Four people lost their lives this week in a Manhattan office building, gunned down in a place I know well, by a man with a rifle and a three-page note blaming football and the brain diseases it allegedly left him with. One of the victims was an off-duty NYPD officer. Another was a Blackstone executive. All were innocent. All were just trying to make it home, and thanks to 27-year-old Shane Tamura, they never did.

I’ve walked through those NFL offices. I’ve sat in those rooms. I have friends who still work there, people I care about deeply. And on the other side, I’ve known people and lost people who have suffered with chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE), not always to death, but to the isolation that comes with it and the slow unraveling of mind, body, and spirit. And I’ve lost people to gun violence. Too many of us have.

So when I read that the shooter claimed to suffer from CTE, that he was trying to reach the NFL offices and take revenge for what he believed the game did to his brain, though he never played on the professional level, I felt more than shock. I felt grief. I felt rage. I felt an urgency I can’t ignore, and neither should you.

This tragedy isn’t just a story about one man. Even in the gunman’s three-page note found is his wallet, he referenced Terry Long, a former NFL player who died by suicide and was later confirmed to have CTE, it’s a warning about everything we still refuse to confront: how we treat brain trauma, how we ignore mental illness, how we arm the broken, and how silence, in football, politics, and culture, continues to kill.

I know what it feels like to weaponize your own body.

I played Division I football at Purdue and was later drafted to the Dallas Cowboys. I went on to play and start for the Tampa Bay Buccaneers and the Buffalo Bills. I’ve lined up across Hall of Famers, driven my shoulder into men twice my size at ungodly speeds, and felt my own skull rattling in my helmet tackles after tackle and hit after hit. In football, that wasn’t cause for concern. That was cause for celebration. I often remember teammates from as young as high school to 12-year vets in the NFL often hiding their concussion symptoms to not lose time on the field, and too often, coaches and trainers encouraged, or at the very least, turned a blind eye to these circumstances. That’s not to say that for every indifferent coach or trainer, there weren’t a host of more diligent and careful ones to check in with them, but still, athletes slip through the cracks more often than not.

We were conditioned to treat pain like performance fuel. If you could keep playing, you did. You’d tape it, ice it, pop a pill, and keep quiet. But there is no quick fix for the brain. We called it toughness. We called it loyalty. We called it team culture. But let’s be honest, it was silent, slow bleeding. And for some of us, it never stopped.

I recall playing for the Buccaneers as a starter back in 2017, dislocating my shoulder, tearing my labrum and breaking part of my clavicle, only to take two weeks off, medicate, ice and rehabilitate, so that I could play the rest of the season, missing only one game. Each week, while my teammates were practicing for our next opponent and getting better at their craft, I was rehabbing my shoulder enough to be able to raise my arm on its own – never above my head, though – and play again that week, repeating my own self-torture. And I was thanked for it every week until it became expected of me by everyone in the organization. I was later cut in 2018 for that same injury, which had gotten substantially worse through playing.

View image in fullscreen At least six people were shot Monday and a police officer was killed when a suspected gunman unleashed gunfire inside a midtown Manhattan office building that houses the Blackstone investment firm and the headquarters of the NFL. Photograph: John Angelillo/UPI/Shutterstock

CTE isn’t something you talk about in the locker room. It’s something you whisper about years later when a former teammate loses his marriage, disappears into depression, or dies by suicide, which I have personal accounts of. It’s something you fear will show up in your own life like a ghost or the boogeyman, in a burst of rage you can’t explain, in the way your memory blurs, in the quiet moment you wonder if your mind is slipping away.

The man who opened fire in Manhattan didn’t play in the NFL. He played high school football over a decade ago. But the way he described his suffering in his final note, the way he named CTE, and the league, and begged for his brain to be studied: that language, that desperation, it’s familiar. I’ve heard it. I’ve lived adjacent to it. Some of my friends and former teammates’ lives have been ruined.

None of these are excuses for what he did. Let me be absolutely clear: the victims of this attack did not deserve what happened to them. Their families, their communities, and our country are left mourning yet another senseless act of violence. But if we don’t look at what led him there, the culture of silence around brain trauma, the lack of access to mental healthcare, the glorification of pain and masculinity in football, then we’re choosing ignorance. And ignorance has never saved a single life.

For all its faults, the NFL at least has the awareness to ban finger guns and any gestures resembling violence from celebrations, yet our country remains hell-bent on not just refusing to ban real guns but actively loosening gun laws under the current administration.

This wasn’t just about CTE. It was also about access. Shane Tamura drove across the country with a file in his car and pain in his chest. He crossed state lines, walked into a corporate building in Manhattan, and took four lives before taking his own. That kind of devastation doesn’t happen without a weapon in hand, and in this country, that weapon is far too easy to get.

I’ve lost people to gun violence. People who looked like me. People whom I called uncle, brother, and friend. I could have been lost to the same fate, but I was lucky enough to have sports to escape into. Football, manhood and masculinity teach men to bottle up what hurts, and then America hands them a gun when they finally explode. There are more regulations on touchdown celebrations and social media content than on who gets to buy an AR-15.

Grief and condolences are not enough. Not this time. Not anymore.

The NFL has taken steps, but it’s time to double down at all levels. Mental performance and mental wellness can no longer be an afterthought in a sport built around pain. From the first padded practice in youth football to the final snap of a pro career, we need to talk openly about trauma, identity, support and care, as well as regular mental performance screenings. Not just for stars. For everyone.

We also need to take along hard look at the laws that let people like Tamura move through this country with a weapon of war and no safety net. If CTE was the fuel, access to that rifle was the match. How many more lives have to be lost before our lawmakers act? Before mental health and gun access are treated as connected crises, not isolated talking points?

I’m speaking up because silence has already cost us too much. I was lucky. I got out with my body and my voice. But I know players who didn’t. I know communities that didn’t.

So remember the names of the victims. Officer Didarul Islam. Wesley LePatner. Aland Etienne. And one more soul whose name we will learn too late. Don’t reduce them to headlines. Don’t let the systems that failed them off the hook. And please, don’t look away.