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#Oregon coach Dan Lanning closes postgame with extended speech on gun violence in America after Maine shooting [Video]

The Oregon football team got its biggest win of the season Saturday with a dominant 35-6 win over Utah, but head coach Dan Lanning used the end of his postgame news conference to look beyond football.

Lanning, in his second season with the Ducks, spent nearly two minutes discussing gun violence in America in the wake of the mass shooting that killed 18 people in Lewiston, Maine, on Wednesday, joining the legions of people wrestling with how to limit the country’s mass shootings.

Lanning went out of his way to say he didn’t want to make a political statement, instead describing gun violence as a multi-faceted issue and questioning why action can’t be taken on gun control, mental health outreach and more. He repeatedly mentioned that Oregon players cared about the topic as well.

His full speech:

“I want to take a quick second to say something that’s important to our players. I wouldn’t normally hop into this, but I wanted everybody to understand this is not political in any way. As a dad of three kids, a 13-year-old, a 12-year-old, a 10-year-old, I see at times what’s going on in this country and I have a platform where it’s worth saying something about. What I’ll say right now is where is the respect for human life? I think there is a lot more than this, people can say ‘Let’s make it about guns,’ [or] ‘Let’s make it about mental health.’ Why can’t we use a common sense approach and make it about everything?

“This isn’t me taking a stance, but our players told me this spring that gun violence was really important to them. I just want to ask everybody what are we doing about it? We can continue to sit around and expect different results. Don’t think I’m sitting here talking about gun control. Don’t think I’m not talking about mental health. I’m talking about all of it. We’ve got a lot of smart people in this country, how about we do something to fix it? I know that means a lot to our players, it certainly means something to me when I send my three kids to school and expect to see them come home.

“I think enough’s enough and at some point, we’ve got to look at ourselves, take a hard look in the mirror and figure out where we can support the people that are having problems with mental health in this country. Where can we support making sure people who shouldn’t have weapons don’t have weapons and support our law enforcement to where they can help handle situations when situations arise. Again, I’m not trying to be political, but I do care about human life and I do care about human decency, and I hope at some point we can take a stand and do something about it.”

The manhunt for the Lewiston shooter, identified as Army reservist Robert Card, ended Friday when Card was found dead. He was reported to have had significant mental health issues, made threats against a military facility and been committed to a facility this past summer.

Maine has a “yellow flag” law that allows police to “temporarily remove guns from people deemed to pose a threat to themselves or others,” but Card still procured what local authorities described as a semi-automatic assault rifle.

Lanning isn’t alone in the sports world in addressing the Lewiston shooting. Several figures, including New England Patriots head coach Bill Belichick, have sent their condolences, while the Boston Celtics warmed up in shirts dedicated to Maine on Friday.

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