WEAPONS OF CHOICE
SHOOT THIS! NBA TRIES TO SLAM DUNK YOUR FIREARMS
Obama 'proud' of league's alliance with anti-gun group
Douglas Ernst
The basketball league that once celebrated a team named the Washington Bullets now wants politicians to take Americans’ guns.
The National Basketball Association has teamed up with Everytown for Gun Safety, former New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s anti-gun group. Hollywood director Spike Lee filmed ads for the group that will begin airing Christmas Day.
All-stars Steph Curry, Carmelo Anthony, Joakim Noah and Chris Paul took part in the campaign.
“We know far too many people who have been caught up in gun violence in this country, and we can do something about it,” Kathleen Behrens, the league’s president of social responsibility and player programs, told the New York Times on Wednesday.
The NBA enters the national gun-control debate despite evidence that homicides by firearms in the U.S. have fallen since 1993.
“In 1993, there were seven homicides by firearm for every 100,000 Americans, according to a Pew Research Center analysis of data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention,” the Washington Post reported Dec. 3. “By 2013, that figure had fallen by nearly half, to 3.6 – a total of 11,208 firearm homicides. The number of victims of crimes involving guns that did not result in death (such as robberies) declined even more precipitously, from 725 per 100,000 people in 1993 to 175 in 2013.”
Complicating matters for the league is its own history with crime. The NBA’s reputation was so bad in the 2000s that fans called the Portland Trail Blazers the “Jail Blazers.”
A small sampling of players who tarnished the league’s reputation over the years include:
- Jason Kidd: Convicted of domestic abuse in January 2001.
- Allen Iverson: Arrested on assault, weapons offenses and terrorist threats in July 2002.
- Ron Artest: Arrested and charged with domestic violence in March 2007. He was also suspended for 73 games after a Nov. 19, 2004, brawl with Detroit Pistons fans.
- Sebastian Telfiar: Arrested in April 2007 for having a .45-caliber handgun after he was pulled over for speeding.
- Delonte West: Pulled over for speeding in September 2009 and arrested after cops found him with a Beretta 9mm handgun, a Ruger .357 magnum handgun, and a Remington 870 shotgun.
- Ben Wallace: Pulled over in September 2011 and arrested with a concealed weapon.
image: http://www.wnd.com/files/2015/12/Ron-Artest-mugshot.jpg
Ron Artest was arrested and charged with domestic violence in March 2007
The Times said the partnership between Everytown for Gun Safety and the NBA started when Lee brought up the idea during a November interview with John Skipper, ESPN’s president, who then took it to Adam Silver, the NBA’s commissioner.
Lee told Skipper the U.S. needed “common sense” gun control, “but because of the NRA, politicians and the gun manufacturers, we’re dying under that tyranny,” the newspaper reported.
President Obama, who plans to announce executive orders on gun control within weeks, applauded the NBA’s alliance with Bloomberg on Thursday.
“I’m proud of the @NBA for taking a stand against gun violence. Sympathy for victims isn’t enough – change requires all of us speaking up,” Obama tweeted.
Everytown for Gun Safety was launched in 2014 as an umbrella organization of two other Bloomberg groups, Mayors Against Illegal Guns and Moms Demand Action for Gun Sense in America. The former mayor vowed to infuse the organization with $50 million.
“This is about looking at the long game,” said Shannon Watts, founder of Moms Demand Action, one of three groups under Everytown for Gun Safety’s purview, told the Los Angeles Times Oct. 22. “We’re not going to win every battle. The fact that we’ve won so many in such a short period of time is amazing.”
Read more at http://www.wnd.com/2015/12/shoot-this-nba-tries-to-slam-dunk-your-firearms/#bgYX35iPbXwUAEWW.99
No comments:
Post a Comment