NFL players: Three out of four own guns
NFL players: Three out of four own guns
Sports
NFL players say they need to own guns for protection, and that hasn’t
changed despite the Jovan Belcher shootings.
11:12AM EST December 7. 2012 – Former NFL
running back Thomas Jones was always around guns, long before he became a
football-carrying member of that unofficial gun club within the National
Football League.
As a kid, he and his buddies fired guns in
the woods in Big Stone Gap, Va. They’d shoot bottles and go hunting.
His dad had guns.
Jones bought his first gun his senior year
at the University of Virginia, and, as a rookie with the Arizona Cardinals a
dozen years ago, he learned quickly that guns were an ingrained part of the NFL
culture.
COMPLETE COVERAGE: Belcher
tragedy
“Most guys when they first come into
the league is when they first start to realize they need protection,”
Jones says. “Because money brings a lot of positive things. But most of
the time, it brings more negative things. People don’t like you for what you
have, for who you are. They don’t like you for what you represent. And people
will go to any length to take what you have or harm you in some way just
because they don’t have what you have. If you don’t have a firearm to protect
you from situations and God forbid something happens to you, you wish you would
have a firearm.”
Jones, who retired last season with the
Kansas City Chiefs after 12 years in the league, was a big brother to young
linebacker Jovan Belcher, who killed his girlfriend, and then himself, last
Saturday.
Yet less than a week removed from the
tragic shootings in Kansas City, NFL players aren’t ready to give any ground on
their belief that carrying guns is not only a right but, in their world, a
necessity. Indeed, numerous players told USA TODAY Sports that in their
estimation, roughly three-quarters of NFL players owned guns, compared with 40%
to 45% of households in the general population, according to the National Rifle
Association.
Though no statistics on NFL gun ownership
exist, and league spokesman Greg Aiello called the percentage estimates “a
wild guess,” even former Indianapolis Colts coach Tony Dungy — widely viewed,
even now, as the moral compass of the NFL — says the number of players who
armed themselves during his tenure “shocked” him.
When Dungy, now an NBC analyst, was
coaching the Colts, he’d always ask at the first team meeting of the year,
“How many of you guys have guns?” Then he would tell the players that
they needed to register their weapons in Indiana.
“I was always shocked at the number
of guys who raised their hand. … That was kind of eye-opening to me. …
(But) it’s just a fact of life. These guys had them. … I think so many of
these young guys have been around guns and have seen guns, and they just feel
that’s part of the landscape for them growing up.”
Like Jones, Belcher owned guns. But
Belcher shot and killed his girlfriend, Kasandra Perkins, the mother of their
three-month-old daughter, and then killed himself with a different gun in front
of his coach and general manager in the parking lot of Kansas City’s Arrowhead
Stadium.
“I’m not … trying to tell guys in
the league they need to purchase firearms,” Jones says. “I’m just
saying to be realistic about our lifestyle.”
Wayne LaPierre, chief executive officer
for the NRA, dismisses any notion that guns are to blame for the tragedy, or
that NFL players are in some way different.
“It’s not a culture of
athletes,” he says. “It is particular behavior by particular
individuals that is no different from the rest of society. We’ve got to stop
making excuses. A murderer is a murderer.”
the Ravens. Ed Zurga, AP
Lessons of Taylor’s death
According to numerous players, it’s not a
secret that the NFL is loaded with firearms. One of the reasons routinely
mentioned is protection, and one of the incidents players often cite is the
death of Sean Taylor, a Washington Redskins safety who was killed in a home
invasion in Miami in 2007. He was 24.
Redskins kick returner Brandon Banks
echoes the mantra that it’s all about protection. The third-year player, who
declined to say whether he owns a gun, says “70% of the NFL players have
guns. Guys get them as soon as they start getting some money, when people start
knowing where you live.”
BENEFITS: Belcher
daughter eligible for at least $1 million
Players in other pro sports leagues agree
with that sentiment, including in the NBA where former Utah Jazz star Karl
Malone, a noted outdoorsman, once put the number of gun owners at “close
to 60%.”
But just as in the greater society beyond
sports, gun ownership isn’t only about protection. For many players and
millions of Americans, guns are simply the equipment for another popular sport:
hunting.
Pittsburgh Steelers quarterback Ben
Roethlisberger calls himself “a huge hunter” and says he owns rifles,
shotguns and handguns. He estimates the percentage of NFL players who own guns
at “over 75%-80%.”
Roethlisberger’s teammate, James Harrison,
is a gun collector and one of the most avid gun advocates in sports. Harrison
reacted to the Belcher story with sadness, but the all-pro linebacker is
unapologetic about his passion for firearms.
