Oregon Ducks football coach Dan Lanning is sending a loud message about “common sense” gun control after a since-deceased shooter left 18 dead and 13 injured in a rampage in Lewiston, Maine last week.
“I want to take a quick second to say something that’s important to our players. And I wouldn’t normally hop into this, but I want everybody to understand that this is not political in any way. But as a dad of three kids, a 13-year-old, a 12-year-old, a 10-year-old, I see at times what’s going on in this country and I think I have a platform that is worth saying something about,” Lanning said, according to Oregon Live.
“What I’ll say right now is, where is the respect for human life? I think there’s a lot more to this. People can say, ‘Let’s make it about guns. Let’s make it about mental health.’ Why can’t we use a common-sense approach and make it about everything?
“This isn’t me taking a stance, but our players told me this spring that gun violence was really important to them. And I just want to ask everybody, what are we doing about it? We continue to sit around and expect different results. And don’t think I’m sitting here talking about gun control, don’t think I’m not talking about mental health. I’m talking about all of it. We’ve got a lot of smart people in this country, and how about we do something to fix it?
Lanning went on to stress that he “wasn’t trying to be political” but rather that he cared about human life and decency. In closing, he stressed that he hoped America could “take a stand” and “do something” about the gun violence plaguing our country.
