WWLTV.com:
“If this opinion in Louisiana is super unpopular,” Payton told USA TODAY Sports in a 33-minute phone conversation on Monday, his first interview since Will Smith’s death, “so be it.”
In the aftermath of the senseless shooting on Saturday night that left former defensive end Smith dead – and Smith’s wife Racquel wounded — amid a beef linked to a traffic accident, the New Orleans Saints coach is pleading for more gun control.
He isn’t merely talking about tighter laws. If Payton had his druthers we’d live in a country without guns.
“Two hundred years from now, they’re going to look back and say, ‘What was that madness about?’ “ Payton said. “The idea that we need them to fend off intruders … people are more apt to draw them (in other situations). That’s some silly stuff we’re hanging onto.”
Payton is still processing the death of a former team captain — who was weeks away from joining the Saints coach staff as an intern — and no one in their right mind can blame him for expressing his raw, human emotion. He wants to get this off his chest, and it hardly matters if Payton is bucking conventional NFL coach speak by coming out strong on a hot-button political issue.
“I’m not an extreme liberal,” Payton said. “I find myself leaning to the right on some issues. But on this issue, I can’t wrap my brain around it.”
Payton, who grew up in suburban Chicago, said that his philosophy was influenced by his father, an insurance claims adjuster whose line of work was filled with tragedies. He also spent six months playing in a British football league during the late 1980s, before launching his coaching career.
“I hate guns,” he said.
Payton said he is trying to remove his anti-gun bias in considering the matter, but even with that he reaches the same conclusion.
“I’ve heard people argue that everybody needs a gun,” he said. “That’s madness. I know there are many kids who grow up in a hunting environment. I get that. But there are places, like England, where even the cops don’t have guns.”
[ … ]
“It was a large caliber gun. A .45,” Payton said. “It was designed back during World War I. And this thing just stops people. It will kill someone within four or five seconds after they are struck. You bleed out. After the first shot (that struck Smith’s torso), he took three more in his back.”
Payton paused, then continued with his theme.
“We could go online and get 10 of them, and have them shipped to our house tomorrow,” he said. “I don’t believe that was the intention when they allowed for the right for citizens to bear arms.”
Hey Sean, I noticed that you went on to talk about the danger in New Orleans and your fears there. You mentioned that you could go online and have ten pistols shipped to your home tomorrow. You know that’s a lie, or maybe you don’t. You have to go through an FFL when you cross state lines, and you certainly do when you buy from a dealer even in your own state.
And perhaps that wasn’t really the intent of the founders after all. I agree with you. It should be easier than that to get something to protect your very life. And getting back to the issue of the danger in New Orleans, I noticed that you talked about cops in England not even carrying guns. Well, that’s being revisited now in light of the threats posed by Islamists, and some of them do carry guns, but in any case, I also noticed that while you observed that cops in England don’t carry, you didn’t call for the disarming of cops in America.
That’s because this isn’t really about guns to you. It’s about a monopoly of force. Only the state should have the power to defend themselves and others. You said so when you talked about waiting for cops if you get into a fender bender with a hot headed dude.
So you want people to have guns, just your kind of people. That makes you a hypocrite. Why don’t you just do your job and coach football and leave the public policy to men who aren’t hypocrites?
