‘Makes me sick!’ Former USC coach Steve Spurrier sounds off on AR-15 after school shooting
In response to last week’s fatal shooting at a high school in Georgia, former University of South Carolina head coach Steve Spurrier has said the country “messed up” by allowing “sick people” like the shooter to purchase an AR-15 rifle.
“Why in the world in America are you eligible to walk into a gun store and buy an AR-15 rifle?” Spurrier said on the “Inside the Huddle” show on the Gainesville, Florida, ESPN affiliate WRUF. “They should have a sign, ‘If you need a gun for mass school shootings, here’s your AR-15. We’ll give you a discount.’ Why don’t they just put that sign up there?”
Spurrier prefaced his remarks by noting a football coach, Richard Aspinwall, was among four killed Sept. 4 at Apalachee High School in Winder, Georgia. The 39-year-old Aspinwall was Apalachee’s defensive coordinator at the time of his death.
“I want to say something about another coach, as a coach, a former coach myself,” Spurrier said before noting Aspinwall’s death in the latest mass shooting, according to AL.com. “And everybody says hearts and prayers go out. … (But) that’s the only thing they’re used for. You don’t need them for self-defense. And yet we sit here and say blah, blah, blah.”
Spurrier has long been willing to voice strong opinions dating back to his time as Florida’s football coach, when he led the Gators to a national championship in 1996. Spurrier was the Gamecocks’ head coach for a decade between 2005 and 2015, and took South Carolina to nine bowl games and an SEC championship game in one of the most successful periods in the program’s history.
“We’re messed up in America to allow sick people to have these guns,” the coach said, according to the website Mediaite. “And it ain’t going to stop. It ain’t going to stop until they get all these guns out of the way. You can carry your six shooter, protect yourself. We’re all for; but these AR-15s are for mass shootings in the schools and we sit here and allow it to happen in America. Makes me sick.”
“All right, I’ve said my piece,” Spurrier concluded.
This story was originally published September 11, 2024 at 12:15 PM.
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