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As you read this, know that by the time you finish, somewhere in America a fellow citizen will use a gun to stop a crime and save a life. Opining on the Kansas City Chief football player who murdered his girlfriend and then blew out his own brains in front of his coach, the otherwise great sports announcer, Bob Costas, blamed the murder-suicide on easy access to guns. He lives in a strange fairyland of ignorance and denial. If there were a free speech penalty for blundering ignorance, a penalty flag would have been tossed at Mr. Costas. Just as...

GREG GUTFELD: Now this tale not only shows how guns save lives, but it also kills the stereotype, Bob, that libs love to propagate that gun owners are clumsy yokels who collect guns the way sports broadcasters collect toupees. Not so, the homeowner handled the situation with compassion, keeping the guy from endangering them and others. Any decent gun owner would say that's how it's done. But this is a logic that escapes people like Bob Costas, who glide among secure skyscrapers, never worrying about trivialities like home invasions. Commentators need no guns when the bodyguard is already packing. If...

Regarding my first op-ed this last week at Fox News on Costas here is some of the reaction. I will update this later when I have time to put in responses. From Entertainment Weekly: As you can guess, his commentary was closely scrutinized, and while some applauded his effort, many criticized him for broaching a politically taboo subject in the midst of Sunday Night Football. Second-Amendment advocates like Fox News’ John Lott dismissed Costas for his “emotional reaction,” and media-watcher Howard Kurtz said, “If Bob Costas wanted to urge gun control during NFL, he should have made his own case,...

NBC sportscaster Bob Costas will appear tonight on Fox News’ O’Reilly Factor with host Bill O’Reilly as the centerpiece of a gun rights controversy that just keeps on giving like the proverbial Christmas present with a down-side. He's trying to mollify a lot of angry people and it is obviously not working at Northwest Firearms, Shooters Northwest, Seattle Guns or Gun Rights Media. His media colleagues may be okay with his remarks, and buy his shifting explanations, but that merely has sharpened the philosophical disparity between the media and a huge segment of its audience. This column discussed Mr. O’Reilly’s...

Sports broadcaster Bob Costas used his platform at NBC’s Sunday Night Football to blame guns for Kansas City Chiefs linebacker Jovan Belcher’s murder of his girlfriend Kasandra Perkins and Belcher’s subsequent suicide. Costas quoted extensively from a column written by Fox News sportswriter Jason Whitlock, in which Whitlock concludes, without equivocation: What I believe is, if he [Belcher] didn’t possess/own a gun, he and Kasandra Perkins would both be alive today. Never mind the fact that their relationship was so troubled that the KC Chiefs team management was providing counseling to them. And never mind the fact that Belcher had...

Reacting to Bob Costas’ controversial halftime gun control lecture on Sunday night, retired NBA all-star Charles Barkley said he carries “a real gun” because he feels “safer with it.” Barkley, appearing on “Costas Tonight,” said he doesn’t think the nation has a “gun culture” but rather a “crime culture” especially “in the black community.” “You know, we as black people always, we don’t have respect for one another. You know, we’ve got more black men in prison than we do in college and crime in our neighborhoods is running rampant,” Barkley said. “And I know everybody reacts when something like...

The Bob Costas flap has become the gaffe du jour this week, with some well-meant attempts to help the embattled NBC announcer do damage control in the wake of Sunday night’s remarks and Monday’s blistering reaction. Fox News’ Bill O’Reilly and contributor Bernie Goldberg jumped to Costas’ defense Monday night and while they made some reasonable points, they also said some things that may just exacerbate the situation, and leave them looking a bit foolish. It's a pity, because both guys seem like honorable men trying to do what they believe is the right thing. To wit, during O’Reilly’s popular...

Bob Costas' gun control rant was bad but made worse by one key point -- he lives much of his life with the benefit of armed security. (i.e., men with guns). If you've ever been to an NFL game this point is academic. The number of armed policemen you pass between the gate your seat is incredible. And if you get behind the scenes, in certain corridors, the armed presence can be just as strong (or stronger). ... Remember when Rosie O'Donnell spent what seemed like years on her gun rants? Those rants lost their effectiveness when the focus turned...

About his rant against the 2nd Amendment, in the manner of an explanation: "...maybe I gave the audience too much credit...."

