Javon Belcher

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I don't know how much news this is making outside of the US, but the short story is Javon Belcher, an NFL player for the Kansas City Chiefs, was involved in a murder-suicide on Saturday, fatally shooting his girlfriend, and mother of his 3-month old daughter, before driving to the Chiefs practice facility and shooting himself in the head in front of his coach and general manager. In their defense, the coach and general manger were trying to get him to put the gun down.

If you want more details, you can read the full story with many more details here.

I have a few problems with this story. First, most of the media is portraying this as some great tragedy - and certainly the death of these two people is tragic. However, it does seem to be missing a pretty big point. Belcher, while obviously mentally disturbed, is a muderer, and he orphaned his 3-month old daughter to boot. Yes, he was in a rocky relationship with his girlfriend, yes, they stated he had some financial problems (despite slated to earn about $1.9M this year playing for the Chiefs), and yes, the Chiefs organization was aware of all this, and even provided counseling for the two of them. But that isn't at all a unique scenario, and most people don't respond by shooting the other person and then shooting themself. (Which is why I'm guessing that there was something mentally not right with Belcher - there has been no report of him ever suffering from a mental illness, but normal people don't do this kind of thing.

From my standpoint, I feel sorry the most for the baby, who will never know her parents. I also feel sorry for his girlfriend. Even if she was a real ummm... witch.... to live with, she didn't deserve to be shoot 9 times on Saturday morning. (That also blows my mind - 9 times? You emptied the cartidge on her?) But I'm finding a hard time feeling much sympathy for Belcher. Lots of people suffer from mental illness, and unsurprisingly, lots of people with mental illness have relationship problems. Most of the time, these people do NOT commit suicide, and hardly any of them murder their girlfriend and orphan their daughter first.

There is one ancillary subject I'd like to bring up. On Sunday Night Football, Bob Costas has some strong political opinions. Setting aside for a moment that a national football broadcast was probably not the best place to use as a soundboard for your opinion, he called for more gun control laws, and said that if Belcher didn't have a gun, he and his girlfriend wouldn't be dead. I don't agree with that statement. I believe if someone has decided to end their life, there are lots of ways they can go about doing it without the use a gun. I will concede the possibility that his girlfriend may still be alive if he didn't have a gun, but from everything I have seen about this, if someone is committed to killing themselves, there's very little you can do to stop it.

 

Thank you! Belcher's death is not tragic; the death of the person he murdered is, as is the abandonment of their daughter.

If he had simply sucked it up and stuck to killing only himself, I would feel sorry for him while still not really thinking it a tragedy. A person dying who wants to die is sad, but a person dying who wants to live is tragic.

 

I'd also like to add that I really dislike the coverage of this. It's almost like they are saying his girlfriend was Victim #1, and Belcher was Victim #2.

Oh, and the Chiefs won their game on Sunday, and many said they played inspired because of this. Really? You need a teammate to commit a murder-suicide to inspire you to play well?

 

Bob Costas tried to back-peddle a little bit, by claiming he was trying to speak more about a "gun culture" in the U.S. Even his back-peddling was incoherent. I think it's another example of how newscasters, and especially sports broadcasters, don't become successful in their career field by being educated, thoughtful, or even insightful, but by saying enough to fill airtime at the critical times, by reading what they are told to read in a fairly animated manner, looking fairly good, and avoiding controversy.

There is no rational reason for Costas to argue if Belcher didn't have a gun that Belcher and his girlfriend would still be alive. There is absolutely no evidence for him to make that statement. Belcher could have easily stabbed his girlfiend to death (does Costas somehow know definitively that Belcher didn't have any knives in his kitchen?) or even beaten her to death with any manner of instruments or simply his fists. Or pushed her down the stairs, or poisoned her, or shoved her into oncomming traffic, or held her head under the water in the tub. Could have burned the house down. All sorts of murders are executed in all sorts of way every day. Likewise, Belcher's suicide could have been executed in any manner of ways.

