And, honestly, I hadn’t read the article - assuming that I knew the tenor from his TV report. I have now, and it’s much more toned down. I agree with you, it’s hard to see castigation in the article.
I don’t frequent “gun nut” sites, because I frankly think that some of the people on them are, in fact, nuts. Also, I rarely check my e-mail. No, this is something I came across. As for an agenda, of course I have an agenda. I am well known on these boards as being a gun rights person. It’s worth noting, though, that the article had an agenda of its own, and since I am diametrically opposed to that agenda of course it will elicit a reaction from me.
On this issue I have never claimed to be non-partisan. I have no idea why you would assume that I was.
I guess I just don’t see any hints of an agenda in the article. Does it say (or even imply) that there is something wrong with these guys getting concealed carry permits? I can’t see anything in the story that would get anyone worked up about it.
Exactly. It seems as if mhendo was simply assuming that owning a gun is inherently bad and should be in a category with adultery and driving drunk.
On a different note: It’s disturbing if these types of records can be obtained by the press. I thought that the records weren’t even kept by the government usually. They do the background check. You get approved. The record gets deleted. They don’t need to keep track of those once they are done being processed. Hopefully this is just a cop leaking this to the press because he saw them come in and not some sort of record that’s available and can be tracked down.
Three times it was noted that the persons involed did not justify their decision. It’s akin to you asking me why I need a gun if I’m discussing my new purchase with someone else. Why do I need one? None of your business. Yet this point was harped on three times, signifying that the article writer thinks that need should be justified. It’s a typical anti-CCW argument. See here, here, here, and here. Those are just some examples, easily found by searching the words “guns” and “permit”. You can do it yourself and find a hell of a lot more, some very vociferous. There have been a gazillion gun threads here, and invariably someone eventually asks “why do you need one?” That usually kicks off the small penis/ego stroker comments, which in turn causes very heated disputes. And that’s just here.
The reporter was trolling for fodder to rip these guys. They gave him none so he made it seem as though some justification was necessary, when it is not.
The angle the reporter was going for was “Are professional athletes in Denver fearful for their lives?” That’s been the story ever since Darrant Williams was killed on New Year’s Day. When the reporter was asking why the guy needed a concealed weapon, the answer he wanted was “I’m afraid some gangster is going to try to kill me”.
Denver has been a bad plae to be for athletes/celebrities lately.
http://www.nydailynews.com/front/story/486500p-409445c.html
Sorry, this one’s not about gun laws.
Concealed carry permit applications are a public record in Colorado. Why shouldn’t they be?
See post #3.
No, three separate statements were reported. Sure the reporter could have written “Hodge, Evans, and a team spokesman all declined to give a reason for the permit”, but this was a fluff piece. Fluff pieces do their best to get an article sized story when all that really is necessary is 3 sentences.
Which is precisely my point. When you’re famous, the media will take any vaguely controversial thing you might do—legal or illegal— and blow it out of all proportion to its actual importance.
Bzzt.
Wrong.
Try again, moron.
I made very clear in my original post that i was criticizing the media’s tendency to focus on famous people. I emphasized that point by noting that "on a slow news day you could probably write ‘Basketball player walks down street, gets castigated by press for it.’ "
Sorry, “contact sport” and “fighting” are not the same thing.
Also, the fact that fighting goes on in the NHL does not mean that it is allowed in the rules. In fact, Rule 56 is quite clear about the penalties for fighting.
Furthermore, the fact that it might be winked at as part of the game in hockey does not, in my opinion, alter the hypocrisy of any media commentator who ignores fighting in hockey and criticizes it in basketball. In fact, i would venture to assert that the media should be more critical of the NHL for not cracking down on fighting. At least the NBA takes these incidents seriously, and tries to do something about it. Yet media commentots laugh off fighting in hockey, and act like the world is about to end when a coupe of basketballers exchange blows.
It’s not like fighting is somehow congenitally necessary in a contact sport like hockey. Other tough contact sports like rugby, American football, etc. manage to get by with very few fights.
The reason they can’t say why they want to carry a gun is because the true reason would get them drawn and quartered in both the press and public opinion. I occasionally carry a concealed handgun. My reason for doing so, and the reason most people who carry handguns do so, is to shoot those who seek to do you harm.
There is nothing wrong with this reason, and no reasonable person would deny you the right to do it, but it sounds terrible in the wrong context, and it’s pretty easy to put it into the wrong context, so there you have it. No answer is the best answer.
