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UF men's basketball coach Todd Golden (left) and football coach Billy Napier (right) speak prior to and during an event for the Fightin' Gators Touchdown Club on May 27, 2022 (Pictures by Cam Parker).
GAINESVILLE, Fla. — Prior to a speaking event with the Fightin’ Gators Touchdown Club on Thursday night, Florida Gators men’s basketball head coach Todd Golden and football head coach Billy Napier gave their perspective as fathers of young children on the recent mass-shooting at an elementary school in Uvalde, Texas.
Tragedy struck on Tuesday, May 24 when an 18-year-old shot and killed 19 children and two teachers at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, which is less than 90 miles from San Antonio.
Napier, 42, and his wife Ali are parents to three young children, 9-year-old daughter Annie, 7-year-old son Sammy Nelson and 5-year-old son Charlie.
“Some of these things, they continue to be issues. You’re talking about two highly debated topics when you talk about mental health and when you talk about gun control,” Napier said. “I think, obviously, right, wrong or indifferent here, you just feel strongly for the people that were affected.”
Golden, 36, and his wife Megan are parents to two young children, son Jacob and daughter Madison.
“It’s very tough, and I do not have the answers. I will not pretend to,” Golden said. “As a parent, it’s concerning because it’s happening far-too often.”
Golden believes that the topic is hard to discuss due to how divisive it is.
“It becomes a really divisive topic. I wish we would have better answers to what has been happening too often,” Golden said.
As far as solutions go, Golden believes that most people want to find solutions rather than make the topic political.
“I think the majority of people in this country are good people and want to work towards a solution as opposed to making it a political situation where we’re talking about guns, or we’re talking about mental health, or we’re talking about all these different things,” Golden said.
Napier said that these tragedies cause people to see other point of views than their own, which he has experienced in his own life.
“What I’ve learned in life is these difficult things that we go through, individually or as a group of people, whether it’s a community, university, a nation or whatever the case may be, these cause dialogue,” Napier said. “These cause conversation. These cause people to see other vantage points.”
“What I would hope here, much like the most difficult things in my life that I have been through, those struggles cause growth,” Napier added. “They cause you to create a different perspective. It causes you to really have integrity, really tell yourself the truth, really look in the mirror and come up with solutions.”
“We need the best and the brightest that we have, from both sides and both vantage points, to come together, find some common ground and come up with some solutions.”
Additionally, Napier pointed out that majority of the mass-shootings in the United States are not reported on a national level.
“A lot of these things don’t get to the surface,” Napier said. “There’s lots of things that happen like this in our world that never make it to the surface. I’m hopeful that we can come up with some really good solutions here.”
In the United States, there have been 231 mass shootings in 2022, according to a report by the Gun Violence Archive. Since the shooting at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, there have been 18 mass shootings in the United States. The GVA defines a mass shooting as having a “minimum of four victims shot, either injured or killed, not including any shooter who may also have been killed or injured in the incident.”