Like everybody else, I was appalled when I heard about NBA star Gilbert Arenas and teammate Javaris Crittenton pulling guns on each other in a locker-room dispute. Yesterday, though, the story took a funny turn: TMZ reported that one of Arenas’ unlicensed guns was a gold-plated Desert Eagle. If you don’t know your firearms, the Desert Eagle is a freakin’ huge weapon that weighs four pounds, with some models sporting a 10-inch barrel. Watch this video of a woman firing one of those and getting clocked in the head by the recoil.
Who else has a Desert Eagle? Saddam Hussein had one, with the same gold plating, no less. Also, Mike Myers had Goldmember carry one, appropriately enough, in Austin Powers in Goldmember. I think anybody who has one of these .50 caliber hand cannons should have an inscription engraved on the barrel that says: “If you think I’m big, you should see my owner’s penis.” Let’s face it, the barrel can probably accommodate the whole sentence.
People are shocked that Arenas copped to pulling the gun as a joke, but I remember the story told about Colombian soccer player Faustino Asprilla, who not only showed up to practice one day in Chile with a gun, but fired it several times in the air. When his teammates calmed down enough to ask him why he did it, he said he was “trying to lighten the mood.” So Arenas isn’t the only star athlete to associate gunplay with humor.
