Will Guns and Athletes Finally Mix?

Just two days after the shooting of Redskin's safety Sean Taylor in his home, a few serious questions should be asked: Are athletes easy targets of violence? What do athletes have to do to keep themselves safe? and more importantly, Should athletes carry guns? Sean Taylor was shot in the middle of the night in his home. No night club, no strippers, just him and his girlfriend laying in bed. After hearing the rumble of an intruder in his house, Taylor apparently pulled out a machete, and now we can see that a gun shot will kill a person before you can retaliate with a machete. The murder of Taylor comes a little over a year after University of Miami's Bryan Pata was shot and killed just outside of his apartment. Once again, no drugs, no strippers, just an innocent man coming home from practice and being gunned down before he can step foot through his front door.

So what do athletes have to do to keep themselves safe? We don't know if things would have been different if Sean Taylor had pulled out a gun instead of a machete after hearing the intruder. Maybe athletes should be allowed to carry guns for safety. But if the tables were turned and Sean Taylor would have gotten in a shot and killed the intruder then it's highly possible that the media would be condemning him for using a gun and owning a gun in the first place. It's a catch 22, if a man is shot and killed then he should've been carrying a gun for safety. If a man is approached by a gunman and he defends himself by shooting the gunman, then he shouldn't have had the gun at all.

This theory could potentially get out of control. If every person carried a gun then people would be shooting each other all over the place, just because they thought that they were unsafe. This is the same for athletes, too. Let's go back to Pacman Jones' infamous Vegas strip club incident. If he were carrying a gun on that night, he might be serving more than a one year suspension from the NFL.

Then there's the possibility of all athletes being perceived as criminals or thugs if they were to carry guns for safety precautions. For instance, the Brandon Meriweather and Willie Cooper gun incident. Brandon Meriweather's name was slightly tarnished during the 2007 NFL draft. Certain media outlets were saying that the Patriots were taking a chance drafting someone with "his history." Yes, there was the helmet slinging incident against FIU which is a different story entirely. But the gun incident is fishy because different sources have said that the deatails of the story are false. I've even heard from reliable sources that Meriweather actually shot Cooper with a BB gun on accident and was embarassed, so they changed the story up a little bit. But from the moment that the story hit the presses, the Canes were proclaimed as thugs. I mean how many times during Canes' games do they put up the graphic of the new rules that Coach Shannon has enforced: "No guns (there's an idea)."

So what do professional athletes have to do to keep themselves safe if guns have such a negative connotation? always walking around with five bodyguards at all times and never having a normal life again. Because people won't stop and stare at you if you're walking around with five gigantic men dressed in all black.