hoplophobia/sports

NFL Gun Policy

Posted on by Caleb

In light of Marvin Harrison’s possible involvement in a shooting in Philly, I decided to do a little research into the NFL’s policy on the possession of firearms by it’s players/employees.

I found a copy of the policy at ESPN.com and I have to say that I was more than a little disturbed.

Guns and Weapons Policy
This policy applies to all employees of the NFL and its member clubs, including players.

Prohibitions. Whether possessed legally or illegally, guns and other weapons of any kind are dangerous. You and your family can easily be the losers if you carry or keep these items in your home. You must not possess these weapons while traveling on League-related business or whenever you are on the premises of the following:

• A facility owned, operated or being used by an NFL club (for example, training camp, dormitory, locker room, workout site, parking area, team bus, team plane, team hotel/motel);

• A stadium or any other venue being used for an NFL event (for example, a game, practice or promotion);

• A facility owned or operated by the NFL or any League company.

Put simply, the League, the Players Association and law enforcement authorities urge you to recognize that you must not possess a gun or other weapon at any time you are performing any service for your team or the NFL.

Legal Possession. In some circumstances, such as for sport or protection, you may legally possess a firearm or other weapon. However, we strongly recommend that you not do so. Any weapon, particularly a firearm, is dangerous — especially so when it is in a vehicle or within reach of children and others not properly trained in its use.

Understanding the Law. If you legally possess a weapon, you must understand the local, state and federal laws that apply. The NFL Security Representative in your area will help you get information about these laws. You should be aware that if you take a weapon from one place to another — for example, across state lines — a different set of laws may apply in the new place.

Discipline. If you violate this policy on guns and other weapons, you are subject to discipline, including suspension from playing. And if you violate a public law covering weapons — for example, possession of an unlicensed firearm — you are not only subject to discipline, including suspension from playing, but also subject to criminal prosecution.

Remember, be careful and understand the risks.

Now, I do agree with the first part of that, where NFL prohibits the possession of weapons in stadiums and other team-owned facilities, because I believe that as the (sort of) employer of all these players they have the right to prohibit weapons and whatever else they may want to prohibit on their facilities.

What I find offensive and irritating are the hoplophobic comments inserted in a couple of different places throughout the policy:

Whether possessed legally or illegally, guns and other weapons of any kind are dangerous. You and your family can easily be the losers if you carry or keep these items in your home.

and

In some circumstances, such as for sport or protection, you may legally possess a firearm or other weapon. However, we strongly recommend that you not do so. Any weapon, particularly a firearm, is dangerous — especially so when it is in a vehicle or within reach of children and others not properly trained in its use.

It’s just feeding the “guns r scary” mindset that you see so often in the sports world.  The policy would be quite sufficient to cover their legal bases of not having people tote guns around and advise players of the legalities involved without going into PSH over people owning and carrying firearms.  I really don’t like the first bit, where it says “you and your family can be losers if you keep a gun” – it feeds directly into the myth that guns kept in the home are magically more dangerous than any other gun in the world.

Athletes and public figures have just as much of a right to privacy and self-defense as you and I, and yet the NFL’s official policy is taking the stance of discouraging their players from possessing and using firearms for their own safety and well being.   While the league has every right to prohibit possession of weapons on “company property”, I find that the language used in their “official policy” is over-the-top and completely unnecessary.

Hoosier

Holy Crap Mitch Daniels

Posted on by Caleb

Mitch Daniels, the Republican candidate for governor has a new TV spot out, which you can view at this link.

I was going to vote for Mitch anyway because he’s been good for the state of Indiana and Indiana gun owners, never mind what ads he runs on television.  But I actually really liked that ad, and normally I hate all political commercials.
Honestly, that music was so damn heroic, I expected Mitch to come swinging in on a rope, dagger clutched between his teeth and punch the economy IN THE FACE for misbehaving.  Perhaps my enjoyment of the commercial was based primarily on the hilarious mental image that I had with it.

Really though, I’m a sucker for music, and the music in a campaign commercial can have a strong affect on my reaction to the advertisement. In this case the Mitch Daniels campaign absolutely nailed the music on this one. I’m sure that the resemblance to the music from Pirates of the Caribbean was not a coincidence, as the mental image conjures heroics and drama, which is precisely what the campaign was going for.

This does illustrate something that I’ve talked about before when it comes to campaigning, and that’s the importance of simplicity and music. All that commercial does is put up a bunch of stats about how awesome Mitch has been while playing rousing music in the background. Because it’s very simple and stimulating, it has a lot of broad appeal, moreso than an ad where the candidate wanders around talking to people.

Never underestimate the power of awesome music.

Hoosier/news/sports

A surprising op-ed

Posted on by Caleb

If you hadn’t yet heard, Marvin Harrison, the Indianapolis Colts’ marquee wide-receiver was somehow involved in a shooting in Philadelphia.  To call the details “sketchy” would be to give them a lot more credit than they’re due, but the few facts that are available is that a person was shot through the hand, a child was cut by shattered glass, Marvin Harrison has a valid Indiana carry permit, and that’s about it.

That’s why I’m so surprised to see this editorial in the Indy Star (a paper I don’t normally read).  Normally, whenever a professional athlete is involved in a shooting, you get every sports columnist from hell to breakfast taking that opportunity to litter up the sports page with how they feel about gun control, which they’re usually all in favor of.  That’s why Bob Kravitz’s column was such a breath of fresh air to me.  When a writer says something like this quote, “I’m not a gun guy. Never owned one. Never shot one”, I usually brace for the inevitable “so why does anyone need guns”.  But this time I got something different.

