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The assassination of Charlie Kirk hit close to home for Oregon football head coach Dan Lanning, who recently found out that Kirk was a fan of Lanning’s own Ducks.
Lanning offered his condolences to Kirk’s wife, Erika, and their two children following their 34-14 victory over Northwestern on Saturday.
But in a prolonged answer regarding the current culture of the United States, Lanning implored Americans to look at his own locker room, saying, “the people in this world can learn a lot from [it].”
“You walk in that locker room, you got guys of different races, guys of different backgrounds, different religions, and you got a team that loves each other. Tons of differences. Where they come from, what they deal with, and ultimately you got a team that loves each other, and I think we’re missing some of that in our country,” Lanning said.
Lanning has been outspoken about gun violence before, and he made his voice heard again on Saturday, condemning the “evil” that led to Kirk’s assassination as well as children’s shooting deaths.
“I recently found out Charlie Kirk was an Oregon fan, right? I didn’t know that. I hurt for his wife, Erika, and their kids. That sort of evil should never exist in our country, and that’s what it is — evil. I remember having to explain that to my family, right? I remember sitting down my kids and explaining what happened, and they’re talking about people talking about it at school. And it’s just sad, right?” Lanning said.
“But it’s just as sad — every day it seems like we deal with some sort of violence that’s going on in our country, whether it’s school kids in Colorado or kids in Minnesota at churches. I mean, life matters, and I think we’ve lost sight of that. But I just wish the world could learn a little bit of something from our locker room, because we got a bunch of people with differences, and what you got in there is a bunch people there.”
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Lanning also had a powerful message to those who disagreed with him on political and social issues.
“Just know this — I love you. I absolutely love you, right? And life matters. And there’s no way that Charlie should experience, that his family should experience, there’s no way that that evil should exist in this world.”
Lanning then called for gun reform for “sick people” and more protection for children at schools.
“And we have to continue to identify and point it out and make sure that it’s absolutely evil. There’s no reason in the world that our kids, that we should be worried about sending our kids to school. It’s our most valuable commodity in the world. They should be protected. And the reality is, there’s just not a lot of common sense on both sides.
“Common sense says, ‘Oh, it’s mental health, right?’ Common sense says, ‘Oh, it’s guns.’ You know what? It’s both. Let’s have some common sense. Our kids should be the most protected thing in the world, right? They should have armed guards at every school, because there’s sick people, there’s sick people in this world, right? And on top of that, sick people need help, and it should be really hard for a sick person to have a gun.”
A suspect, Tyler Robinson, is in custody following Kirk’s assassination.
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