Dan Lanning reacts to Charlie Kirk murder after Oregon's win over Northwestern: 'There's no way that evil should exist'

In the wake of the Charlie Kirk murder this week, multiple college coaches have reached out to express their feelings on the divisive issue. Include Oregon coach Dan Lanning among them after his team’s win over Northwestern on Saturday.

Lanning provided an extensive take on where things stand in the world following the horrific tragedy. To him, the world could learn a thing or two from his football team.

“I think the U.S. could learn a lot from our locker room,” Lanning said, per Matt Fortuna of The Inside Zone. “I think the people in this world can learn a lot from our locker room. You walk in that locker room, you got guys of different races, guys of different backgrounds, different religions, and you got a team that loves each other, like tons of differences, tons of differences — where they come from, what they deal with, and ultimately you have a team that loves each other.

“And I think we’re missing some of that in our country. I recently found out Charlie Kirk was a Oregon fan, right? I didn’t know that. I hurt for his wife, Erika, and their kids. Like that sort of evil should never exist in our country. And that’s what it is, it’s evil.”

Dan Lanning noted that he had to spend time sitting down with his family and explaining what happened. He referenced other shootings, at a school in Colorado and at a church in Minnesota, as examples of what the world is dealing with now.

In speaking on Charlie Kirk, Lanning knows he’s opening himself up to criticism. He didn’t seem bothered by that.

“And there’s some people that’ll be disappointed about how much I said about this, right?” Lanning said. “And there’ll be some people that are disappointed I didn’t say enough, right? And I really don’t care.

“What I do care about is if you disagree with me, if you hate me, if you don’t like me, just know this, I love you. I absolutely love you, right? And life matters. And there’s no way that Charlie should experience that, his family should experience that, there’s no way that that evil should exist in this world, and we have to continue to identify and point it out and make sure that it’s absolutely evil.”

From there, Dan Lanning pivoted toward the importance of protecting children in schools. He opened up:

“There’s no reason in the world we should be worried about sending our kids to school,” Lanning said. “It’s our most valuable commodity in the world. They should be protected. And the reality is, there’s just not a lot of common sense on both sides.

“Like common sense says, Oh, it’s mental health, right? Common sense (says) Oh, it’s guns. You know what? It’s both. Let’s have some common sense. Our kids should be the most protected thing in the world, right? They should have armed guards at every school, because there’s sick people. There’s sick people in this world, right? And on top of that, sick people need help, and it should be really hard for a sick person to have a gun. Should be really hard, right? And if people can’t see that from both sides, how disappointing is that?”

Dan Lanning was upset that “internet warriors” rushed to spread the video of Charlie Kirk’s murder across the web. He hoped his children, and Kirk’s children, never have to see that video.

To sum it up, Lanning noted his disagreements with some of Kirk’s philosophy. But he wanted to impress upon everyone the urgency of approaching things with love. That’s something he discussed with his team recently at a Bible study talking about everything.

“At some point we need to go look at sports, because what our football team has is it has people on both sides of the fence, right, and there’s fans that love our team that have a lot of different opinions,” Dan Lanning said. “And the truth is, there’s a lot of things Charlie said that I did not agree with at all. There’s a lot of things he said that I did agree with.

“But what’s disappointing is I can respect those differences. And somebody else couldn’t, and they thought that they deserved to be God in that moment, and they didn’t. And nobody should have to experience that. So yeah, I’ve got a lot of disappointment.”