I think there is an argument to be made that if Belcher didn't have a gun, than maybe his girlfriend would have had a "fighting chance" to escape Belcher or do whatever in order to live. Maybe. But of course a lack of a handgun doesn't correlate in any manner towards some sort of mitigation of Belcher's suicide.

Costas' argument was so deeply flawed because it presupposes that the mere presence of a particular weapon motivates humans towards using it to conduct immoral or unethical activity. Clearly that is a false supposition.

 

And yet, Costas is typically all of those things. Everything I have seen from him - not just sporting events but appearances he has made on talk shows, etc, he appears to be a very intelligent person, and I do enjoy a lot of his work. That's what I found the most bizarre about the incident. I thought he was smarter than that.

I agree with you though about his backpedalling and stating that you are talking about the gun culture, and not gun control. The two topics are extremely closely linked.

 

Costas can think and say what he wants obviously, but I mainly take issue with him for using the broadcast as a platform when he's really no more qualified than any of us to hold forth with any authority. There are ... well let's be frank - very few sports journalists who transition successfully into politics or even social commentary, and I don't really think that Costas is one of them, nor that a sports broadcast is the platform to preach from even if he is. ("I tuned in to watch a football game and all I got was Bob Costas' stupid object lesson in morality!" )

He and the rest of the broadcast gang are eminently qualified to tell me what's going on in the game or analyze players' performances or whatever. Preaching about social issues not so much.

It brings to mind the flawed coverage of the New York subway pusher murder guy in an odd and really indirect way ... maybe just because the two things are going on concurrently.

More specifically it's reminiscent of stories like Columbine, where the two sh*tbird murderers were frequently included in the casualty total. I hate when they do that.

[edit - this was composed prior to Aldeth's reply]

 

I would say the entire thing is tragic, do not think you can separate them really. Seeing as Belcher actually died I don't see what is wrong with viewing him as victim number 2 of the entire debacle. Any time someone murders someone I would call it a tragedy for the perpetrator as well, not to feel sorry for him/her but it is tragic when people kill people and in a situation like this when someone totally snaps, does something horrible and then kills themselves I would call all of it tragic.

 

I don't know joa. It's one thing to think it tragic, and quite another to view Belcher as a sympathetic figure, which is how much of the news coverage has painted him these last few days.

As I said before, a lot of people face the exact same problems Belcher had, many far worse - even if he was suffering from a mental illness that was left untreated - there were many positives in his life, including the recent birth of his daughter, and a bright future as a professional athlete. A lot of people in much worse situations than he don't end up committing suicide, and hardly any of them orphan their daughter while doing it.

He was only 25 years old, and was still improving. He salary of nearly $2 million this year was the most he had ever earned, and given the improvement he had shown from his first three years in the league, it seemed likely that his financial situation would only improve going forward. The tragic part would be his mental illness - if in fast he had one - being left untreated. I don't buy into the "he just snapped" argument. There isn't a man alive who hasn't been majorly pissed off at some point with their wife or girlfriend, and the number of people who respond to that by shooting their wife or girlfriend is really small.

It certainly lessens any sympathy you can feel for him at any rate. We obviously don't know all the details, but chances are he wasn't walking around with a gun in his pocket early in the morning. Presumably he had to go get it, possibly load it, and then shoot her. Even if that process only took like 30 seconds, you'd think 30 seconds would be enough time to come to your senses.

 

I'm not a big fan of how professional athletes seem to get points for being what they are. Belcher is a murderer, plain and simple, and I have no patience for murder. I get he was angry at this woman -- no one knows anger at treacherous, lying women more than I do. I have an unbelievable amount of rage in me. But I believe in self control, decency, and the rule of law, not to mention basic morality. Belcher has zero excuse, IMHO.

But because he's a football star, we are supposed to feel sorry for him? Inspired by his ability to manipulate an oblong piece of pigskin? The <snip> with that.

Costas is a fool, and if I were an executive I'd fire him for using company airtime to express a personal opinion. He has a right to his opinion, of course, but when he spouted off his enabling crap (which to me is a roundabout way of saying that Belcher didn't do it, the evil gun did) on company time, he was out of line.