DALLAS (KRON) — Ahead of the Golden State Warriors’ Western Conference Finals game against the Dallas Mavericks on Tuesday, Warriors head coach Steve Kerr passionately responded to the school shooting in Uvalde, Texas, that took the lives of 19 children, two staff members and the shooter. An emotional Kerr challenged senators to make a change and stormed off the podium after he was finished talking.
“When are we gonna do something?” Kerr shouted, slamming the table he was sitting at. “I’m so tired of getting up here and offering condolences to the devastated families that are out there. … I’m tired of the moments of silence. Enough!”
Kerr did not speak about basketball at the news conference, instead beginning his speech by acknowledging the victims in the recent Buffalo supermarket shooting and Orange County church shooting, as well as Tuesday’s mass shooting. He went on to challenge 50 United States senators for failing to vote on a background check bill that was passed by the House of Representatives.
“There’s a reason they won’t vote on it: to hold on to power,” he said of the senators. “So I ask you, Mitch McConnell, I ask all of you senators who refuse to do anything about the violence and school shootings and supermarket shootings… I ask you, are you going to put your own desire for power ahead of the lives of our children, and our elderly, and our churchgoers?”
Kerr, whose father died in a shooting, challenged people to think about their own family members in the wake of the tragedy. He also said that 90% of Americans believe in background checks.
“We are being held hostage by 50 senators in Washington, who refuse to even put it to a vote,” he said. “Despite what we, the American people, want. They won’t vote on it because they want to hold on to their own power. It’s pathetic. I’ve had enough.”
Kerr ended the media briefing at that point and walked out of the room.
The coach has been outspoken about political issued in the past. In June 2020, he joined protesters in an effort to get police officers off of Oakland school campuses.