As the NFL wrestles with the murder-suicide involving the Kansas City Chiefs' Jovan Belcher, an informal new survey claims that gun ownership in the NFL vastly outnumbers that in the general population — if the estimations of players are correct. David Leon Moore has a report out from USA Today today that claims while there aren't any hard statistics on gun ownership in the NFL, a number of players told the paper that around three-quarters of the players owned guns. Moore compares that to statistics from the National Rifle Association, which show that only 40 to 45 percent of households do. Moore takes care to note that some gun owners in the NFL attribute their possession to their interest in hunting, but that said, Moore adds that many players said that players routinely cite the death of Sean Taylor of the Washington Redskins—who was killed in a home invasion—as one of the reasons protection is necessary.

The day following Belcher's death, and his murder of his girlfriend Kassandra Perkins, Bob Costas ignited controversy by saying that if Belcher never owned a gun none of this would have happened.

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Esther Zuckerman