Why Gilbert Arenas Should Never Own Guns

Struggling knee patient . Eccentric millionaire. Alleged cuckolded fiancee’ and father.

NBA all-star.

Is it his right as an American to do so? Absolutely. But anyone whose lived the life of Gilbert Arenas—particularly the last three years—should be self-aware about what they might be prone to do with firearms at their disposal.

Again, it’s not a discussion about rights as it is who is a right fit for a gun. No one wants those who don’t value their intended purpose to have them, but for Bible-thumpers and thugs alike, the law trumps the common sense of the common man when it comes to weaponry for the citizenry.

And then you have Gilbert Arenas; a man whom basketball angels have blessed, and the world’s demons have tortured. His recent struggles—private and professional—seemed to have found a safe harbor to dock, and his play has shown the effects of a beaten-back emotional tide.

And then he gets caught with a gun in a Verizon Center locker. His reasoning, the safety of his daughters, is the most notable and respectable you could extrapolate from a potential concealed handgun charge in Washington D.C. But it speaks to the dichotomy of Arenas’ maturity; primarily through his ignorance of the nationally-famous gun laws in the nation’s capital.

And frightfully, its speaks to a fear or concern about why his children might easily locate handguns in a sprawling suburban estate.

Arenas could’ve easily called his local police department to inquire about disposing guns. He could’ve asked the Wizards about resources to accomplish the same objective. Instead, he brought them to work.

And why have guns that he suddenly needs to get rid of? Citing the birth of his second daughter doesn’t shoot very straight; the same guns shared a residence with his four-year-old.

In tandem with his well-documented on and off-the-court struggles, this situation seems to be wrong all the way around. There’s no reason to spell out the scenarios in which guns can lead to a very bad turn of events, but the Arenas household seems all the more volatile an environment for those kind of events.

Maybe its more responsible to come out and say it—if you read a headline in the Washington Post that began “Washington Wizard involved in accidental shooting,” Arenas would be the name that would immediately come to my mind. The eccentricity, the documented adversity, it would all seem, from the outside at least, the perfect storm for tragedy.

Everybody has the right to own guns. Not everybody knows how to do the right thing with them. Fortunately, the wrong actions for the right reasons might have prevented a tragic fall from grace for a well-intentioned NBA superstar.

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