It's infuriating enough reading this sort of anti-gun bile in the editorial, opinions and letters to the editor pages of the Globe.
But when it starts spreading to the sports page, it sinks in even more that our enemies really are everywhere.![[angry]](/xen/styles/default/xenforo/smilies.vb/008.gif "Angry [angry]")
http://www.boston.com/sports/basketball/articles/2010/01/10/a_call_for_disarmament/?page=1
But when it starts spreading to the sports page, it sinks in even more that our enemies really are everywhere.
Can we all agree that America would be a better, safer place without guns?
Yeah, I know, from my lips to the ears of Charlton Heston, whose late-in-life command performance was staged at the National Rifle Association’s theater of the absurd, where he delivered such lines as, “I doubt any of you would prefer a rolled-up newspaper as a weapon against a dictator or a criminal intruder.’’
Can we at least agree that the National Basketball Association would be a better place without guns? That’s not to place the Yosemite Sam mentality of a good many players on the league itself, or on the shoulders of commissioner David Stern, but it’s abundantly clear, thanks recently to cartoon character Gilbert Arenas, that it is the North American professional sports league most in need this morning of some good ol’ Transportation Security Administration intervention.
Imagine a TSA sentry set up in front of each of the 30 NBA locker rooms, screening the 20 or so players, coaches, trainers, and ball boys who report to work each night. Based on TSA efficiency, players would have to report at least five hours prior to game time, which would take these Nike-heeled soldiers of fortune, and their firearms of choice, off the street for a minimum of some 400 hours per year.
Arenas, now staring down the barrel of a possible lifetime expulsion from the NBA and forfeiting the bulk of his six-year, $111 million contract, is alleged to have had either three or four firearms on hand at the Verizon Center, home of his Washington Wizards, on Dec. 21.
Some media accounts have it that Arenas, believed to have lost $25,000 to teammate Javaris Crittenton in a card game two days earlier, left the guns and a note for Crittenton, requesting him to “pick the gun you want,’’ presumably as a means to settle the debt. Crittenton let it be known he was, shall we say, concerned, and by last Monday Arenas was telling a grand jury how sorry he was about his firearms faux pas. A New York Post story had it that Arenas and Crittenton went so far as to point the guns at one another, something more for the grand jury to consider.
“I now realize that there is no such thing as joking around when it comes to guns,’’ Arenas said in a written statement Monday, “even if unloaded.’’
The very next day, Arenas was back at work, and his words of contrition proved emptier than Al Capone’s safe when, prior to a game with the 76ers, he fashioned his hands as six-shooters and play-acted a Wild West-like shooting of his fellow Wiz kids. They all found it a hoot, too, which made their untimely imaginary deaths even more bizarre. When did killings become such fodder for pantomime, such animated shtick?
Stern didn’t laugh, which was the first bit of good news for all of us, including Arenas.
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On Wednesday, the Commish suspended the 28-year-old guard, noting that he felt Arenas was not “fit to take to take the court in an NBA game.’’ Now, really, didn’t he prove that when he came to work Dec. 21 and brandished that firearm family pack?
To his credit, Stern has tried for years to rid the NBA workplace of firearms. In October 2006, in what had to be an excruciating decision for someone with Stern’s public relations and marketing sense, he requested that his players leave their guns at home when reporting to the arena. That request received only moderate media attention at the time. Some eight months later, NBA referee Tim Donaghy was hauled in for betting on games, and suddenly the league had a bigger issue, or one at least more sensational and headline-grabbing, on its doorstep.
Why these guys need guns is certainly beyond me. Why so many need so many guns should be beyond us all.
“I have a sense,’’ Lakers coach Phil Jackson told the Associated Press, “that this is an environment that’s come out of a lot of kids’ past. Not only that, they’ve had situations that have happened in their personal lives that makes them feel that it warrants it. But my message is that it attracts violence. There’s no doubt about it, and the violence that happens around guns is death usually.’’
New Jersey Nets guard Devin Harris told reporters last week that he believes 75 percent of NBA players, approximately 270 total, own firearms. If true, that is certainly a well-armed militia. Versus, previously known as the Outdoor Network, could marshal these guys together at the NBA All-Star Game for great tangential programming. The obvious range-side reporter: Tommy “Gun’’ Heinsohn. Oh for the days when such quaint nicknames made us chuckle.
Not long ago, the Pacers’ Stephen Jackson was suspended seven games after he pleaded guilty to criminal recklessness, having discharged a firearm outside an Indianapolis nightclub. Charlotte’s Lonny Baxter, arrested in 2006 for discharging a Glock handgun near the White House, was later sentenced to 60 days in prison for his role in shipping four guns within the US. In 2002, ex-Nets star Jayson Williams accidentally shot his limo driver, and was initially acquitted of manslaughter, then retried and sentenced to three years for aggravated assault.
Let us not forget Delonte West, an ex-Celtic first-rounder, arrested in Maryland this past September, pulled over for speeding on a motorcycle and found to be in possession of two loaded handguns and a loaded shotgun that he had tucked inside a guitar case strapped to his back. Sweet music. Nice look.
Gilbert Arenas needs help. He has a thing for guns, both real and imaginary, and the only thing funny about any of it is that it was the make-believe variety that got him booted out of the league indefinitely. Meanwhile, Stern’s final decision about Arenas’s NBA future will come once an NBA investigation and the US justice system figure out exactly what happened in the Wizards dressing room back in December.
America also needs help. It has a thing for guns, both real and imaginary, and it’s only slightly humorous that some of us cling to an antiquated Second Amendment, penned 219 years ago, to support a deadly and shameful addiction. Whatever guns, legacy, or demons Arenas ultimately carries, right now he is only the latest, best example of a country long on arms and short on brains.
http://www.boston.com/sports/basketball/articles/2010/01/10/a_call_for_disarmament/?page=1
![[thinking]](/xen/styles/default/xenforo/smilies.vb/010.gif "Thinking [thinking]")
