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Former Giants star Plaxico Burress has pleaded guilty to attempted criminal possession of a weapon in 2nd degree and will server 2 years in prison, in what WCBS 2 says is a deal with the Manhattan DA's office. It sounds like a deal, since he was facing 3 1/2 to 15 years on the three charges he was indicted on—"two counts of criminal possession of a weapon and one count of reckless endangerment."
The Post says Burress's sentence is 20 months, but the Daily News explains that Burress's lawyer Benjamin Brafman believes his client will serve 20 months if he behaves behind bars. He will turn himself in on September 22. Burress shot himself in the leg—with his own unregistered-in-NY gun—at a Manhattan nightclub last November.
Brafman said of the sentence, "This was not an intentional criminal act. prison sentence is a very severe punishment." To keep track, former Atlanta Falcon (now Philadelphia Eagle) Michael Vick served 18 months (of a 23 month sentence) in a federal prison for dogfighting while Cleveland Brown player Donte Stallworth served 24 days (of a 30 day sentence) for DUI manslaughter charges in Miami.
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It appears that his lawyer goes to the same barber as Bernie Madoff.
"Michael Vick served 18 months (of a 23 month sentence) in a federal prison for dogfighting while Cleveland Brown player Donte Stallworth served 24 days (of a 30 day sentence) for DUI manslaughter charges in Miami."
Donte KILLED a man under the influence yet he only gets 24 days compared to Vick and Plex. How ridiculous.
And wouldn't have even gotten a traffic ticket if he hadn't been drinking.
If you get mowed down while jaywalking, it's not the driver's bad.
In this state (New York) it is—all vehicular traffic must yield to pedestrians. This goes for New England as well.
I just gotta know... What was Burress' lapel pin?
I almost shot my nuts off?
What is lost in the discussion over this case is that New York City's gun laws are unfair and unconstitutional. Just applying for a permit to have a gun in your home—which is your RIGHT under the Constitution—is extremely costly and in many cases will cost MORE than your firearm.
Burress should be ordered to take a basic course in gun safety and buy a holster.
Why hasn't there been a lawsuit against this kind of unconstitutional interference?
While we are it I want to see a lawsuit against the Port Authority for unconstitutional interference with interstate commerce. Getting from New Jersey to NY should not take $8. Experts have estimated that the GW bridge can easily be maintained if they charged less than $2.
At the time the Constitution was written, guns were expensive -- well over a month's wages.
If you're the type of person who cares deeply what the founders thought, then you have no Constitutional right to a cheap gun. (If you're not an originalist, you definitely don't have a right to a cheap gun).
Free advice: Keep out of trouble in the slammer, work out regularly, come out in 6 months and your job will be waiting for you. After all, you're not an animal abuser.
And now hopefully everyone has learned the lesson
Never wear sweatpants when going to a club -
....
oh yeah and sweatpants will never hold up a gun in the elastic band.
Thank you Plax for teaching the valuable lesson
Lets recap
Guns, Sweatpants, and Clubs Don't mix
thanks
Bronx, NY
I recall that the gun was a brand w/o a safety. It went off when it hit the floor. If it had a safety, Plax would still be playing for the Giants.
So the modified lesson is:
Safety-less Guns and Sweatpants )or anything else) Don't mix.
Anyone here know why they even make safety-less weapons? It just seems 100% stupid.
"Anyone here know why they even make safety-less weapons?"
They don't. Or maybe someone does, but this wasn't one.
His gun was a Glock 22. People who don't know what they're talking about might say that it doesn't have a safety, because Glock was the first manufacturer to make handguns without the traditional external safety lever. So if you look at one and don't know what you're looking for, you might think there's no safety.
In fact, there's a trigger safety, a firing pin safety, and a drop safety. That is, Glocks have more safety mechanisms than most other guns.
Some idiots, though, leave those mechanisms unactivated.
Thanks for the explanation. I do recall a news report that the gun had no safety.
All the more reason he should go to jail. He shouldn't be carrying a gun if he does not know how to use it properly.
'Freedom' does not mean you have the right to act irresponsibly and put others at risk.
Really it's probably the case that if he'd simply let the gun fall to the floor, it wouldn't have gone off. The Glock's safety mechanisms all work through a small lever on the trigger. There's no way to disengage that; if that lever isn't pressed the gun should not fire.
But as the gun fell down his pants, he grabbed for it and fumbled with it. He almost certainly must have grabbed the trigger at that point.
Here's his gun. You can see the trigger safety:
http://graneyandthepig.wordpress.com/2008/12/03/plaxco-burress-40-caliber-glock/
""This was not an intentional criminal act."
Really? He was carrying a gun unintentionally?
