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NEWS > SPORTS > NBA CONCEALED GUN POLICY UNDER FIRE AFTER GILBERT ARENAS INCIDENT
NBA CONCEALED GUN POLICY UNDER FIRE AFTER GILBERT ARENAS INCIDENT
January 3 2010
Washington, D.C. – The NBA has long had a reputation as a rough and tumble league, embracing and being embraced by a sub culture of American society that frequently exhibits bad behaviour. Inevitably, some of that attitude makes its way
onto the court in the form of fisticuffs. While violent outbursts occur in other sports as well, fights in basketball are frequently more violent and more shocking than in any other sport with their level of damage and sheer ferocity, the odd time they do occur.
The league in turn has done little to dissuade such behaviour, retroactively punishing players with light fines and suspensions but all of that might have to change in the wake of an incident in the locker room of the Washington Wizards. Just before Christmas star Gilbert Arenas and teammate Javaris Crittenton reportedly pulled guns on each other after a debate over a gambling debt. While it’s likely that the incident will result in serious fines and suspension for both players, it is the NBA itself that may suffer the most from the incident. At issue is the perception that the league’s soft attitude to bad behaviour allows this type of incident to occur, and that there policy of allowing concealed handguns into the locker room directly resulted in this incident.
“The league has done a great job of keeping incidents under the radar in the past but this one is a big deal. Aside from the fact that it involves a big name player, the league has been trying to keep its nose clean in recent years so that David Stern can propose legalized gambling in the league. The fact that this took place in Washington, under the nose of the very people he is going to have to convince, that’s just a disaster,” said an NBA insider who preferred to remain anonymous. “The league has behavioural issues of course but the real issue, the one that’s really going to cause a problem, is the league’s weapons policy which is far behind that of the other major leagues.”
Unlike the NBA, the NFL, NHL, and MLB do not allow firearms either concealed or not into locker rooms. The NBA only recently prohibited the presence of automatic weapons on the court.
“The league is going to have to move forward and they are going to have to work with
the player’s union in order to do that. Privately they have been saying for years that the gun policy is a little outdated and have frequently blamed the union for keeping it alive, but in reality they’ve thrived on the policy and done a lot to make their players happy,” continued the insider. “By keeping the players happy they have had a lot of success. I imagine it will be very difficult to do away with the concealed weapons policy considering the battle they had with automatic weapons, never mind the huge battle it took to keep hand grenades out of arenas.”
In that issue the league eventually forced arena owners to draft policies banning explosives from the arenas.
“Ultimately though they are going to have to change things if they want to bring gambling to the league. There’s also a serious risk that someone could end up getting shot. If it’s a player like Crittendon then it’s not a huge deal, but if some like Arenas took a couple of shots to the chest it would be a totally different story,” continued the insider. “I think they are seriously looking into it this time though. I think they will forced to do something about the policy if they want the league to survive in the long term.”
Landmines and claymores have been banned from the league since the early 1960’s.
Alexi Orton, Sports Correspondent
NEWS > SPORTS > NBA CONCEALED GUN POLICY UNDER FIRE AFTER GILBERT ARENAS INCIDENT
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