“It has nothing to do with the
guns,” Harrison says. “Somebody goes out and kills somebody with a
knife; you going to blame the knife? It’s the person who did it who’s
responsible.”
Redskins wide receiver Josh Morgan no
longer owns a gun. But he says he grew up in Washington, D.C., carrying
unregistered handguns. He gave up guns “after one of my best friends got
killed. That’s when I had to stop. When you see so many people get killed and
you witness so many deaths and go to so many funerals before you leave high
school — and you’ve got 12, 13, 14 friends die from murder or get stabbed — you
get tired of going to funerals. You get tired of crying.”
Morgan says he knows a lot of players who
own guns for protection, and he defends their right, even as he chooses not to
exercise his.
“Some people just have nothing to
lose,” he says. “When you’ve got people like that, you’ve got no
choice but to protect yourself and protect your family.”
MEMORIAL: Kasandra
Perkins remembered for bringing joy
The NFL’s Aiello says the league educates
players about guns and weapons every year. Each team conducts an annual
mandatory preseason meeting with NFL security, club security and local law
enforcement at which gun laws are reviewed and explained. At this meeting, NFL
employees are urged not to own guns, according to Aiello.
Some players have followed that advice.
“I do not own a gun,” says
Redskins tight end Logan Paulsen. “It’s something my wife and I have
discussed. We (the team) are away a lot, so it gives me some peace of mind
knowing she could protect herself (if she did have a gun). It also makes me
nervous because there are a lot of issues with gun safety.”
Paulsen, who puts the league gun ownership
number at “70-80%,” realizes that he’s “definitely in the
minority.”
But Troy Vincent, the NFL vice president
of player engagement who played from 1992-2006, disputes that the league has a
gun culture, or that players commonly own and collect guns.
“No. No. I’ve never. … You’ll hear
people say, 80%-90%, 20%. How do you know that? We don’t ask that question.
That’s personal information. … (But) we’re not naive by any stretch of the
imagination.”
While echoing Aiello’s comments that the
league does all it can to educate players, Vincent shed tears and became
emotional when asked about the Belcher tragedy.
“A young lady lost her life, and it
didn’t have to be that way.”
Family and friends said goodbye to
Kasandra Perkins, 22, at a funeral Thursday in Blue Ridge, Texas.
Too eager to arm?
Because Belcher was a gun owner, a person
in his home would have been three times more likely to be involved in a
homicide, and five times more likely to have killed himself, according to an
article in the New England Journal of Medicine.
If that Saturday in Kansas City were an
average day in America, 32 people were slain with guns and another 54 people
were killed by guns in suicides or accidents, according to the Brady Center to
Prevent Gun Violence. More than 31,000 people in the USA die in gun-related
incidents each year. This year, one of those deaths was the stunning suicide of
recently retired NFL superstar linebacker Junior Seau, who had acquired a
handgun for protection but, according to his friends, hardly knew how to load
it.
SEAU’S FINAL DAYS: Plagued by sleepless nights
Whatever the reasons athletes give for gun
ownership — or their Second Amendment rights to legally purchase firearms — gun
safety advocates continue to be concerned about the link between guns and
professional athletes. There’s nothing wrong with owning a gun, they say, if
the buyer is ready for gun ownership.
“You have young people with a lot of
money, and there may be a quickness in a decision to buy a gun,” says Dan
Gross, president of the Brady Center. “There’s a kind of social norm that
exists in certain professional sports around ownership of a gun. It’s kind of
encouraged. And I think there’s a tendency among professional athletes not to
look into the right equation in terms of risks versus benefits.”
Not true, says the NRA’s LaPierre, who
blames the premise of a gun culture in the NFL on the media and anti-gun
groups.
“You’ve got good Americans who love
to play sports, who are disciplined, who are responsible, and they’re no
different from any other Americans,” he says. “Owning guns is a
mainstream part of American culture, and it’s growing every day.”
Gross says he and his organization aren’t
trying to ban guns. They seek education and awareness, and they urge potential
gun owners to pause and consider that — statistically speaking — placing
themselves around guns increases their risks.
“What we saw with Belcher and
Kasandra Perkins was a very clear manifestation of those risks, as was Junior
Seau,” Gross says.
LaPierre counters: “The one thing
missing in that equation is that woman owning a gun so she could have saved her
life from that murderer.”
Other sports leagues
Just as with the NFL, other pro sports
leagues have had their share of gun controversies.
