Tag: gun

Categories
Letter From The Editor Opinion

On Ja and Guns

When guns are involved, no one is invincible. (Photo: Tom Def | Unsplash)

You’ve all heard by now that Grizzlies star Ja Morant has been seen, once again, on a social media live stream flaunting a gun. Back in March, Ja, looking a bit intoxicated, flashed a small handgun on an Instagram Live from a nightclub in Denver, Colorado. He was suspended for eight games following that incident and entered a counseling program in Florida, issuing a statement saying he needed “to get help and work on learning better methods of dealing with stress and my overall well-being.” On May 13th, another video surfaced of Ja and friends having a big time in a car, with Ja swinging a gun to and fro in the passenger seat.

A few notes: The man is 23 years old. He’s from a small (small) town — he attended high school in Sumter, South Carolina, whose population was just over 43,000 in the 2020 census; for perspective, compare that to the just under 55,000 in Southaven, Mississippi, and 628,000 in Memphis. In 2019, at the age of 19, Ja signed a four-year contract with the Memphis Grizzlies worth $39.6 million. Last summer, he signed a five-year extension, a deal worth a guaranteed $193 million, with a potential $231 million if selected for All-NBA. I’m not an avid basketball fan and couldn’t tell you what All-NBA means without googling it. But this isn’t about basketball, Ja’s talent, or even the specifics of these and other reported events (an alleged confrontation with Indiana Pacers players in January, another with a teen at his home in March). This is about a young man, just past the age to even drink alcohol or buy cigarettes, who, like most young men his age, probably wants to have a good time. But unlike most young men his age, he has risen to fame quickly and has millions of dollars to play with, and that could arguably lead to a bad decision here and there, perhaps even a sense of invincibility. With enough money, you can get away with a lot (or think you can). But — especially when guns are involved — no one is invincible.

My issue with all of this has less to do with Ja Morant — who hasn’t broken a law that I’m aware of — having a gun. My issue is that he’s recklessly brandishing a gun.

To bring it closer to home, I’ll share this. Sixteen years ago this summer, I lost a close friend in a similar incident. It was 4th of July, and he and some peers were joyriding, intoxicated, and he was in the passenger seat waving a gun. I have no idea why he’d do that. Other than he was always a little wild, the life of the party, doing crazy stuff like eating live bugs or walking across fires to see people’s reactions. But one bump in the road, a slip of the finger (we’ll never know exactly) caused the gun to go off, and he shot himself in the head. I can tell you that his sister, one of my very best friends, did not want to see her brother in that condition in a local ER. Nor did she expect that night that she’d be by his bedside as he took his last breath. In the blink of an eye, a good time turned tragic — and this is what I’m reminded of when I see people handling guns without regard.

Ja Morant is a role model for countless youth. Waving guns around in public spaces or while jamming tunes in a car with your buddies is not “cool.” And yes, I know the probability of a gun going off on accident is low, but it is never zero. Add alcohol or inexperience to the mix, and it’s a recipe for disaster — especially for young folks who’ve never been properly trained on gun safety but sadly could likely get their hands on one with little effort. Guns are for hunting, for protection — not for showing off on a live stream to thousands of impressionable followers. Unfortunately, some will want to emulate this behavior. And they will.

According to Gun Violence Archive, as of May 21st, there have been 597 unintentional shootings in the U.S. so far this year. The most recent in Memphis happened on May 17th, in which a 5-year-old was accidentally shot and injured by a sibling.

This isn’t just about Ja. It’s about a culture in which people don’t respect the fact that a gun can end a life in a split second. Promoting reckless gun use has got to stop. So many lives depend on it.

Categories
News The Fly-By

Weapons Test

CREDIT: ODVDVEER | dreamstime.com

Last Wednesday, Markees Smith, a 15-year-old Manassas High School student, was arrested after his handgun accidentally went off, shooting a 16-year-old classmate in the arm.

On the same day, 20-year-old Eddie Smith was arrested at Fairley High for bringing a gun onto school grounds to confront a 17-year-old female student. While wrestling the gun away from Smith, a school security officer broke his hand.

The day before, a gun was recovered from Ridgeway High when a 14-year-old student was caught putting it inside a classmate’s folder.

Following last week’s incidents, the Memphis City Schools administration is asking schools to beef up weapons screenings. Currently, schools are required to perform nine random weapon checks per school year. The new request does not mandate additional screenings but leaves it to the discretion of principals.

“They’re not saying you have to do 15 as opposed to nine. They just want them to be more frequent,” says MCS spokesperson Shawn Pachuki. “They may come up with a [new] number down the road.”

School board member Tomeka Hart says the current requirement is only meant to be a minimum number of screenings.

“That certainly does not mean that a school only has to do nine,” Hart says. “We need our policies to be broad enough so that we’re not hand-holding our principals. We expect our principals to know their communities and to tailor their practices for the needs of the community.”

Prior to last week’s shooting, Manassas, a small school with fewer than 600 students, performed random metal detector screenings once a month.

