Guns and the Men That Love Them

When you think of an insular community of not particularly well educated individuals who fervently defend the second amendment and constantly complain about taxes, you think of right-wingnuts living on a compound in Texas. Right? I used to.

But I’ve learned that the brain malady that makes people think Jesus was an action hero who wanted nothing more than to pop caps into Roman asses isn’t limited to Sarah Palin supporters. If you are looking for a group of people who strap-up before they put their socks on, look no further than the modern professional athlete. The armed shenanigans of Washington Wizards guard, Gilbert Arenas, is just the latest — and funniest — evidence of the mentality:

After piecing together several different reports, the story (at present) appears to go like this: Gilbert Arenas, Javaris Crittenton, JaVale McGee were all playing cards on a flight home from Phoenix before Christmas. Arenas and Crittenton both lost big, but because he was upset over a dispute about the rules, Arenas quit the game, leaving Crittenton to pay the entire pot himself. Crittenton argued with Areans over his share of the losings and at one point threatened (jokingly?) to shoot Arenas in his gimpy left knee.

Two days later, before practice, Arenas thought it would be funny to place three of his own guns next to Crittenton’s locker with a note saying, “Pick one.” That’s funny, right? Well, Crittenton apparently didn’t think so. He angrily picked up one of the guns and threw it across the locker room, screaming about how he has his own gun and doesn’t need hand-me-downs. So touchy.

Via Deadspin

Oh, to be young, talented, and armed. My favorite part of the story (thus far) is when Crittenton gets angry at the suggestion he can’t afford a high quality firearm of his very own. Crittenton basically had the same reaction I have when somebody condescendingly offers to buy me a haircut, only he expressed himself by throwing a gun across the room.

I have no intention of harping on how stupid it is to be this casual with weapons or pointing how much damage gun violence does in this country. I mean, it is (stupid) and it does (do horrible damage); but that is why I’m always happy to vote for an actual liberal with enough sense and testicular fortitude to stand up to the gun lobby.

What I’m really interested in is the fact that a young black kid from D.C. and an old white man from Mississippi would probably agree on this (and many, many issues) as long as they were blindfolded and not allowed to talk about music. How does that happen?

After Plaxico Burress went full retard at a Manhattan night club, I heard all of the grand cultural explanations about how growing up poor and black on the dangerous streets of urban America makes one regard guns differently than — you know — normal freaking adults. I get the argument: people around you have guns, people around you get shot with guns, eventually you think “hey, I should get a gun.” Who knows, maybe if I had grown up poor, I’d be brandishing a TEC-9 at my mutherf***in’ Roget’s Thesaurus right now.

But I doubt it. I think the whole cultural experience argument is BS, just like I think it’s total crap when some “sportsman” tells me that giving his kid a 9 bolt action rifle and teaching him how to kill defenseless Disney characters for fun is an important family tradition.

It’s not about culture, it’s not about tradition, it’s about the fact that some people want to feel like they have power. Not real power, as Machiavelli or Richard Neustadt might describe it. Just the base kind of Hobbesian power of being able to kill another man. People often accuse gun nuts of trying to compensate for a small penis. I can’t speak to that, but I do think running around with deadly weapons strapped to your person is a consequence of a really small mind and a simple, unexamined life.

And I think that’s where the true connection lies between armed crazies of any color. I look at all of the hard work put in by professional athletes: the countless hours in the gym, endless repetitions of jump-shots or fly patterns or curve balls, training yourself to become so single-minded that you can competently perform despite thousands of people screaming at you. For a lot of them to succeed, their job must be reduced to its most simple components. Add to that the fact that they are flush with cash, and it’s probable that the rest of their lives probably become pretty simple too. They can buy themselves out of complications that most of the rest of us struggle with. Putting it together, I think you end up with a pretty streamlined existence. And the shortest distance from “point A” to “point Power Over Others” is probably to purchase a deadly weapon.

On the other side, I look at a guy that has an honorable yet boring job. A guy who doesn’t challenge himself intellectually. A guy who would rather have six beers at a bar instead of going home and actually dealing with his domestic situation. I look at that guy and am totally unsurprised to find out that he owns two shotguns, a handgun, two young children, and zero safety locks. In his world, he never knows when he might have an opportunity to waste some cat burglar who tried to steal some naff Kaye jewelry.

It’s the same lack of intellectual creativity that sparks both gun desires. The rest is just window dressing.

I think. But again, I’m not sure. I’ve just never been able to fully wrap my mind around the ability to take another man’s life. But I can’t reliably sink a jump-shot either.