Bob Wire Has a Point (It's Under His Cowboy Hat)
NBA Player Caught With Male Enhancement Products
By Bob Wire, 1-07-10
Gilbert Arenas is an idiot. The career of this trigger-happy point guard for the Washington Wizards is hanging by a thread, thanks to his moronic decision to bring guns into the locker room. The initial story, written for the New York Post by Peter Vecsey, painted a pretty damaging picture of the incident, and as details and denials continue to surface, it’s looking more and more like that picture was accurate.
The scenario reported by Vecsey had Arenas laying out four pistols on a table in the locker room. He left them there for teammate Javaris Crittendon to find, along with a note that read, “Pick one.” Seems the two Mensa candidates had been betting at cards aboard the team plane a couple of days earlier. Crittendon’s response (which he of course denies, but was confirmed by two eyewitnesses) was to slip a magazine into his own pistol, and chamber a round. Would Crittendon have gone as far as blowing Arenas’s brains all over the locker room wall? Probably not. But then, I never would have predicted a mass shooting on a U.S. Army base, either.
Who’s lying? The witnesses, who have nothing to lose but the possible friendship and trust of a couple of dung-headed teammates? Or a couple of spoiled, wildly overpaid twenty-somethings who have been handed the world on a silver platter? Hmm. Let me think about that one.
Arenas has been suspended “indefinitely” by NBA Commissioner David Stern, who said the player is “not currently fit to take the court in an NBA game.” This decision came down after Arenas was seen clowning with his teammates courtside, pointing his fingers like guns, laughing. He has since issued a lawyer/agent/sychophant-crafted apology, but obviously the guy could do with some maturity and perspective. I think a full-season suspension would be a proper response, and it needs to be done quickly to send a message to the rest of the NBA, and to professional athletes in general. Enough with the guns already. Who do you guys think you are? Rappers?
A lot of sports stars like to think that they function as an island, free to live however they please, having to answer to no one. Well, that’s bullshit. Pro jocks are role models, no matter what Charles Barkley says. When a gifted, accomplished player like Allen Iverson, say, embraces the violent, thuggish side of rap culture, his young fans take after him whether he wants them to or not. To the extent that the rap community has glamorized gang killings, selling and using drugs, and treating women like a lower form of life, I think it’s a dumb move to align yourself to that culture. Now, I ain’t saying that Carmelo Anthony needs to start listening to Trace Adkins and add Wranglers to his off-court wardrobe, but I do think that these spoiled millionaires should stop trying to come off like ganstas from the ‘hood.
Pro athletes packing heat has become a tired cliché, and many ball players from Plaxico Burress to Delonte West have been arrested for playing cowboy. Do you really need to bring a Glock into the nightclub with you? Isn’t that what bodyguards are for? Are you insecure because you get paid millions of dollars simply because you have above average hand-eye coordination? You’re young, you’re rich, you’re in peak physical condition, and you’re a world traveler. Believe me, you don’t need a gun to make you more attractive to the ladies. Just ask Tiger Woods.
I think it goes back to the basic human reason that men feel the need to own handguns in general. It’s like Seth Rogan, the cop in Superbad, said to McLovin when the high schooler asked what it felt like to carry a gun. “It feels…awesome! It’s like having two dicks, if one of your dicks could kill someone!”
Of course, there’s the argument that men (let’s face it, male handgun owners far outnumber female gun owners) buy handguns to protect their domicile. This reason to own a weapon (along with the non-answer, “it’s my constitutional right”) is shouted long and loud by the awesome two-dick handgun crowd. But how often does this really happen, I wondered. A quick Google search did, indeed, turn up a handful of instances over the last few years where a homeowner was lucky enough to get to his piece and blow away a burglar or intruder or unfortunate drunk who’d stumbled into the wrong house. Interestingly, a disproportionate number of these killings occurred in Texas, by the way, where the “Castle Law” is evidently the most popular legislation the state has passed since the controversial “full set of teeth” tax in 1972.
It’s hard to rally behind any gun control legislation when your opposition is heavily armed and generally paranoid. All I can do, as a human being who’d like to see most of his fellow human beings reach their life expectancy (with the possible exception of Perez Hilton), is to not own, shoot, or glorify handguns.
