The Philadelphia Eagles aren’t exactly a great team this year, but I suspect many of you wouldn’t know because the politicization of the NFL a few years ago ran you off from watching.
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I don’t blame you. I haven’t exactly watched much football myself lately.
The thing is, those were mostly players acting independently. While I don’t care to have their politics foisted in my face, they’re individuals who have a right to speak freely. Where they lost me was the league basically just bending the knee and sharing those political positions.
But at least everyone learned their lesson, right?
Well, no, and that brings me back to Philadelphia. It seems that rather than addressing their 2-2 record, they’re focused on other things.
At Lincoln Financial Field Monday morning, an assemblage of Philadelphia residents and politicians posed an unusual question: How can we be more like Boston?
The query had nothing to do with football but instead with homicide prevention: The Eagles hosted the Safer America Summit, which featured elected officials and White House appointees alongside violence prevention leaders, speaking on the city’s recent violent crime reduction and what’s needed to improve public safety.
Yes, let’s have the football team full of concussion cases tell us how to deal with violent crime.
OK, so it’s not the team telling anyone anything. It’s just them hosting a bunch of people who will tell us what we all should need to do.
But is it a bad thing? Well, there’s an awful lot here that doesn’t suck.
Davis, who noted that Philadelphia has experienced a year-to-date 40% drop in homicides compared to 2023, said public investment from the commonwealth will go a long way in developing that comprehensive, strategic approach. He added that this year’s state budget includes $100 million for school safety and mental health grants and a $5 million increase for nonprofit security grants for places of worship and other community centers.
“Let’s be clear, there are still far too many incidents involving guns, but the trends show that the commonwealth’s comprehensive approach and investments in community-based programs are working,” Davis said. “To use a football metaphor, we’re in the red zone. Now is not the time to slow down.”
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No mention of gun control. Maybe this won’t completely blow goats.
And let’s be clear, there’s more talk about things in investment and other non-gun control interventions in the story.
Pointing toward Boston’s significant drop in homicides – an 82% year-to-date decline in the first quarter of 2024 and a 78% decline through the first half of the year – Rob Wilcox, deputy director of the White House Office of Gun Violence Prevention, said collaboration between local and federal partners can impact violence prevention immensely.
“That’s the world we’re fighting for,” Wilcox said. “I can tell you, the president and vice president are committed to doubling down and not abandoning” the issue.
Wilcox and Gun Violence Prevention Office Co-Director Greg Jackson spoke on federal efforts to look at gun violence through the lens of investment and accountability, and about tackling both public health and public safety concerns.
Now, the president and vice president are doubling down on gun control, but there was a lack of rhetoric about it in many ways. As we’ve seen in a number of cities, there’s an approach that seems to work that doesn’t involve trampling on people’s right to keep and bear arms. That seems to be a lot of what’s being reported as topics of discussion here.
So maybe the Eagles organization was actually smart enough to keep the gun control rhetoric out?
Well, no, they were.
First, we have this tidbit:
“We’re going to have zero tolerance for gun dealers that will break the law,” Wilcox said, referring to efforts to thwart the proliferation of gun trafficking and ghost-gun sales. “That’s what we’re talking about – investing in people and in places where the violence is happening, and getting at the access to guns.”
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Now, we know that gun dealers aren’t breaking the law. Not the licensed ones, anyway. They might make the occasional clerical error and are being hammered for it by the ATF, but they’re not selling machine guns out of the back room.
But maybe it’s wrong to blame the Eagles for this. After all, this is the deputy director of the Office of Gun Violence Prevention, a political operative working for an anti-gun presidential administration.
Could it be possible that the Philadelphia Eagles weren’t actually intending to make a political statement in all of this?
Well…
The event, executed in partnership with Everytown for Gun Safety, CeaseFirePA Education Fund, Moms Demand Action and NextGen America, showcased grassroots organizations combating violence in the city and featured remarks from U.S. Reps. Mary Gay Scanlon and Madeleine Dean, among other community leaders.
So they partnered with anti-gun groups, invited the anti-gun White House to send officials, and then let them run loose.
Look, I’m down with some of the intervention strategies. The carrot-and-stick approach makes a lot of sense to me. Yet the Eagles are getting into politics here, which didn’t help the league thrive a few years back and created a lot of bad blood with longtime NFL fans. Doubling down isn’t exactly a winning strategy.
And considering how badly they’ve been playing so far, I get that “winning strategy” isn’t exactly something the Eagles really know all that well this season, but anyone with half a brain could see how this would play.
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While individuals and organizations can say what they want, that doesn’t mean saying what you want is always wise, especially when you need to maintain a customer base. In Philadelphia, that means winning. This is the fan based that booed Santa Claus, after all. If you don’t give them something to cheer for, you’re going to have issues.
So instead of wading into politics, maybe the Eagles should figure out how to actually win more than every other game.
