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But a funny thing happened the other day.  Guy walks into a bar.  But not just any guy.  A guy with a Super Bowl ring, a $35 million contract – oh, and an unregistered, nine-millimeter Glock semi-automatic handgun – the preferred piece of gangsta rappers and NFL wide receivers everywhere. 

This is stupid, sure – but not new, or rare.  Former Detroit Lion Lomas Brown told the New York Times five years ago that “the vast majority of players in the N.F.L. have guns.  You have all these players packing guns wherever they go.  It’s a disaster waiting to happen.”

Five years later, it’s just a disaster that keeps on happening.  The players pack guns, they say, because they feel unsafe.  Unsafe?  These are the biggest, baddest people our society can produce.  If they feel so unsafe they need to carry semi-automatic handguns just to go out for a drink, perhaps the rest of us mere mortals should be carrying AK-47s to the grocery store.  Whatever.  But, I tell you this: I am NEVER going to that nightclub!

But Plaxico takes it up another notch.  He decides the best place to keep his gun is in the waistband of his pants.  But not just any pants, we’re talking sweat pants – because nothing says class like walking into a New York night club sporting sweat pants.  (This is what offended my mother’s conservative Canadian sensibilities the most.  “Whatever was he thinking wearing sweat pants to a night club?”  I don’t know, Ma, but it gets worse.)

And nothing says common sense like expecting your elastic waistband to hold your two-pound handgun in place.  What could go wrong?

It gets better.  Plaxico decides it would be even smarter to make sure the gun is loaded, and the safety is off.  I can’t speak for you, but nothing makes ME feel safer than putting a loaded handgun with the safety off in my pants, pointing straight at my groin -- especially if I know it’s been secured by an elastic waistband.  For me, it’s more than protection.  It’s peace of mind. 

It’s also natural selection, just waiting to happen. 

Well, sure enough, Plaxico’s series of brilliant decisions pays off when the Glock starts sliding down his leg, and fires a bullet into his thigh.  Now, this was the kind of nightclub where no one takes much notice when a gun goes off.  But I bet Plaxico did. 

His friends called a doctor who took care of the shooting victim without informing the police.  In New York, this is also illegal – and the doctor is now suspended, too. 

Mayor Michael Bloomberg assured New Yorkers that Burress would get no special treatment.  That means, if he’s convicted, he’ll spend a minimum of three-and-a-half years in prison. 

I don’t know if Plaxico Burress will feel “Unsafe” there – but wherever he goes, he should feel lucky.  Very lucky.

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