If an athlete, or anyone else, wants to own a gun, that’s their right. Whatever you think of the gun-control laws in this country, bottom line, that’s their right.

He even mentions a couple of other places in the article that it doesn’t matter that Marvin owned a gun, because he has a right to do so.  Honestly, I was pretty much floored by this column, because I agree with it 100%, and that almost never happens.  Kudos to Bob Kravitz for not following the standard anti-gun handbook.

shooting

E-Postal Match: Pin training

Posted on by Caleb

The E-Postal Matches are back!  After my hiatus from shooting while I was in Las Vegas, I got back into the swing of things with an actual pin shooting match a couple of weekends ago, and then just yesterday I got the email that the latest and also first ever internationally hosted E-Postal match was up!

The match breaks down as follows: 5 shots on the first target for a max score of 50, plus 5 shots on the second target with a max target score of 50 points, for a total combined “cold max” of 100 points.

Go to the link above to print out the target papers for the match – those are some small bullseyes on that first target.  The second I saw that, I realized that this was not going to be an easy match, and starting thinking about what guns I wanted to run it with.  I’ll probably end up using a pair of different .45 revolvers, hoping that I can get lucky and have that big bullet cut the target in the right spot.

I’ll be shooting the match this weekend, so check back for a score report and update.

Hoosier

Indiana Primary Wrap-up

Posted on by Caleb

The Indiana Primary, in bullet point form:

  • Hillary won, but not by a lot. Barring any back-door shenanigans, Obama will likely be the nominee. Note: people named Clinton excel at back-door shenanigans.
  • Dan Burton won in Congressional District 5. I am officially supporting him in the general against Mary Etta Ruley. Lots more coverage on this particular race to come.
  • Beverly Gard won handily, and should roll over Mike Brinegar in the general, but you’ll see more on that race here in the future.
  • Shockingly, Andre Carson held on to win in Democrat D7, because apparently it doesn’t matter if you have any actual political positions as long as you have the right name.
  • If Obama wins West Virginia, I will eat my hat. And I like this hat a lot.

The primary was a nice warm-up for the general, I will say that. Although in the past few years District 5 has been relatively safe for Republicans and will in all likelihood continue to be so for this year, I am not taking anything for granted.

As far as the Democratic nomination goes, it probably will be Obama, as I said above. However, I also have a hard imagining Obama winning in Kentucky and West Virginia, so who knows?

gun control/news

We are winning

Posted on by Caleb

The Brady Campaign’s political action committee, which is their equivalent of NRA’s Political Victory fund has to date this year raised the whopping sum of zero dollars.

They haven’t been raising any money for their Political Action Committee.  This is speculation, but my guess is they’ve been having to eschew fundraising for the PAC in order to keep their 501(c)(4) and (c)(3) activities afloat.

This is easily one of the most important elections for the gun rights movement, and thus is also just as important to those who would seek to deny us those rights; but the Brady campaign isn’t raising money for the branch of their organization that can directly impact the election.  I agree with Sebastian’s speculation that it’s because they’re hurting like whoa in the money department, and have had to forgo raising money for electoral stuff so they can keep funding Paul Helmke’s posts on HuffPo.

On the flipside of the coin, NRA-PVF to date has raised over $200,000 for election related issues.  If you look at the donor list, you see a lot of regular folk, people with jobs like “mechanic” donating thousands of dollars to NRA-PVF.

It does help explain the feelings of desperation that I’ve been getting from the other side – they are losing money, losing ground and grasping at straws now.

Hoosier

Special Podcast: Primary!

Posted on by Caleb

Here is the special podcast I did for the Indiana primary, now with 100% more bourbon.  Honestly, I can’t deal with CNN’s coverage any longer sober, so I’ve started in on the Knobb Creek.

[display_podcast]

If the embedded flash player doesn’t play the audio correctly, just hit the link labeled “download” to listen, or you can click this link to download it on iTunes. The embedded flash player doesn’t always like Internet Explorer 6, however audio should play fine in Firefox or Internet Explorer 7.

Hoosier

Primary thoughts

Posted on by Caleb

As you know, I cast my primary ballot this morning.  I actually had to stand in line at Christ the Savior Lutheran Church – which surprised me, since it was about 6:30 in the AM when I went to cast my ballot.

I did notice that everyone there who went before me at the registration table was voting in the Democratic Party primary – whether or not they were actually Democrats is an open question.  I got my voting done, voting for John McCain for president, and then making sure to vote for Beverly Gard and Dan Burton – everything else was local county level stuff.

The one thing I did notice was that the election volunteers actually had people my age there, and a couple of attractive women.  This is the first time that has happened since, uh, ever.  Every single other election I’ve ever voted in, the volunteers were uniformly old-blue hairs.  I fully support election volunteers being attractive.

I can’t believe I’m saying this, but I do agree with Tam that the weather may be a factor in this election (I can’t believe that the weather might be a factor, not that I agree with Tam.  I do that all the time – ed).  It saddens me that our current political scene is such that we literally have “fair-weather voters” who will turn out to vote for their messiah only if they won’t get rained on in so doing.

I do think Hillsy will win it though – my gut instinct is that Obama won’t be able to get enough of the college kid/young vote out to beat Hillary’s appeal to the more traditional Democrat base.  Plus, you can factor in what seems to be a pretty sizable chunk of GOP voters deciding they want to torpedo Barack on the presumption that McCain will beat Hillary like a rented mule.

I’ll have more election coverage this evening, and a special podcast wrap-up tomorrow morning.