In December 2009, Gilbert Arenas and
Javaris Crittenton violated NBA rules when they had unloaded guns in the
Washington Wizards’ team locker room. Both were suspended for the remainder of
the season. But gun ownership — for sport and protection — remains vibrant.
Hall of Famer Charles Barkley, now a
commentator on TNT, says, “Most of the guys I played with over the years
always had protection. We’ve had some players get mugged going home late at
night, coming off a road trip or leaving nightclubs. But I’ve never heard of a
situation like (the Belcher shootings) where everything went crazy.”
Barkley, too, says that a tragic
aberration like what happened in Kansas City doesn’t diminish his right to own
a weapon: Having a gun “is a personal choice. It’s my personal choice, and
I’m not going to change it. I don’t care what anybody says.”
NBA veteran and Los Angeles Clippers star
Lamar Odom doesn’t own a gun, even though he was once held up at gunpoint.
“I understand there are mixed
feelings and mixed emotions about it,” he says. “I think it’s our
right to be able to protect our homes, but I just don’t feel the need.”
Major League Baseball has long been associated
with a hunting culture. This week, Chicago Cubs manager Dale Sveum revealed
that former teammate Robin Yount accidentally shot him in the right ear on a
recent quail hunt. And San Diego Padres general manager Josh Byrnes spoke out
on guns after one of his pitchers, Andrew Cashner, lacerated a tendon in his
right thumb with a knife after a deer hunt this offseason.
“As a GM, I am concerned,”
Byrnes said Thursday, while noting that he supports gun control. “We can
control things on the job, but away from it, we hope they make the right
decisions.”
But Atlanta Braves general manager Frank
Wren argues that hunting lends itself to experience with guns.
“What’s different is that the hunting
culture for the most part are the most gun-savvy and the most careful and
cautious of any group of gun owners,” says Wren. “And we’re also not
talking about handguns. That’s a whole other class that we don’t see.”
Wren has plenty of experience on his teams
with avid hunters, among them recently retired star Chipper Jones and former
Braves first baseman Adam Laroche. Wren recalls them often setting up targets
under the stadium where the grounds crew stores sand and practicing with bows
and arrows. But he says in his 25 years with several franchises, he’s never
come across issues with players and guns. He says part of that stems from many
players coming from Sun Belt states, where guns are often introduced in
childhood.
“The first thing you do as a kid in
the South is go take a gun safety course,” Wren says.
Saving lives, or taking lives?
But just a day after the Chiefs gathered
at Belcher’s memorial service, players question whether the murder-suicide will
have any lasting impact on the league.
Steelers wide receiver Plaxico Burress,
infamous for accidentally shooting himself in a New York City nightclub in
2008, called the Belcher shootings “very, very unfortunate” but isn’t
sure the tragedy will be a lasting lesson to a gun-heavy league.
“It will for a little while,”
says Burress, who served 20 months in prison because he was carrying the gun
illegally. “But over time something else will happen and we’ll be having
the same discussion then. Things like this happen to people every day. It just
happened to be Jovan, somebody that we knew.”
Steelers safety and player representative
Ryan Clark doesn’t own a gun in a locker room where his quarterback estimates
that most of his teammates do. He has twice seen gun-related tragedies up
close. Clark’s freshman year at LSU in 1999, a close friend killed himself with
a shotgun blast to the face.
“Everybody sat around the next day
when we found out, wondering what could we have done different. What could we
have said to him? You don’t see the signs. We never found out why,” Clark
says.
He was also a teammate and friend of the
Redskins’ Taylor, whom he played with from 2004-05 before joining Steelers in
2006. Taylor armed himself with a machete during the home invasion in which he
was shot dead.
“If Sean had a gun, he’s probably
alive today,” Clark says. “I choose not to own one. But guys are
targets and they have their families and they have guns in their homes, they
want to protect themselves and they have the right to. The law gives them the
right to.”
Clark recognizes the difficult calculus,
and societal wrenching, over the issue of gun ownership.
“In that case, Sean Taylor, maybe it
saves a life there. But in the next case (Belcher), it takes two lives.”
Contributing: Jim Corbett in Pittsburgh,
Lindsay H. Jones in Kansas City, Mo., Robert Klemko in Landover, Md., Mike
Garafolo Florham Park, N.J., Paul White and Bob Nightengale in Nashville.
GOVERNMENT = SELF APPOINTED LEGALIZED CRIME SYNDICATE !!!!
NESARA- Restore America – Galactic News
2012-12-09 09:00:42
Source: http://nesaranews.blogspot.com/2012/12/nfl-players-three-out-of-four-own-guns.html
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