“This was a student who knew there was a chance he’d be checked that day, and he still brought a gun to school,” Hart says. “He knew if he brought a gun to school, he’d be kicked out for a calendar year. We can’t get a whole lot tougher on our policies.”

Memphis City Schools adopted the use of metal detectors in 1996, but last year the district set a minimum number of screenings per year. Hart says using the metal detectors on a daily basis would take too much time.

“If it takes an hour to get kids through, do we start school an hour early or do we miss an hour out of the education day?” Hart asks.

At least one school, Booker T. Washington High on Lauderdale, conducts daily weapons checks. Principal Alisha Kiner says school doors open at 7:30 a.m., and students are screened upon entering the building. Those with backpacks enter one door, and those without are screened at another door. The school’s 755 students filter through screening until the tardy bell rings at 8:10 a.m.

“Believe it or not, we still find something every once in a while,” Kiner says. “To be honest, parents need to check their kids before they leave the house. That would make it so much easier.”

Every middle and high school in the district is equipped with at least one walk-through metal detector and two metal detector wands. Additional walk-through units are added per 500 students, and schools get more wands for every additional 300 students.

It can take six people to operate a check at small schools and up to 20 staff members at larger schools. Some schools opt to perform checks before class and others surprise students with random wand checks during class.

“They could set up a checkpoint in the hallway between periods. Kids walk out [of class] and then, bam, there’s a set-up there,” Pachucki says. “Or they might walk into a classroom and announce, okay, everybody, we’re going to do a metal detection check. Principals have the discretion to do them when they want and as frequently as they want.”

The real problem, Hart says, lies within the communities. She says educators should do a better job talking to parents and kids about guns.

“We have to get into our communities and talk to our parents. We need to go find out, from that particular family, what is it about your child that made him or her decide to bring a gun to school today?” Hart says.

Despite the three incidents last week, Hart says gun incidents at city schools are infrequent. However, MCS was unable to provide statistics of gun incidents by press time.

“We have to put these incidents into perspective,” Hart says. “It’s rare that kids bring guns into our schools. We have 115,000 students. Even if 20 kids in a school year bring their guns to school, the board has to look at the big picture.”

Categories
Opinion Viewpoint

Don’t Go for the Gun

The carnage at the Virginia Tech campus last month has inevitably revived the arguments about gun ownership in this country.

Advocates of arming the population as a means of preventing gun violence take the view that guns in the hands of citizens will always be effective in neutralizing the threat posed by an armed assailant, when nothing could be further from the truth.

There was a time, not too long ago, when I was the proud owner of several guns. I had lived my whole life in fear of guns and with the belief that their use and ownership should be severely controlled. So, to confront my fears and prejudices, I embarked on an episode of my life that saw me accumulate and familiarize myself with the use of a variety of firearms.

I was the proud owner of several exotic shotguns (for sport-shooting purposes) and managed to acquire more than a few Glock, Beretta, Smith & Wesson, and lesser-known handguns. I even had the big daddy of handguns, a .357 Magnum (the kind Clint Eastwood made famous in his “Go ahead, make my day” scene in Dirty Harry).

I joined a local gun club. I was living the fantasy every boy of my generation envisioned when he got his first toy gun. I even went to the trouble of being trained in the use of the handguns and getting a carry permit issued by the state. I carried a concealed weapon in the belief that in this Wild West town I needed protection from crazed criminals.

Then, I was robbed at gunpoint not 500 yards from a police station (a fact I throw in only to show that no place is totally safe from a determined criminal). The robber surprised me as I was entering a store late at night and already had his gun drawn and pointing at me from no more than five feet away, much the same way the assailant in Virginia was already brandishing one (or more) of his weapons when he confronted his victims.

As it happens, I was “carrying,” and I gave a fleeting thought, during what seemed to be the longest few seconds of my life, to wondering whether I could, O.K. Corral-style, outdraw him. But I realized, thankfully, I probably couldn’t shoot him before he shot me (or worse, that we would both die in a hail of bullets), and I abandoned that thought as I threw him my wallet.

Since I’m writing about the incident, I obviously did the right thing — not to mention that I’m not sure I could have shot another human being, even at the risk of my own life. And I’m not sure whether I could have hit my target. I must admit I still have moments when I regret not having at least tried to defend myself, but then I realize: Charles Bronson I’m not.

Even law-enforcement personnel, who are thoroughly trained in the use of firearms, will tell you that in the heat of the moment, the likelihood of hitting your target diminishes substantially.

The proponents of a ubiquitously armed citizenry assume that merely carrying a gun equips the person carrying it to use it effectively and rationally, when the fact is, increasing the number of guns being carried in the population will only create more guns available to be stolen or used for some unintended purpose (i.e., suicide, crimes of passion, accidental firing, bystander injury, etc.).

My gun-toting days are now behind me, primarily because of my recognition of the uselessness of doing so, born of my experience with an armed assailant. I don’t regret familiarizing myself with the world of firearms, but my experience taught me guns aren’t the solution to gun violence, they’re the problem.

Marty Aussenberg writes the “Gadfly” column in “Political Beat” atwww.memphisflyer.com, where a longer version of this essay first appeared.