Then I guess it’s a good thing I didn’t say they were!
And the rules leave plenty of wiggle room for the refs to use their judgement so that fights don’t get “out of hand”. Penalties are given all the time for fights that do get out of hand. Read about it here. There’s a certain amount of controversy about fighting in hockey, but it’s an integral part of the sport at the professional level.
Do you watch much hockey and basketball? You’re allowed to slam the guy into the side of the rink in hockey, whereas anything coming even remotely close to that in basketball would be a penalty.
Completely besides the point. The real problem with basketball fighting, which you conveniently ignored, and why the media jumps all over it is that there is nothing seperating the fans from the players, and the fans often get involved. That’s almost impossible to happen in hockey. But the point is that the rules in basketball forbid contact that falls well short of fighting while hockey allows contact that is well within the bounds of fighting.
Hockey is unique in that aspect, and the same media frenzy would swirl around fighting in football or baseball (especially if it spilled over into the stadium). In fact, the Oakland A’s fans are notorious for throwing shit at the players, and whenever that happens to a significant degree it’s a big news story.
I watch plenty of hockey. I was born in Canada, and lived there for a couple of years of my adult life. Watched on TV, and went to games.
You can pretend all you like that slamming a guy into the boards is “like” fighting, but it’s not. That’s just like saying that tackling and blocking in NFL or rugby is “like” fighting; it’s not.
The issue here, too, is not just whether fighting is condoned within the sport, but what the media’s reaction to fighting is. If fighting between players is bad, which often seems to be the media’s attitude to basketball fighting, then it should be bad whether or not the morons running the sport condone it. Two guys hitting each other on a basketball court isn’t any different, in any objective sense, than two guys hitting each other on an ice rink.
In principle, i would accept that as a valid argument. But in the most recent incident involving the Knicks a few weeks ago, all the hyperbole surrounding the fight had nothing to do with the crowd. It wasn’t like the big Pistons-Pacers blowup of a year ago; the more recent incident was largely confined to the court, and still everyone was up in arms about it.
Again, i’d have more faith in your line of reasoning if the people in the media made clear that the issue of fan/player proximity was their main concern, but it’s often not even mentioned when criticisms of basketball violence are raised.
They could have dodged the issue entirely by telling the reporters that they wanted to shoot some hoops.
As far as I’m concerned the only ‘issue’ here is some bent-out-of-shape reporter thinking that there’s any issue at all with a citizen exercising his or her right to obtain a license to carry concealed.
Why would he think they need to justify their decision unless he thinks there’s something wrong with it?
People don’t ask for justification of a purchase of cake or a trip to the movie theater, they ask for justification of actions that they think are wrong. When someone asks you ‘Why do you think it’s OK to…’ it’s a sign that they think whatever they’re talking about is not OK in their book.
The ‘journalist’ was obviously trying to say that having a concealed carry license is the kind of shady, not-morally-right type of thing that needs to be justified.
Sigh.
Maybe you have to be in Denver to understand, but this isn’t about gun laws or concealed carry. Those things are pretty much non-issues out here in the West. The story is all about athletes being targeted for violent crime. It has happened at least four times in the past few years, and people are wondering what these athletes need to do to stay safe. It is a big story out here, but the concealed carry angle isn’t being played. If this were just a random interview then you might have a point, but in this case context is everything.
Look, guys. I support your right to carry a gun. Good on you, and I hope you’re around if I get mugged or something.
What I don’t understand is why it bothers you that it could be public record?
Would it bother you if something that you never intended to be public record were revealed?
The whole point of a CCW permit is that nobody is supposed to know. If people know that you are carrying right now you may as well put a scarlet A on your shirt, because a good number of people get weird when they know you have a gun. Trust me, I’ve been there when it happens. All of the sudden they look at you like you have leprosy, even though it’s perfectly legal for you to have a gun.
So what you waiting for? Ban his ass.
That’s really funny, because it doesn’t focus on athletes being targets of violent criminals, it focuses on their ‘refusal to justify’ an action that is perfectly legal and above board. The entire tone of the article is that these two basektball players, because they sought to legally carry concealed handguns, were operating with some nefarious purpose and up to no good.
If ‘out west’ as you say there’s no real problem with concealed carry, and it’s a non-issue, why was so much emphasis put on the statement that they would not ‘justify’ their actions? People don’t ask for justification unless they believe your actions are wrong.
They weren’t asked about violence against athletes, were they? The only angle being played in this article is ‘look at these two gun toting freaks.’