... and even though he lives and "works" in New Jersey, he somehow unintentionally materialized in New York, with said "unintentional" illegal handgun?
That's some stretch, even for a lawyer.
Yep. But clearly the spin the lawyer and Plax himself have been going for since the beginning is that he's being prosecuted for shooting himself, and shouldn't be because he's the only one that got hurt.
But of course, that's not what he was prosecuted for. His crime was carrying the gun. The mechanism by which he was caught committing that crime is that he clumsily discharged the gun in public and shot himself. That does nothing to change the original crime other than that without that happening he would have gotten away it.
My question is why the guy who had an unlicensed shot gun who killed two and injured two more in self defense gets heralded as a hero? But Plax, who must have been carrying a gun for self defense (noting that there have been past high profiled NFL stars murdered in their own home), gets his life destroyed for an accident. He was licensed in Florida, must have been proof that he wasn't a criminal. The government hates that us minions carry the same weapons as their army. A cop could have gotten away with this with two days suspension with pay.
good read
http://www.lewrockwell.com/kramer/kramer22.html
The storeowner did have a permit (which is all the law requires for shotguns). And maybe the charges against Plax would have been different if he was threatened in the first place—who knows?
But Plax getting 2 years for being stupid while Donte Stallworth gets less than four weeks for killing a man is depressing.
He got two years for carrying a gun, not for being stupid. Being stupid is what resulted in him being caught carrying a gun.
If he hadn't shot himself, but did something else that attracted police attention and resulted in him being searched and the gun was found, he could have faced the same charge. But he's a celebrity, he wouldn't be caught up in a normal stop and frisk or anything like that.
As a celebrity, the only way the gun would have been discovered by police was if he did something stupid. Which he did.
"He was licensed in Florida, must have been proof that he wasn't a criminal"
No, that he was once licensed in Florida (that permit had been expired for years) is proof that he knows he's legally required to have a permit for a gun, so was knowingly committing a felony.
"noting that there have been past high profiled NFL stars murdered in their own home"
Well... one. Not "stars," one person. And this wasn't in Burress' home, where he'd illegally had the gun presumably for years. If he'd used it for defense there, he may or may not have faced charges. But that has little to do with carrying it in public, unsecured and while intoxicated.
The guy's a millionaire. If he's worried about safety while out clubbing, he should hire someone who legally can carry to protect him.
"He was licensed in Florida, must have been proof that he wasn't a criminal"
Actually, being associated in any way with Florida before the age of 65 is considered admissible circumstantial evidence that you ARE a criminal.
Just sayin'
Unless you are in the health care business.
It is a little weird that carrying an AR-14 openly in the general vicinity of the President is absolutely within your rights in certain states, while in others you can get two years for shooting yourself in the leg.
But, at the same time, that bullet could have hit someone else -- in the leg, head, chest, etc. Forget the gun charges -- he shouldn't have had one, but that's not (only) why he should go to jail. He should mainly go to jail for being criminally stupid.
Damnit....he wanted to sign as a Jet too!
The NFL should seriously consider a prison franchise.
... and even though he lives and "works" in New Jersey, he somehow unintentionally materialized in New York, with said "unintentional" illegal handgun?
That's some stretch, even for a lawyer.
I know that the right to bear arms is constitutionally protected in America, so don't flame me for having a difference of opinion. I just though you'd be interested to know that a related discussion is going on at Torontoist about the fun of shooting off rounds at a gun club for recreation. My own observation in that discussion follows:
"Firing guns is "fun as hell" ..... my brother-in-law taught me to shoot various firearms, and I enjoyed it immensely. But what I am saying is that it is a slippery slope, and if guns were more widely available, you'd have more death by crimes of passion and accidental death. It is "fun as hell" to drive 200 km/h on an open road, but one false move and you are dead.
The phrase wasn't exactly used above, but one writer above was implying that "people kill people, guns don't kill people." But guns DO kill people. In the 18 years from 1979 to 1997 there were 30,000 accidental gun deaths in America. Among these, children for God's sake, 214 were unintentional and 1,078 were suicides.
http://tinyurl.com/nglnze
Look at the statistics and open your eyes.
Gun deaths per 100,000 population (for the year indicated):
Country / Homicide / Suicide / Other (inc Accident)
USA (2001) / 3.98 / 5.92 / 0.36
Canada ('02)/ 0.4 / 2.0 / 0.04
http://tinyurl.com/3tzce
America's homicide rate by gun is 9.95 times larger, suicide is 2.96 times larger, and other causes including accidents is 9 times larger.
I enjoyed firing guns when trained to do so: loved it. But my social conscience and deliberation upon the facts insure that I will never fire a gun again, and always vote for further restrictions."