Collegiate Times: “Crittenton real victim of Arenas’ gun scandal”
That headline from the Collegiate Times might not seem so outrageous if you didn’t know that Javaris Crittenton is facing murder charges. But the story actually tries to suggest that Gilbert Arenas is the bad guy, and Crittenton is a “victim.” Seriously?
Well, that’s how the Collegiate Times sees it:
“However, there was another player in that incident that has a story far more tragic: Javaris Crittenton. For the most part, the media ignored Crittenton because he wasn’t a big name. That all changed this weekend when Crittenton became wanted by the Atlanta police for the alleged murder of Jullian Jones, a 22-year-old mother of four.”
This all goes back to how Arenas and Crittenton became involved in a locker room showdown, one which did involve guns. The media tried to paint this as a “gun” thing, when in fact it is really an “overpaid athletes acting like thug” thing. But the Collegiate Times sees it otherwise:
“Gilbert Arenas ruined his (Crittenton’s) career — that’s how.”
So let’s get this straight? You lose your career over something stupid, and you end up a murderer? This sort of logic is too close to “society is to blame.” And that leads to blaming guns instead of blaming the criminals who pull the trigger.
FoxSports: NBA And Guns – Blame the Idiots
Writing this week for FoxSports.com, Jen Floyd Engel offered her opinion on the NBA’s reaction to firearms following the arrest of former Washington Wizards player Javaris Crittenton on murder charges. Instead of focusing on how Crittenton’s latest run in, which involves his alleged role in the murder of a mother of four, Floyd Engel notes that Crittenton was involved with a gun-related incident with teammate Gilbert Arenas and the NBA’s reaction.
She notes that the NBA is too quick to see this as a “gun problem,” and is blind the bigger issue:
“The Association focused on the guns. The mistake we made then was making it about the guns. Even NBA commish David Stern, whose response in hindsight saved the league an ugly embarrassment at best and a body bag in one of his locker rooms at worst, said, ‘The possession of firearms by an NBA player in an NBA arena is a matter of the utmost concern to us.’ See how we do that? The guns become the problem, allowing us to ignore the real issue. The NBA’s problem was not guns in the locker rooms; it was the idiots.”
Kudos to Floyd Engel for noting that this isn’t a problem of guns, but a problem of overpaid athletes behaving like idiots and wasting their talents.
Firing Back: Multiple News Stories Miss Point on NBA Gun Incident
While it still isn’t entirely clear what transpired between NBA players Gilbert Arenas and Javaris Crittenton in the locker room, what is known is that firearms were involved. Regardless, the issue is that this is yet another example of the rich and semi-famous getting a different level of standards when it comes to firearm ownership and possession.
Firearms aren’t toys, and whether Arenas was joking when he “challenged” Crittenton to a duel is a moot point. The real issue is that Washington, D.C. is a city where gun ownership is closely controlled – yet these millionaires brandish firearms as it is just so much more “bling.” And that’s just bad news for those law-abiding citizens who actually respect the guns they hold in their hands.
