Ja Morant carrying a gun in a strip club is a case of a young person doing something dumb. That’s it. This isn’t a gun control issue, race issue, gang issue or anything else of the sort. Don’t tell that to the American sports media who have somehow let this massive nothing story run amok.
It is predictable yet annoying, nonetheless. With countless outlets paying bumbling fools millions of dollars annually to spit out banal hot takes, everything has to be something even if that means common sense and critical thinking go out the window.
And boy, these didn’t simply go out the window. They were thrown out with the velocity of a prime Aroldis Chapman fastball. Speaking of the former closer, he was suspended for shooting off a gun around his partner back in 2015.
There are two divergent paths we could go on at this point. The first is sports media’s inability to focus on something once the news cycle has passed. However, it is the second path that deserves more attention in this instance. Ja Morant carrying a gun in a strip club is a massive nothing story.
Every day across America, 23-year-old men do foolish things. It has nothing to do with race, sexual orientation, money or anything else. Getting upset at the NBA star for being dumb is akin to being angry with fire for being hot. What were you expecting?
That isn’t to say this behavior should be normalized or even tolerated. Morant going on social media to show he’s packing heat is dumb as all hell. However, this is much different from Gilbert Arenas and Javaris Crittenton bringing guns into a locker room or Plaxico Burress shooting himself in the club.
Those were events that warranted media scrutiny. Ja Morant carrying a gun in a strip club is different, though. For starters, Burress and Arenas were grown men who knew better. Second, those incidents show a distinct lack of control. Sure, a slippery slope argument could lead you to believe Morant was following in their footsteps.
And some in the media have gladly slid down that logical fallacy which, in turn, has promoted peers to embrace other logical fallacies. Ultimately, Ja Morant carrying a gun in a strip club is a massive nothing story because people in their early 20s are prone to be idiots. The Memphis Grizzlies guard will hopefully learn from it and talking heads can get off their soapboxes.
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