Former Phoenix Suns star Steve Nash is angry.
In a letter for the Players' Tribune titled "We Are In This Together" Nash focused on stricter gun control, writing of a need to "meet in the middle" on the issue.
"Innocent people are dying senselessly in a country that has so much to offer the world," Nash wrote. "Parents are losing their kids … kids are losing their parents … people are waking up one morning, expecting a normal day — and then never seeing another."
Nash said when he heard of the Florida high school shooting that left 17 people dead, he couldn't help but "think about it like a dad."
"I’m a dad of four who gets his kids up in the morning, makes them breakfast, drops them off at school, picks them up, and basically runs around like a full-time Lyft driver taking them to their various activities," Nash wrote. "I wave goodbye to my kids so many times, every day, not thinking anything of it."
The NBA great wants to see change and fast. He touched on two changes he hopes we can all agree on that he said could "save lives immediately."
First, he wrote, is the need to enforce and expand background checks. Second, regulations need to be stricter for semiautomatic weapons like the AR-15.
Throughout his piece Nash lays out gun violence statistics. He also touched on the Construction briefly saying it has been "refined and changed" throughout history to "adapt to evolving times."
"So why has the idea that the Constitution is unchangeable been allowed to persist on the gun issue alone?" Nash wrote. "Just think about the types of weapons that the Constitution was talking about — they weren't AR-15s. They were muskets."
Nash said he's not writing to drive us further apart, but to ask how we can come together on the issue. Because, he said, it's about us, and the country and communities we "all live in."
"I know we can find some common ground — and I know that that’s where we’ll have to meet if we want to leave this continuous cycle of violence and death in the past," Nash said.
"Whether you’re a gun owner or not: We are all just trying to protect our families, and we are all just trying to keep our communities safe. We have to do something."
Nash finished his letter echoing its title, "We are in this together."
Click here to read Nash's full letter.