Spurs coach Gregg Popovich on guns: It's time to reassess the Second Amendment

Jeff Zillgitt | USA TODAY

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WASHINGTON – In the wake of former Supreme Court Justice John Paul Stevens calling for a repeal of the Second Amendment, San Antonio Spurs coach Gregg Popovich said changes to gun laws being discussed are Band-Aids.

“Even if they changed the age limit, it’s all a Band-Aid,” Popovich said. “The obvious elephant in the room is the guns, weapons of war, the magazines. The real discussion should be about the Second Amendment. Is it useful? Does it serve its purpose the way it was supposed to do in the beginning? That discussion should be had.

“Is one life more important than some congressman keeping his position because he’s afraid he won’t get funds from the NRA? It’s a dereliction of duty on the part of everybody around (President) Trump."

The Spurs, who played the Washington Wizards on Tuesday, visited the Supreme Court on Monday and were hosted by Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor. The team also received a brief visit from Chief Justice John Roberts, and they saw the basketball court inside the Supreme Court Building – known as the highest court in the land.

It was Popovich’s first Supreme Court visit.

“We try to do things outside of basketball and just expose players to real life because this is just entertainment,” he said.

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Popovich was impressed with kids around the country who participated in anti-gun violence marches last weekend, and on Sunday, he jabbed Trump for not being in D.C. during the march in the nation’s capital.

“They give me hope that I’m actually living in the country I thought I was living in because at times it’s not where I thought I was living,” he said. “They made me believe. They give you hope for the future. They want to do the right thing, things that have moral clarity and common sense.”

Popovich has been a Trump critic often since the 2016 election.

“We have a president who sat across the table in a fake environment of goodwill to talk about gun violence, just like the immigration façade, where he said he’d sign anything and of course didn’t do anything,” Popovich said. “He actually leaned across the table and told two senators they were afraid of the NRA. He said that. He just leaned across the table and told them and laughed about it. And then had lunch with the NRA himself and went back on everything he wanted to do.”

Popovich doesn’t want people distracted by controversies that don’t have an impact on the country.

“Our current president hopes to bore us to death with all these new issues day after day after day that keep him in the news,” said. “But you can talk about one comment or scandal after another and it becomes commonplace – forgotten about – and we don’t even know what’s going on behind the scenes, like what’s happening to our environment and health, all this sort of thing, all the laws that are sliding in, all the people who are being removed and being replaced like scientists replaced by politicians.

“We take our eye off the ball. He’s great at it. It brings out the dark side of human beings for his own purpose, which is himself. If it it’s not pointed out, if people don’t stand up and point it out and it will become commonplace. It’s not the world I want to live in.”

He concluded his diatribe by saying people around Trump believe “their position and their power is more important than our children in our country. …

“I think I’ve gotten myself in enough trouble.”

Then, he walked into visitor’s locker room.

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