NFL players and guns often go together
By KENT BABBThe Kansas City Star
December 06, 2008 - 10:15 p.m.
Quinn Gray likes power in his pocket when the news is grim, and safety to this 29-year-old is one bullet away.
Gray, the Chiefs’ backup quarterback, identifies himself as a “gun guy.” He has collected guns for a long time, and three years ago he took a test in Florida that allows him, while he’s in his home state, to carry his loaded Glock .45 in his glove compartment, his .357 Magnum in his duffel bag, his .380-caliber pistol in his pocket.
“Just in case,” he says, “I feel threatened in any way.”
Gray is an NFL player, and he says that makes him a target for criminals. He says he needs those guns to protect himself. He also keeps a semi-automatic assault rifle and a 12-gauge shotgun with a pistol grip locked in a safe at his home.
Just in case.
Gray has never been attacked or robbed. He hasn’t been held at gunpoint or had someone break into his homes in Grandview or Fort Lauderdale, Fla. But he has heard enough stories of NFL players who have: Sean Taylor, Richard Collier, Steve Smith and a dozen others.
Gray is one of many players who feels threatened enough that he carries one or more guns, a practice that had a harsh spotlight shined on it last week after New York Giants wide receiver Plaxico Burress shot himself in the thigh while at a Manhattan nightclub.
The Chiefs, and other NFL teams, warn players that safety is not automatic if they carry guns. Kansas City is the league’s youngest team, and officials have a difficult task: reminding players that guns are frowned upon but not prohibited, and trying to convince a young, impressionable group that weapons can complicate tough situations as much as they help them.
“If you decide to make that part of your costume,” says Lamonte Winston, the Chiefs’ player development director, “know what you’re doing because the consequences are steep.”
Gray says hundreds of NFL players carry guns. Some experts estimate that as many as 75 percent of players are armed. Not all of those players are as careful as Gray says he is. He says he has educated himself on gun safety and keeps his firearms locked when he’s not using them. Even when they’re in his gun safe, Gray says he feels safer with his weapons within reach.
He knew some of those players who were attacked; he’s played with men who have been robbed and had nothing to protect themselves with but luck. Gray says he’ll never have that problem.
“It’s just good to have,” he says.
• • •
They piled into a meeting room Wednesday morning, groggy but attentive, and Chiefs coach Herm Edwards did something unusual.
Before Chiefs players began the week’s first team meeting, Edwards slid a typed news story onto a projector. It was an article outlining the latest developments in Burress’ case, five days after he’d shot himself by accident.
The man who caught the winning touchdown pass in last year’s Super Bowl made a mistake, and Edwards wanted to share it. Burress had brought an unregistered handgun into a bar, and he somehow pulled the trigger and discharged a .40-caliber round into his thigh. The Giants suspended Burress for the rest of the season, and the incident could put Burress’ future in jeopardy. It was the latest bout of violence involving an NFL player, this one a rare episode of the player inflicting injury on himself.
Edwards directed the red beam of his laser pointer toward the time printed in the article, pointing out that the incident took place around 2 a.m.
“Nothing good happens after midnight,” Edwards said that morning in the meeting room. “Life is not a dress rehearsal.”
That meeting began an educational blitz designed to impart wisdom on a group of young players from different, and sometimes rocky, backgrounds — some of them with guns somehow shaping their adulthoods.
Rookie wide receiver Will Franklin’s best friend was shot to death while Franklin was a player at Missouri. Another rookie, left tackle Branden Albert, witnessed a fight years ago that ended with a man being fatally shot as Albert watched from his car.
“Sometimes you don’t look for trouble,” says Albert, who admits he’s scared of guns and doesn’t own one. “Sometimes trouble looks for you.”
The point of that meeting was to remind players that they are unusual, even as much as they try to blend in. Their bodies often are larger than average, and their billfolds attract at least as much attention as their broad shoulders. Edwards told the players they should avoid certain places and situations — particularly those that mix alcohol with firearms, a combination of elements Edwards says players should avoid.
Some agree with the coach’s message.
