GUN VIOLENCE AND CTE: FOOTBALL’S TWIN TRAGEDIES

Late July is usually a time of great optimism for the NFL. Training camps begin, rookies prepare to make their mark, and fans count down to kickoff.

But this year, the excite­ment has been eclipsed by tragedy. On Mon­day, July 28, a gun­man opened fire at the New York City build­ing that hous­es the NFL’s offices, killing four peo­ple and him­self. It was the city’s dead­liest shoot­ing in 24 years — and a stark reminder that no insti­tu­tion, not even the country’s most pow­er­ful sports league, is immune to America’s gun vio­lence cri­sis.

The sus­pect, Shane Devon Tamu­ra, 27, left behind a sui­cide note ref­er­enc­ing griev­ances about chron­ic trau­mat­ic encephalopa­thy (CTE), the degen­er­a­tive brain dis­ease linked to repeat­ed head trau­ma. The appar­ent sui­cide note read, “Study my brain. I’m sor­ry.” A for­mer high school foot­ball play­er with a doc­u­ment­ed his­to­ry of men­tal health strug­gles, Tamu­ra request­ed that his brain be stud­ied after death — and shot him­self in the chest. This echoes pre­vi­ous cas­es where ath­letes with CTE took their own lives in the same man­ner and left a sim­i­lar mes­sage.

The NFL acknowl­edged the link between CTE and foot­ball in 2016, years after fierce pub­lic and legal pres­sure. Since then, the league has intro­duced new safe­ty pro­to­cols and fund­ed research into the dis­ease. Con­cus­sions are down, and play­ers are more will­ing to report symp­toms. But no rule change, hel­met inno­va­tion, or law­suit set­tle­ment can undo the irre­versible harm already caused.

This week’s events expose two crises at once: a men­tal health and pub­lic safe­ty emer­gency caused by easy access to guns — and a long-run­ning reck­on­ing with the price foot­ball play­ers pay with their bod­ies and minds. There is no sin­gle sta­di­um where this sto­ry unfolds. It is a league-wide issue. Just like gun vio­lence in the U.S., it remains a nation­al prob­lem with no solu­tion in sight.