By now, everybody has heard the story of Plaxico Burress shooting himself in the leg with a gun in a New York nightclub. Burress is facing a minimum of three and a half years in prison if he’s convicted of New York’s ridiculously stiff handgun law, not to mention pretty much losing his job. But no one seems to be mentioning the whole concept of NFL players and guns.

Just this month, ESPN the Magazine ran a large feature about remembering Shawn Taylor. Taylor was shot in a break in at his home and killed last year. NFL players continue to fear for their safety.

The NFL’s official policy is that players cannot carry guns on NFL premises’. That means when they drive to and from the team facilities, everyone knows they are unarmed. These men are walking targets and the NFL won’t let them use their legal right to protect themselves with arms.

Lost in the news this week was that Burress’ teammate, Steve Smith, was held up and robbed at gunpoint outside of his New Jersey home. Until the NFL realizes that all of their employees are targets and does something about it, we have unfortunately not heard the last story about an active NFL player getting murdered or robbed.

I’m not defending Plaxico Burress. If he wanted to protect himself, he should have gotten the gun licensed and had the proper carry and conceal permits wherever he planned to take it. Not knowing the laws of where you are puts you at the mercy of that jurisdiction. Burress doesn’t have much of an excuse for breaking the New York handgun law.

Having said that, I don’t think Burress should be looking at three and a half to 15 years either. Do you think it’s fair that Burress will likely spend more time in prison than Michael Vick?

Then you have the media jackasses who are treating this like a murder case. I saw one idiot on ESPN this week saying that this is worse than anything an NFL player has done before. Really? Worse than Michael Vick? Rae Carruth? Ray Lewis? O.J.?

The media and the city of New York are going overboard on this. Yes, what he did was wrong and he deserves punishment. But putting Plaxico Burress in jail for three years effectively ends his NFL career and will put him in an unemployable state at 34 years old.

I’m not saying that the law should make an exception based on who committed the crime, but they shouldn’t make him an example either. When your mayor is holding press conferences to say that an NFL player should be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law and he’s facing “three and a half years in the slammer,” you are not treating him like anyone else. That’s what making an example of someone is all about. Michael Bloomberg wants nothing more than to send Burress to jail for a few years so that the thugs in his city learn a lesson. That’s not justice.

And while I’m on the topic, John Feinstein of the Washington Post completely missed the point on this story. Living in the most gun-fearing city in the country, Feinstein apparently only understand sports statistics, as he wants sports to completely ban all of their athletes from carrying guns, and oh yeah, while we’re at it, abolish the Second Amendment.

I don’t want to get all political on you, but every study in the history of studies shows that allowing guns prevents crime, not the other way around.

Example A: Washington D.C. enacted a virtual ban on handguns in 1976. Between 1976 and 1991, Washington D.C.’s homicide rate rose 200%, while the U.S. rate rose 12%.

Example B, from Harvard Law: “…a series of studies by John Lott and his coauthor David Mustard conclude that the issuance of millions of permits to carry concealed handguns is associated with drastic declines in American homicide rates.”

The sooner Feinstein understands this simple statistic, the sooner he can stop writing idiotic things. (Having said that, he’s a fantastic sports writer — as long as he sticks to sports, apparently).

Ask Shawn Taylor’s family if he was better off not being allowed to own a gun. Ask Darrent Williams’ family the same thing. Ask Steve Smith if he wants to start packing.

It’s a dangerous job being an NFL player. Not only on the field, but off. Banning athletes from carrying guns may cut down on athletes getting arrested, but I guarantee it will increase the number that are killed off the field.

The NFL and the media need to pay more attention to the Steve Smiths of the NFL if they want to understand the Plaxico Burress’ of the NFL. Professional athletes are sitting ducks to criminals. Yes, some of them are thugs themselves, but many of them are not. This doesn’t mean that they should not be afforded the same constitutional rights that the rest of us have.

Telling the world that this group of 1700 men with average salaries in the seven-figures is not allowed to arm themselves is an invitation to take them by force. Would the NFL rather have this or less arrests of guys shooting themselves in the leg?

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