Original article:
"What About Homeland Security?"
Gun Safety and Not-so-ordinary Citizens
by Richard Blow
New Yorkers are understandably jittery about safety just now. On the Upper East Side, women who used to be buying $4,000 Fendi handbags are snapping up gas maskes and Cipro. In Midtown, stores and restaurants are asking for proof of identification, and not just to see if you're old enough to drink. And at Yankee Stadium, men can't carry backpacks into the ballpark. Which makes what happened with Damien Robinson and the New York Jets all the more puzzling.
Robinson is a talented free safety who signed with the Jets this past April for $10 million over five years. Before the teams recent game against the Miami Dolphins, police searched his Lincoln Navigator as he was driving into Giants Stadium in the Meadowlands, where the Jets play their home games. The searches have become SOP since Sept.11th.) In the back of Robinson's Navigator, not far from his wife and two young daughters, a bomb-sniffing dog turned up a Bushmaster .223 assault rifle, three ammunition cartridges containing 30 rounds a piece, and two boxes of ammo with 100 rounds each.
The Bushmaster is an intimidating gun-it looks like something you'd find being fired from the caves and mountains of Afghanistan. Aesthetics aside, it is illegal in New Jersey, and has been for the past 11 years. Possession of it can be punished with five years in prison. According to "The New York Times," Robinson told officers at the scene that he had bought the gun in New York, that he had been using it for target practice within the last week, and that he had forgotten it was in the car.
But the New Jersey State Police and the New York Jets didn't seem too worried about Robinson's behavior. The police charged him with illegal possession of a weapon and released him on $7,500 bail-in plenty of time to make kick-off. Jets coach Herman Edwards, who found out about the arrest half and hour prior to game time, promptly started his free agent star. "If you know Damien...it's and honest mistake," Edwards explained.
An honest mistake? Set aside or a moment the questions of why anyone would own a machine gun and why it requires target practice. How many rules of safe gun ownership did Robinson violate? He kept his gun and ammunition in the same place, not separated, as responsible gun owners know to do. For a week, perhaps more, he left gun and ammo in his car, where they could easily have been stolen or found by his kids. Finally, he tried to carry an illegal machine gun into the parking lot of a football stadium on game day. That's not "an honest mistake," That's a bunch of stupid ones with potentially lethal consequences.
The New Jersey police, meanwhile, insist that they treated Robinson as they would any citizen. "He's going to face the charges just like everybody else," Sgt. Al Della Fave told the "Times." But if the police found a fan driving a Lincoln Navigator into the Meadowlands with an illegal machine gun and 300 rounds of ammo, would they really have allowed him to plunk down in his seat an hour later? maybe before Sept. 11. Now now. And nor should they.