Apparently, Plaxico Burress Isn’t a BigLaw Firm in Merger Talks

… which is what the name sounded like to me.  Lots of those bigname law firms have what are, to my eyes and ears, funny names.

Apparently, I’m about the only person in the country not to have previously heard about the famous football player, Plaxico Burress, who achieved even greater fame the other day when he managed to:

1. Clumsily shoot himself in the right thigh with a Glock, in a bar/restaurant, and simultaneously and not coincidentally arrange to
2. Get himself charged with carrying a handgun without a license, in New York, where they’re fairly serious about that sort of thing.

The second is kind of a big deal.  Where I live, carrying without a permit is a crime, sure, but it’s a gross misdemeanor — for a first offense; with a clean record, we’re talking a fine and some community service, maybe. 

In New York, upon conviction, it’s three and a half years enjoying state hospitality, with no probation. Ouch.

Different folks have weighed in on different aspects of it.

Over at Simple Justice, in the comments, Scott Greenfield’s taking another shot at Scalia’s Uriah Heep-like judicial modesty in one part of the Heller decision.  (Alas, Scalia followed universal SCOTUS precedent of not running an opinion by me; I’d have suggested taking the bad paragraph out, honest.)  Scott was also one of the bunches of folks pointing to Kopel’s piece (here, by way of Doug Berman), arguing strongly (if perhaps a bit prematurely) that New York’s law is unconstitutional.

I’ll leave the unconstitutional part, for the moment, to the lawyers.  Philosophically, I’m enough of a legal deconstructionist to say that what’s unconstitutional is what a bunch of folks wearing the right robes are willing to say is unconstitutional and frighten other folks into not doing.

Forget the legal issue — what’s more important is that it’s fucked up, from the start.

For those not familiar with New York’s fairly restrictive handgun permit law, Scott sums it up nicely at the link above. (Orthogonally: the Sullivan act was originally an artifact of Tammany Hall, passed to make it easy to for “Big Tim” Sullivan to make sure that he and his bodyguards were armed, their political opponents both unarmed, and easy to frame by the simple expedient of slipping a gun into their pocket and arresting them. Which is why some Tammany opponents took to sewing their pockets shut.)  

Less nicely — if you want a carry permit in New York:  first have tons of money, and then spend lots of it carefully, and remember that if it’s delivered in a paper bag to the local precinct, if somebody gets mad it you, it’s a “bribe”, and not a “political contribution”.  Political contributions are safer, but prepare to make yourself very popular with at least a lot of politicians, even if you’re unpopular with some — think Donald Trump, Barry Slotnick, Raoul Felder, and Robert DiNiro.

Now, there’s something more than a little strange about that, in lots of ways. Let’s back up a moment.

When you’re out and about, keep an eye for armed security guards. You’ll find them, pretty much any time large amounts of cash are being moved around, no matter where you are.  New York, Minnesota, Texas, California, Illinois even in Winnipeg (yeah, the one in Manitoba, Canada), where possession of handguns in public by folks who aren’t cops is otherwise unknown.  Bags of money?  Guys with guns hanging around it.

Why?  Well, the idea is that if these people didn’t carry guns and hang with the bags of money, other people with guns — or knives or clubs or pointed sticks or whatever — would take the money, incidentally hurting or killing the folks who were carrying it.

Money’s important; got that.  Money’s worth protecting.  Got that.

But what about things that aren’t bags of money? 

Hence the New York carry law:  if you’re rich enough, and maybe famous enough, you get to protect yourself, if you want to. Maybe.   One columnist finds a racial barrier, and I’m not sure he had to look very hard:

I couldn’t find a record of one black person being licensed to carry a concealed firearm in New York City. Despite the large amount of black athletes, businessmen and entertainers who live in and frequent New York. Why don’t black athletes and entertainers have permits to carry concealed weapons in New York? Don’t they face the same threats as Stern and Imus? Is is that black people don’t apply for gun permits or that the board who issues them is racist and doesn’t give them to black people?

Which is probably true, but misses the point:  what’s worth protecting?

If we were to accept that in addition to “bags of money” and then add “white rich and famous people” I’m fine that we also ought to add “black athletes, businessmen and entertainers.” If we do, I guess we’re a step toward solving the horrible oppression that wealthy and successful black athletes, businessmen (and, presumably, businesswomen) and entertainers face, but aren’t we leaving a lot of people out?

In fact, I’ll argue, as Kopel does, implicitly, that we’re privileging precisely the wrong kind of people.  Rich athletes, businessmen, entertainers — regardless of their skin’s melanin content — can, in practice, do the same thing that the bags o’ money do:  hire guys with guns to stand around and protect them, which is what Burress, with his six-year, $25 million contract (plus endorsements, presumably not including for Glock) could have done.

But how about other folks?  Here’s the thing:  if we accept the notion that the reason we let some people carry guns in public is to protect bags of money or the ability of wealthy people to continue to breathe, the problem isn’t that rich black guys like Plaxico Burress might have had difficulty getting a permit and should have hired a guy to pretend he was a bag of money. 

It’s that folks who neither are nor have big bags of money get to hope that they’re not yet another pointed reminder to the world that when seconds count, the police are only minutes away.

And that’s what’s screwed up there. And, for that matter, in the Windy city, as well.

Here in Minnesota?  Down in Texas?  The Dakotas, the Carolinas, Pennsylvania, Vermont, New Hampshire and — literally — more than two dozen more states where you don’t have to be a bag of money or rich and famous to be able to protect yourself? 

Not so much.  By which, I really mean not so much.  It’s still screwed up, in most places — just not so much.

More on that another time.