Bob Costas knows his sports. I’ll say that for him. Over the last 32 years, he has parlayed that knowledge and his broadcasting abilities into an estimated net worth of some $32 million. He has won nearly 20 Emmys and four National Sportscaster of the Year awards. But he is clearly out of his depths and out of place when it comes to opining on other matters – such as gun control. Costas attempted to use his platform during a ”Sunday Night Football” halftime report to blame a gun for the murder of a woman – a gun actually fired...

Bob Costas said he made a “mistake,” violating his own rule of not trying to compress a nuanced topic into small bit of air time, with his controversial halftime commentary Sunday night on the murder-suicide committed by Jovan Belcher of the Kansas City Chiefs the day before. “My mistake is I left it open for too much miscommunication,” Costas said in a lengthy interview on “The Dan Patrick Show.” The 90-second weekly spot, he said, doesn’t offer enough time in which to adequately discuss the issue of “the football culture, the gun culture, domestic violence.”

    If Bob Costas wants to consult someone on domestic double murder without a gun, he need to look no further than his former broadcasting partner at NBC.

Blame the Gun rant by Costas

Collingsworth. Costas. Olberman. MIND-NUMBINGLY bad television.

NEW YORK (Hollywood Reporter) - NBC Universal is ramping up for next month's 17-day coverage of the Torino Olympics, using many of its assets to provide a record amount of TV time for a Winter Olympics. The broadcaster said Tuesday that it will schedule 416 hours of coverage across NBC, USA, MSNBC and CNBC as well as two high-definition channels, NBC HD and Universal HD. That bests the previous Winter Olympics record, 375 hours from Salt Lake City in February 2002. NBC itself will have more than 182 hours. The cable channels are scheduled to have 233 hours of coverage,...

And so, Bob Costas, Mr. Clean Sports Announcer, has decided to use his sports show on HBO as a front piece to attack Bush, and Bush's supporters. How? By slamming Bush's comments about Intelligent Design. Bob made an off hand comment about it during the 'round table' with a couple of sports guys, like Charles Barkley, plus a certain Jon Stewart, a comedian. Stewart said that kids should be taught both sides of the steriod story as well. That steriods are bad for you and so on, but the other side is take as many steriods as you want for...

New York,NY(AHN)-Bob Costas, one of television’s most accomplished broadcasters and host of HBO’s Costas Now, joins CNN as a substitute host for Larry King Live, it was announced today by CNN/U.S. President Jon Klein. “We’re thrilled to have one of television’s most outstanding broadcasters joining the CNN roster,” Klein said. “Bob’s quick wit, nimble mind and broad range of interests will engage viewers in the best King tradition.” “It’s an honor to have the opportunity to sit in for Larry,” Costas said. “I’ve always enjoyed the long-form interview, and Larry’s program is synonymous with that television format.” Costas joined HBO...

Just finished watching this week's edition of Inside the NFL on HBO and in the first ten minute segment Bob Costas, Dan Marino, Chris Collinsworth and Cris Carter talked about the incident from the Pacers/Pistons game in Detroit last Friday night and the implications for the NFL. In summary Bob Costas blamed fan behaviour in Detroit and in general on talk radio, a totally outrageous statement.

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - NBC's broadcast of the 2004 Olympics has gotten off to as bumpy a start as the U.S. Olympic team itself, with prime-time ratings for the first three days of the Summer Games down slightly from four years ago, according to figures released on Monday. NBC's prime-time Olympics coverage still towered over the usual summer sitcoms, reality shows and reruns offered on rival U.S. networks during the first three days of the Athens Games, posting a hefty household rating of 14.1 and a full quarter share of all viewers watching TV on those evenings. But compared with...

Alerting readers to the then-upcoming Bob Costas interview on HBO with Senator Hillary Clinton, I predicted: "I'd bet Costas won't be as reverential as some other star media figures have been toward her." I was wrong. The NBC Sports anchor was every bit as sycophantic as Barbara Walters, Katie Couric or Charlie Rose, though as host of a sports and celebrity interview show, I guess he cannot be held to the same journalistic standards. In the pre-taped interview which led the July 18 On the Record with Bob Costas on HBO, Costas wished for her to impart her wisdom: "How,...

The controversy last week over Senator Rick Santorum's remarks about the slippery slope of the Supreme Court finding a right to any kind of consensual sex based on a "right to privacy" in the penumbra of the Constitution, has had one benefit: A well- known liberal commentator on political issues has conceded his naivete about which rights are in the Constitution. On Friday night's Real Time with Bill Maher on HBO, Maher admitted: "This has been a learning experience for me. I also thought that privacy was something we were granted in the Constitution. I have learned from this when...