I wanted to find out how many kids have been killed accidentally by guns at home and was flabbergasted to discover that both the gun lovin’ NRA and the gun hatin’ Children’s Defense Fund set the number at around 200. (That’s kind of like seeing an Ann Coulter/Jon Stewart sex tape turn up on the internet.) That’s about ten classrooms full of school kids. I have two young kids in my house. I can guarantee with 100% certainty that they will never find a handgun here and accidentally shoot themselves or someone else. If you have a handgun in your house, for whatever reason, no matter where you keep it, you cannot give the same guarantee. However infinitesimal, there’s still a chance that your handgun is going to be used to kill you or someone you love. Do you have a right to own a gun? Sure. Is it worth the risk to you and those around you? That’s up to you.
Our culture’s love affair with the gun is a poisonous one, yet we as a nation cling stubbornly to a woefully outdated Second Amendment as an excuse for guns to proliferate. From first-person shooter video games to horrifically bloody movies to gangsta rap to professional sports, guns are everywhere. I hope I live to see the day when our society as a whole wises up enough to realize that the answer to a less violent nation is fewer guns, not more.
[Bookmark NewWest.net and check back frequently for new posts. Maybe one of these times Bob will tell us what he really thinks.]
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Comment By Clarence Worly, 1-07-10Bob,
I admire your stance on this and I really don't disagree as you might think. I too believe we would all be safer as a society with fewer firearms. The problem is, short of kicking in the doors of every citizen (law abiding and criminal) in the United States and forcibly retrieving these guns, there is no way in hell to control or regulate the millions upon millions of weapons already in circulation. The worn out adage “when guns are outlawed only outlaws will have guns” is true in my opinion.
I have taken a different stance on this issue in that I have a concealed weapons permit and I am armed to the teeth. I live in a low crime rate area so no, I’m not worried about gangsters or roving bands of illegal aliens out to rape my wife, kill my children, and steal my car. I’m worried about the law abiding right wing nut jobs that have a concealed weapons permit, are also armed to the teeth and are worried about gangsters or roving bands of illegal aliens out to rape their wives, kill their children, and steal their cars. Is this a rational fear? Perhaps if you live in Brownsville Texas, but not in areas of the country regular folks live. The odds of one these ass clowns using his concealed weapon to successfully stop a crime are about the same as hitting the powerball (unless you check with the NRA in which case there 40 to 50 million instances every hour or two across the country).
Are right wing nut jobs with concealed weapons permits rational? Fuck no. These FOX news fanatics have taken it upon themselves to play citizen police officer with little or no training and pack a gun around “in case they run into trouble” and base it all on media reports of mass killings and their God given 2nd amendment right to pack heat. They scare the shit out of me and are far worse than the criminal thugs they are supposedly protecting themselves from. Criminal thugs are much easier to identify and avoid than gun totting citizens convinced every one is out to get them.
I armed myself based on the cold war principal of mutually assured destruction. Provide a realistic avenue to rid America of its firearms so that I can go to the grocery store and know there isn’t some needle-dick asshole carrying a .357 (legal or not) under his coat, I will gladly listen. Until then, I’m exercising my option to shoot back.
Interesting point Clarence, I too have my concealed weapons permit, although I rarely carry.
One thing I wonder about though, is, if everyone had the mindset similar to yours, would anything change(maybe not a bad thing?). You carry to protect yourself from some idiot with a gun, who is carrying his gun to protect himself from some other idiot with a gun.
Some may view you as an idiot with a gun, but you obviously (hopefully) don't agree. Is this because you have more experience and superior training with your gun than the rest of the gun carrying population? Your answer may be "Yes" but I'm sure most people who carry feel they have more experience and training than the rest.... See what I'm saying.
To clarify, I don't think you have the right to criticize those who carry if you carry yourself (even if your "reason" behind having a CWP is to protect against other CWP holders). You may be even more paranoid than those "right wing nuts" if you worry about the guy in Albertson's.
http://www.thearmedcitizen.com/
Your estimate of "a handful of instances" is pretty far off. This blog attempts to keep track of the instances that are reported in the news, which is likely far less than actual instances.