“I can’t imagine any place I would need to go where I would need to carry a gun on my person,” says center Rudy Niswanger, who owns two guns. “But that’s just me.”
Veteran cornerback Patrick Surtain says he doesn’t put himself in dangerous situations; sometimes, he says, his status puts him at risk.
When he played in Miami, nights at South Beach weren’t uncommon. After one late night, Surtain started back toward his home in a tony neighborhood in Fort Lauderdale, noticing a few miles from the bar that a car had been following him. He pulled into his gated community, watching as the car turned off, but alerting the neighborhood security guard anyway — most of all wishing he hadn’t felt so helpless during that late-night drive home.
Surtain applied for a concealed weapons permit soon after that night, and he now keeps two guns at his home in Kansas City and another two pistols at his house in south Florida. He estimates that 10 percent of all NFL players carry guns but admits it could be a far higher percentage. Kansas and Missouri are right-to-carry states, meaning residents can carry concealed weapons with a permit. Surtain says it doesn’t matter where NFL players live; he says they face an unusual risk.
“No matter how you look at it,” Surtain says, “no matter how nice your neighborhood is, people are watching you. We’re targets. Things happen, man. It can happen in the suburbs; it can happen anywhere, not just the hood.”
Edwards stood there with that laser pointer and went through the situations the young players might find themselves in. He told them he didn’t believe guns solved problems — Edwards says he’s never owned nor felt compelled to possess a gun — but admitted he couldn’t stop players from carrying a weapon.
He did remind them of the NFL rules, though, the ones that state players aren’t allowed to carry guns onto property governed by the league, whether that’s locker rooms or team parking lots — although the team does not search cars without probable cause.
Edwards moved on in that meeting to discuss last week’s victory against Oakland, leaving the gun talk behind. Before he did, he made a final point, one Edwards said he hoped this young team paid attention to.
“If someone wants to take something from you, it’s real simple,” Edwards says. “You can get a new watch. You can get a new car. You can’t get a new you.”
• • •
The quiet kid sits at his locker at Chiefs headquarters and whispers the story of the night that gave him every reason to arm himself.
Maurice Leggett is a 22-year-old rookie cornerback, and he’s recounting how vulnerable he felt after learning that a gunman had approached Jacksonville defensive tackle Richard Collier’s car three months ago. Leggett arrived at tiny Valdosta State a semester after Collier, but they worked out together and became friends; their girlfriends were in the same sorority and remain close.
Collier was shot 14 times after leaving a nightclub in the early-morning hours of Sept. 2. One of the bullets hit his spinal cord, and Collier is paralyzed from the waist down. His left leg has since been amputated.
“I didn’t know it would hit that close to home,” Leggett says, barely above a whisper. “I never thought that. I just came to the realization that it can end at any minute.”
Leggett says he hasn’t faced aggression or provocation since making the Chiefs roster out of a tryout last spring. His 5-foot-11 frame helps him blend into crowds, but he also avoids certain places at certain times. Some experts think Leggett is being smart by staying away from places that might attract danger. Others think he’d be safer anywhere if he’d carry a gun.
“The safest course of action is for someone to have a gun,” says John Lott, a scientist who supports gun ownership.
“Paranoia,” sports psychologist John Murray says. “That’s all it is.”
Leggett says he prefers to make his own decisions. He is surrounded by teammates who insist all players are safer with a weapon. He says he’s heard all of it, but he says the attack on his friend was all the evidence he needed — to keep himself away from guns.
“All it does is complicate things,” he says.
Leggett says he doesn’t go out often and doesn’t roam Kansas City during late hours. He has a family, and he says bringing a gun into his home or car would introduce an element he’s just not ready to handle. Leggett says he doesn’t know enough about guns to feel comfortable holding or shooting one, but he understands that many of his teammates do.
He says that’s fine. But he says that part of the NFL culture is not for him. Probably won’t ever be, either.
“You think about threats,” Leggett says. “You think about it every night. But why carry a gun if you’re not going to use it? Even after all that happened, I just can’t see myself ever doing that. I just keep to myself. I think that makes me safe enough.”
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I think the NBA has a rule prohibiting players from carrying, even if they have a permit.
