry of the Golden State Warriors commenting on recent news of a 3-year-old who was shot, saying, “My daughter Riley’s that age.”
The Los Angeles Clippers’ Chris Paul can be seen saying, “A bullet doesn’t have a name on it.”
Meanwhile, Richard Martinez, who lost his son to a shooter, said elsewhere, “We’re Americans. We don’t have to live like this.”
Though Everytown for Gun Safety has been praised by likeminded members of the press and Congress for its efforts to address America’s supposed culture of gun violence, it has also been criticized for being “impressively evasive” about what it thinks should be done.
“[I]t seems that either Everytown does not actually know what it is for, or it is too scared to reveal its agenda in public,” National Review’s Charles C. W. Cooke wrote last year.
“Strangely, representatives from the group were accommodating of my inquiries right up until the point at which I asked for specifics: namely, for the group’s position on ‘assault weapons’ and high-capacity magazines, both of which the leaders of [Mayors Against Illegal Guns] and [Moms Demand Action] wanted to ban last year,” he added.
The first NBA-Everytown anti-gun violence PSA aired on Christmas Day.
“The NBA’s decision follows an alarming number of mass shootings and other gun incidents, and the Times speculated that it might spur other ‘generally risk-averse, mainstream institutions’ to action,” the editorial board concluded. “Let’s hope Congress is one of them.”
