The first time I ever saw LeBron James play basketball, it was on ESPN. He was in high school, but was such a promising talent that one of his games was aired for the entire country to see. I hadn’t watched high school ball since I played and I haven’t really watched it since. I only watched this one to see this supposedly great talent.
And he’s good. Damn good.
I don’t think he’s as great as Michael Jordan, but that could be my own biases.
Yet, like Michael, LeBron will sometimes take a shot he really shouldn’t. The difference between him and Jordon, though, is Jordan generally took those shots on the court. James, not so much.
LeBron James’ tone was passionate, yet weary. Another shooting, this time in Las Vegas, more innocent people dead, and the Lakers superstar seemed to recognize that his plea for gun control sounds like a broken record.
“It just goes back to what I said before about guns in America,” he said. “I think it’s such a longer conversation, but we keep dealing with the same story, this same conversation, every single time it happens, and it just continues to happen.
“The ability to get a gun, the ability to do these things over and over and over, and there’s been no change is literally ridiculous.”
…
“My brother from back home texted me and told me to be safe out here because he heard about the shooting at UNLV,” James said.
“It makes no sense that we continue to lose innocent lives, on campuses, schools, at shopping markets and movie theaters and all type of stuff. It’s ridiculous. The fact that we haven’t changed anything — it’s actually been easier to be able to own a firearm. It’s stupid.”
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Really, LeBron? It’s been made easier to own a firearm?
Then please, oh great and wise expert on gun laws in this country, please regale us with your citation of gun law changes that have made it easier for people to buy firearms.
No, I’m genuinely curious just what’s been done to make it easier to buy a gun.
Sure, North Carolina ended their permit-to-purchase requirement for handguns, but that’s a single state. Washington state made it harder, though, by mandating training. Colorado enacted a waiting period for handguns as well.
See, the problem here is that LeBron, because he’s famous, thinks that he’s somehow smarter than the rest of us. He thinks he’s somehow more familiar with the issue than we are.
Don’t get me wrong, he’s entitled to have an opinion and he’s entitled to voice that opinion. The problem is that he really doesn’t know what he’s talking about.
For example, we don’t see anything in the shooter’s background, from what we know of it, that would suggest he should have been prohibited from buying a gun, even under the most restrictive measures James could probably imagine that might almost mesh with the Second Amendment. He was a popular professor, even.
So how would changing laws actually accomplish anything.
Meanwhile, our non-gun homicide rate is higher, as a nation, than other developed nations’ total homicide rate, which means there’s something wrong within this country and its culture that has nothing to do with firearms.
But LeBron doesn’t know that. He’s never bothered to learn the facts. He hasn’t had to, in part because American culture trips all over itself when celebrities are involved. He’s never faced debate over his ignorant takes–and yes, they’re based in ignorance because he’s never bothered to educate himself. At best, he’s taken the anti-gun talking points and swallowed them whole, never looking at the other side of things.
I’d tell LeBron to shut up and dribble, but the truth of the matter is that I don’t care enough to tell him to just do his job. I’d just like it if he’d either shut up or learn what the heck he’s talking about for a change.
