Gun nuts

This isn’t a column about people owning guns or using them responsibly. I don’t care. If you want to be well-armed to protect your family from burglars, rapists and murderers or the Redcoats, Russians or Islamic jihadists, that’s your right. Just don’t leave them out where your kids can get them - but that’s another column for another day.

Today’s column is about athletes and guns. Less than two weeks after NBA player Gilbert Arenas pulled out two guns from his locker and basically challenged a teammate to a duel over a gambling debt, three Duke football players allegedly fired a gun into the air near a bus stop on campus early Sunday morning. Let’s also not forget former New York Giant Plaxico Burress shooting himself in the leg at a nightclub less than a year after winning the Super Bowl.

One word describes all of these incidents - stupid. I would also use the word unnecessary.

The reason this is at the forefront of my mind is that one of the Duke players arrested, Brandon Putnam, is a Sandy Creek graduate. I’ve talked to Brandon a few times and I’ve spoken to his father a few more - though not since this incident - and this was the last thing in the world I expected to happen during Brandon’s time at Duke. You’ve got to be a smart kid to get into that school and Brandon seemed like a smart kid. Obviously he and the other two knuckleheads made a terrible choice on Sunday morning and they’re lucky that it didn’t end more tragically. The front page of today’s AJC had a story about a teen who died after a stray bullet went through his window and killed him in his bed. He wasn’t being targeted. It was an accident.

Accidents happen and when you have a gun the accidents can be tragic.

I don’t know what happened with Putnam and his friends, although when you factor in that they were driving around campus at 3 a.m. and firing a gun into the air, you could probably wager a pretty good guess. Regardless, they were all dismissed from the team and can’t go back to school until the case is cleared up. That means probably not this school year and maybe not ever. I would imagine that Brandon moves on from this incident and doesn’t get mired in a life of bad choices. I can’t see that happening. He’s too big to get smacked on the butt, but if his Dad has stopped chewing him out by now, he’s lucky.

I hope that he and his friends realize that the addition of a gun in the car on Sunday morning was a terrible idea. Guns are tools. They are meant to be used to legally hunt animals or protect your home, loved ones or property. There was obviously no good reason for those players to have the gun. They likely didn’t fear for their lives. In all likelihood, it was just a bad decision to bring it out that night and a even worse decision to fire it.

Unfortunately, guns are so persistent in our culture that they have become accessories to people. Burress brings his gun on a night on the town, not because he expects to use it, but maybe so he can flash it. If someone tries to steal from him, he has it, but maybe it just makes him feel safer. And yet, it goes off and shoots him in the leg, ends his football season and gets him sentenced to jail. Arenas had several guns in his locker. Did he think the other millionaires on the team were going to steal from him? Probably not and yet he gives his teammate a gun and tries to set up a rematch of Aaron Burr and Alexander Hamilton. I doubt that either of them would have fired, but still, stupid. Pointless. They treated the guns as props or toys instead of deadly weapons.

Some police officers go their entire careers without ever firing their weapons in the line of duty. It is often enough when confronted with a situation to show the gun and threaten to use it. Neither Burress or Arena were in situations that called for a weapon (what would happen to you if you put a gun to a co-worker at your place of business?) and the Duke players, from all accounts, had no reason to fire their gun. If you don’t need it on your person, meaning if you aren’t seriously being threatened by a dangerous person, and you are licensed to carry it, keep it in your glove compartment in your car and then at your home. Do not fire it unless you mean to.

These cases prove that guns can destroy lives, even when they aren’t fired at someone. Hopefully, for the sake of Brandon Putnam and his friends, they can learn a lesson that won’t cost them any more than it already has.