Sunday, December 07, 2008
Sports, "Hunt's Grunts"

Have Gun, Will Travel

Obviously, professional footballer Plaxico Burress has had a busy autumn...

By Hunt Archbold

“You better run/ ’Cause I’m young, dumb and I’ve got a gun/ Public idiot No. 1/ ’Cause I’m young, dumb and I’ve got a gun/ The Constitution says that I’m so blessed/ That I can clean my piece on the Supreme Court steps …”
—“Gun,” Todd Rundgren

Obviously, professional footballer Plaxico Burress has had a busy autumn, balancing team suspensions and catching touchdown passes for the world-champion New York Giants. But surely it would’ve behooved him to have taken a listen to the above song, or some kind of sage advice on the subject of personal handgun use and safety.

Burress, who caught the wining touchdown pass in the waning moments of last year’s Super Bowl, is in a heap of trouble for his recent self-inflicted gunshot wound and subsequent arrest. Less than 48 hours before his team was to face rival Washington, Burress entered a Manhattan nightclub, whereupon he shot himself in the leg when the unregistered 40-caliber Glock he had tucked in his waistband accidentally discharged.

Fortunately, he didn’t blow his genitals off; the bullet went through his leg and into the floor. The proceeding cover-up (he told hospital staff his name was Harris Smith and that he’d been shot at Applebee’s) is now humorous, in a Ron Mexico kind of way. But there’s nothing funny about the continuing fascination athletes have with guns.

Of course, it’s not just athletes. In his song, Rundgren offers social commentary about American gang culture—a plea for disaffected youths to stop pulling out guns and randomly shooting people. In this country, illegal gun ownership has now become a lifestyle enhancer, something to add credibility. As Rundgren sings: “This is for fighting and this is for fun.’’

Still, gun control and the interpretation of the Second Amendment to the U.S. Constitution have long been a hot-button issue. The City of Atlanta declared that Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport should be gun-free, and gun advocates immediately retaliated with a suit. Is Washington, D.C.’s law prohibiting ownership of handguns consistent with an individual’s right to bear arms? How will President-elect Barack Obama approach licensing and restricting gun owners? It would seem there needs to be some common-sense enforcement.

Truly, little common sense was used 28 years ago this week, when John Lennon was shot four times in the back outside the Dakota in New York City. His killer, Mark David Chapman, attended Decatur’s Columbia High, and the bullets he fired were purchased here in Atlanta. Against the advice of his lawyer, Chapman (who, interestingly, was a devoted Rundgren fan and was wearing a Rundgren T-shirt at the time of the shooting) changed his original plea from not guilty by reason of insanity to guilty of second-degree murder, and has been incarcerated ever since.

I was working at a psychiatric hospital in Raleigh, N.C., some two decades ago, when I last fired a gun. Well, I didn’t actually pull the trigger. As a health care technician, I was on duty that day to help with the admittance of new patients. So a state trooper brings in a fella off the streets, and next thing I know, he’s taken hold of the officer’s gun, and the three of us have all six hands on it, trying to gain control, when it goes off into the hospital lobby floor. True story.

I’m not a big fan of guns. I didn’t grow up around guns, and have never even been so much as deer hunting, Guns just haven’t been a part my lifestyle. But they have for many of today’s athletes. Yes, they speak of protecting themselves, and the number of attacks on athletes has grown in recent years, as someone desperate enough will rip that gold chain off your neck whether you’re a Super Bowl hero or not. I can see having a gun in the home for protection, but these guys are paid well enough to hire security if they must go into clubs where liquor facilitates stupidity.

But more often, it’s not about protection. It’s about sticking out one’s chest, boasting that you’re packing heat because you’re from the mean streets, and all the baloney that comes with that. It’s just so senseless. In the days after his visit to the club, Burress was arrested on several felony gun charges, was suspended for the remainder of the season, suffered an income loss in the millions and could face prison time, if New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg has anything to say about it.

Burress didn’t play against Washington that day, and former Redskin Sean Taylor was missing, too, after being gunned down last year in the prime of his football career. “Big Things Poppin,’” by Atlanta’s own gangsta rapper T.I., blared along with a video-highlight tribute to Taylor at that game, with such lyrics as “Pullin’ out in public, shawty, who you think you fin’ to scare?/ I send ’em missiles that’ll have you goin’ in your underwear,” and “I tote a pair of 40s on me so you better tone it down/ or I suggest you just prepare yourself for what’s going down.”

T.I., lest we forget, pleaded guilty this year to federal weapons charges and begins a one-year prison sentence in March.

Happy times … and I do own a few water pistols. SP