San Antonio Spurs coach Gregg Popovich calls out lawmakers after Nashville school shooting

San Antonio Spurs coach Gregg Popovich has never been afraid of sharing an opinion.

On Sunday, Popovich criticized lawmakers amid a call for gun control.

Nearing the end of his pregame press conference on Sunday, Popovich asked if any reporters carried a firearm into the arena.

“I just wondered because we have a governor (Greg Abbott) and lieutenant governor (Dan Patrick) and an attorney general (Ken Paxton) that made it easier to have more guns," Popovich said, talking about elected officials in Texas. "That was a response to our kids getting murdered. I just thought that was a little bit strange decision. It's just me, though."

According to ESPN, Popovich talked about the topic for nine minutes. He called out lawmakers in Texas and Tennessee, following the recent school shooting in Nashville where six were killed — three adults and three children.

“What would it take to budge those people? What would it take?" Popovich said. "We've got two young Black guys in Tennessee who just got railroaded by a bunch of people that I would bet down deep in their soul want to go back to Jim Crow. And what they just did is a good start. It's beyond comprehension. And what were they guilty of? They actually protested?

"Those legislators called those kids that were protesting insurrectionists. That's hard to believe in America. But America ain't what we thought America was. It's changed. So if those kids are insurrectionists, what were the people on January 6th? What do we call them? What's the next step or word or level of violence after insurrectionists? I don't know what it is. What will it take?”

He called out U.S. Sen. Marsha Blackburn of Tennessee. He read a statement from Blackburn on the day of the Nashville shooting.

"'My office is in contact with federal, state and local officials and we stand ready to assist,''' Popovich read.

"In what? They're dead," Popovich said. "What are you going to assist with? Cleaning up their brains off the wall, wiping the blood off the schoolroom floor? What are you going to assist with?”

Tennessee Gov. Bill Lee was next on Popovich’s list.

"And then there's Governor Lee,” he said. “I'm sorry to go on and on, but Bill Lee. 'I'm closely monitoring the tragic situation. Please join us in prayer.' What are you monitoring? They're dead! Children, they're dead. When I pick up my 6- and 11-year-old grandkids at school, when I'm here at home, on the way it goes through my mind that I hope they're going to be OK.”

Popovich bypassed the gun manufacturers and lobbies and focused on lawmakers.

"You know, the greed of the gun lobbies and the manufacturers is obvious," Popovich said. "We all know that. Money talks, but the cowardice and the selfishness of the legislators who are so scared to death of being primaried and losing their job, losing their power, losing their salary.

“You’d like to get each one of them in a room just one by one and say, 'What's more important to you? If you could vote for some good gun safety laws that most of the public agrees to, would you do that if it saved one kid? Or is your job and your money so important to you that you would say, screw the kid? What's in your mind?’"

This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Gregg Popovich calls out lawmakers after Nashville school shooting