People who work in sports are not obligated to “stick to sports,” even when you disagree with them. Falcons head coach Arthur Smith has no such obligation, though the comments he made after the mass shooting at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, Texas that took the lives of 19 children and two teachers showed a nearly complete misunderstanding of modern politics and how they work… and more importantly, how they don’t work.
“I’m not going to get into some political rant,” Smith recently said, per Josh Kendall of The Athletic. “Part of me thinks our political process is broken. On both sides. It has been hijacked, in my opinion, by extremists. I think there is a lost art to compromise. I’m an independent thinker, appreciate everyone’s opinion. There’s a lost art to debate, but I’m going to stay out of the political debate because that’s now why I’m concerned. It’s more as a parent, father, husband, son, a concerned citizen. I believe in the people of this county, and I think it’s a shame the leaders, and I don’t care about your politics, that you can’t find a compromise solution to keep military grade assault weapons out of the hands of mentally ill people.”
While Smith’s idea that military-grade assault weapons should not be in the hands of mentally ill people, the current conversations regarding gun control and regulation aren’t as nuanced as Smith would like them to be. The concept of politicians reaching across the aisle to work in concert on bills and laws that protect the public? Those days are gone. You often hear that America is more polarized than it has been at any time since the Civil War, and there’s a lot to that. As to the idea that extremists on both sides have ruined any chance of compromise, it’s hard to find an “extremist” on the Democrat side of things you can point to.
