The San Francisco 49ers on Thursday announced they would pledge $500,000 toward an initiative meant to forge a “more understanding and safer America.” While this goal seems laudable at first glance, there is nothing in the initiative that has any chance of actually achieving this goal.
Part of the money is dedicated to attempting to repairing tensions between police and certain communities by … running TV commercials. Echoing this PR-laden, hands-off approach is the initiative’s plan to advocate for—but offer no money to fund—increased resources for police responding to mental health calls.
However, most of the focus is on promoting legislation curtailing the rights of law-abiding Americans. “I’m not anti-Second Amendment—this is something that is common sense,” team CEO Jed York said, plucking phrases directly from the anti-gunners’ playbook. But the legislation in question would ban the use of so-called “armor-piercing ammunition” and suppressors—achieving nothing in the case of the former, as no law enforcement officer has ever been killed by such ammunition, and actively making Americans less safe in the case of the latter by outlawing a device that can prevent hearing loss in hunters and sport shooters.
While this news is sure to anger the many pro-freedom sports fans, this is the team that launched Colin Kaepernick—so we probably shouldn’t be too surprised.
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