The body of murdered former NFL player Will Smith hasn’t even been buried yet and there are some looking to use his tragic death as a political football. The retired New Orleans Saints star defensive lineman was gunned down in cold blood by a violent thug after a traffic accident late Saturday night. Smith’s death drew an outpouring of condolences and tributes – the Saints flew the flag at half-staff at team headquarters – and an angry response from New Orleans coach Sean Payton who like most gun grabbers is all too quick to blame the Second Amendment instead of the criminals who are responsible for murdering others.

USA Today is reporting that “Sean Payton rails against guns after Will Smith’s death”:

Listen to Sean Payton. Carefully. He’s mad. Sad. Frustrated. Passionate.

“If this opinion in Louisiana is super unpopular,” Payton told USA TODAY Sports in a 33-minute phone conversation on Monday, his first interview since Will Smith’s death, “so be it.”

In the aftermath of the senseless shooting on Saturday night that left former defensive end Smith dead – and Smith’s wife Racquel wounded — amid a beef linked to a traffic accident, the New Orleans Saints coach is pleading for more gun control.

He isn’t merely talking about tighter laws. If Payton had his druthers we’d live in a country without guns.

“Two hundred years from now, they’re going to look back and say, ‘What was that madness about?’ “ Payton said. “The idea that we need them to fend off intruders … people are more apt to draw them (in other situations). That’s some silly stuff we’re hanging onto.”

“I’m not an extreme liberal,” Payton said. “I find myself leaning to the right on some issues. But on this issue, I can’t wrap my brain around it.”

“I hate guns,” he said.

Payton said he is trying to remove his anti-gun bias in considering the matter, but even with that he reaches the same conclusion.

“I’ve heard people argue that everybody needs a gun,” he said. “That’s madness. I know there are many kids who grow up in a hunting environment. I get that. But there are places, like England, where even the cops don’t have guns.”

AND

“It was a large caliber gun. A .45,” Payton said. “It was designed back during World War I. And this thing just stops people. It will kill someone within four or five seconds after they are struck. You bleed out. After the first shot (that struck Smith’s torso), he took three more in his back.”

Payton paused, then continued with his theme.

“We could go online and get 10 of them, and have them shipped to our house tomorrow,” he said. “I don’t believe that was the intention when they allowed for the right for citizens to bear arms.”

Coach Payton’s anti-gun rant will no doubt provide fuel for legions of bleeding heart liberal types who normally wouldn’t give a rat’s ass about pro football but approach gun control as if it was a religion. The Smith shooting however gives the foes of the right to bear arms a high profile case that they can demagogue to death and rest assured that they will do exactly that – especially in an election year. Payton’s rhetoric is ignorant of the fact that the Big Easy is an extremely crime filled and dangerous area, one in which law abiding citizens need to be able to protect themselves from the vermin like Cardell Hayes, the scumbag who pulled the trigger. While it has become a cliché that guns don’t kill people, people kill people is the rock solid truth and the dumbest and worst thing to do would be to prevent the good guys from arming themselves.