Trust the Los Angeles Times to come up with a bazillionth unqualified commentator on gun issues. This time, it’s LA Clipper J.J. Redick, peculiarly mingling a “pay college athletes” mini screed with an apparent plea for gun control. Allowing that he’s butchering a Thomas Jefferson quotation (and, boy howdy, does he), Redick avers that amateur sports don’t exist anymore at the college level, so players should be paid. An expert, perhaps, commenting in his field.
Then, however, comes the gun control weirdness: “… when the Second Amendment was created, we had to worry about bears … I think the laws should reflect where we are with guns.”
It’s the (ignorant) subtext that matters here. Off the court, Redick is a big dude—at 6’4”, he’s in the 100th percentile for height—and has likely dominated nearly every physical encounter he can remember since he was a teen. It’s no surprise that he takes for granted that people would almost certainly view provoking or accosting him as a losing proposition. Then there’s that $6.5 million a year salary: If he did feel threatened, he could hire tough folks to take his injuries or even do his dying for him.
When will these celebrity know-it-alls figure out that the rest of us don’t—and can’t—live that way? It’s high time they reacquired the decency to keep their mouths shut when they have no skin whatsoever in our game.
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