The cultural desert that is pro sports, amoral and narcissistic, reflects nothing about our society nor our national political impetus to always be working to make a more perfect country, world. When someone is paying you over $100,000,000 to play hoops, all you have to do is live and play by the rules, play hard, give it your best, and you will have a future that most could only dream about. But, we are assailed by the bad judgement, poor choices, stupid actions, of pro athletes on almost a daily basis. How many stupid gun deals have we seen in the last decade? The one where the baller shot his chauffeur. The players that get killed in the 'hood being players in some societal dance only they can understand. The girl friends dead, and suicides. This crap is a daily deal. And the only way to stop it is to have zero tolerance. You are gone on the first incidence. Out the door. Out of the NBA, NFL, baseball, soccer, hockey, or even golf.
I played football in college. The head coach had one rule: "Do anything to embarrass the University, your team, yourself, or me, and you are gone. Your equipment and locker will be empty, and that will be it. No discussion, reprimands, apologies. This is all I will say about this each year. Gentlemen, thank you for your time on this team, and for your good behavior." I found that very fair, very upfront. And there were missing uniforms on occasion. Empty lockers. Most of the time you never even saw the kid again, as the shame would cause them to immediately drop out of school. And there were no discussions about it from the coaches. None.
If my 7 year old grand daughter takes fingernail clippers to school, what with that "blade" on them, she will be expelled. Kicked out. Deprived of public education that is her due. There will be a police investigation. Her parents will miss work, be criticized, and maybe punished as well. There is zero tolerance in the second grade.
I was at a flea market a week ago, and here was this neato-jet-too-cool big old pocket tool like a pocket knife, bone handles, but it had a full sized spoon, fork, scissors, awl, can opener, and even a dull old knife blade. I thought about another grand daughter who is an avid Girl Scout. What a great thing this would be, or so I thought. And then it dawned on me that I could never do that to her---give her a pocket knife. She might, inadvertently or on purpose, take it to school for show and tell and end up in a jail cell. The felon of fifth grade. And I declined to buy it, even though it was a bargain, would never be used in appropriately by her, and would be something tacky from a tacky grandpa.
So if Arenas is denied any work as an NBA baller, it would not bother me. This society, and his, have driven this deal to where we all pay the price for indiscretions, parental fears, and the nanny state, complete with helicopter moms, fearful fathers, and pissed grandpas. The water of diversity and inclusiveness continues to run over the granite of individual freedom, eroding it just a little bit every day. It is a zero sum world, and for some dipshit basketball player to pack heat in a culture of gangsta thugs and chest pounding, bringing weapons into a stadium, when a ten year old straight "A" Girl Scout can't be trusted with a pocket knife, and by God, if she is ever caught with one, we'll show her!!!, Arenas should be kicked onto the mean streets, contract cancelled, and the NBA should say "don't let the door hit you in the ass." If you need it translated to Spanish, "Adios" is the working word.
Bob, I agree with your sentiments, but I'm a little puzzled about all the attention given to violence in "rap culture".
"Rap culture" hardly has a monopoly on violence. Guns and violence are a staple in American entertainment. You've seen the violence that comes from Hollowwood, and the violent and twisted shows on TV. In sports, violent metaphors abound.
In our politics, violence is everywhere. We're engaged in two wars that we initiated, have troops in dozens of countries around the world, and we spend more money on weapons than the next 6 countries combined. Right wingers are showing up to political rallies armed, and some people openly call for torture and genocide of our enemies. We're also the only remaining industrialized nation with the death penalty.
"Rap culture", like American culture at large, has a love affair with violence. They're one and the same. It would be great if violence wasn't glorified in rap music, but we'd still be up to our eyeballs in violence nonetheless.
It never occurred to me that 2 gun Pete was actually 3 dick Pete.
Comment By Luis, 1-09-10Well, what do you know. Arenas has been suspended indefinitely. It used to be that a basball, football or basketball player was suspended for X amount of games or days. But now, it's an "indefinite" suspension.
Now the stick and ball sports have followed NASCAR's lead and instituted indefinite suspension penalties. NASCAR pioneered the indefinite suspension.
Bob,
Not to take away from your jist, because it is on the mark and this is a great piece, but I had to give personal kudos to Bearbait for this line..
"The water of diversity and inclusiveness continues to run over the granite of individual freedom, eroding it just a little bit every day".
I whole heartedly agree.
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