Finally, a gun incident worth laughing about.
This past weekend at a Manhattan nightclub, New York Giants wide receiver Plaxico Burress, who made the game winning catch of last year’s Super Bowl, alledgedly shot himself in the leg with a handgun.
He has since been charged with possession of an illegal firearm and was released on $100,000 bail Monday. Likely because his leg does not have a mouth to testify with, he will be pleading not guilty, according to his lawyer.
Ah, what a refreshing change. Usually, NFL stars are being shot by others or are shooting others. Finally, someone has come up with something fresh — totally cutting out the middle man, too!
You may remember last year’s tragic incident where Washington Redskins free safety was fatally shot in his home in Miami, or Jacksonville Jaguars offensive tackle Richard Collier, who was shot a couple months ago and is now paralysed and missing a leg.
On the other side of the blast, Indianapolis Colts star Marvin Harrison was tied to a shooting in Philadelphia earlier this year. (Although no charges have yet to be laid, ballistic tests showed that the shots were fired from Harrison’s gun, which was later found in his garage, and witnesses and the victim have both named Harrison as the shooter.) Combining the evidence against him with the fact that he’s a professional athlete, it’s pretty clear that someone is going to get a hefty fine of hundreds of dollars and may miss as many as one game.
“He is a mature adult,” said Burress’ lawyer Benjamin Brafman, who famously defended Sean “Puffy” Combs in 2001. “I think any professional athlete in this situation would be concerned.”
There are two things to consider in this statement. To be honest, I’m not completely positive that “mature adults” carry illegal hand guns.
As I see it, there would be two reasons why a famous, rich, professional athlete might want to have a loaded gun in a nightclub. (I’m omitting the idea that he wants to impress the ladies, because, like I said, he’s a famous, rich, professional athlete and that should really be enough.)
Perhaps he wants it for protection — but protection from whom? Well, there’s a good chance that, like many NFL and NBA stars, the gangsta life in Grand Theft Auto was not quite real enough for them and therefore they wanted to erroneously prove their manhood by being real life gangstas. You can almost hear them eloquently state, “Me have gun. Me care not of innocent bystanders. Therefore me man.” The logic is bulletproof — as bulletproof as Burress’ slacks.
The second reason would be … actually, I guess that’s it — extreme insecurity.
The other part of the Brafman’s statement is true on so many levels. Yes, you’ve just been caught with an illegal handgun, which could end your career and land you in jail — that’s something to be concerned about. But personally, I’d be more concerned with the fact that not only was I stupid enough to have an illegal handgun, I was idiotic enough to accidently shoot myself with it — in a nightclub!
At that point I would voluntarily have myself castrated to prevent my moronic genes from further contaminating the world’s already grievously polluted gene pool.
Anyway, both the Giants and the NFL are currently deciding what to do with this troublesome player, which by my estimation involves a lot of doodling and deciding between pizza and Chinese for lunch.
The fact of the matter is, public expressions of concern by the team and league are for appearances only. If Michael Vick was not in prison right now, he’d be on a roster for some NFL game this weekend, despite how much owners of teams might claim to be disgusted by his dog-fighting habits. (That’s fighting dogs against dogs — not actually fighting them himself. Vick preferred to hang and electrocute his dogs, not beat them up.)
Gun problems in the NFL and NBA are not resulting from players having keen gun fancies and lifetime memberships to the NRA. It’s purely macho gangsterism. And the only threat prison poses is damage to their careers, otherwise it just gives them street cred. Or so it seems.
If any league wants to clean up the acts of players, such a charge should mean an automatic suspension followed by a lifetime ban in concert with a guilty verdict.
Unfortunately, that’ll never happen because idiots think outlawlessness is cool and the Almighty buck rules the rest.
Contact Tom Patrick at
tomp@yukon-news.com