Below is the statement circulated today by Gilbert Arenas’s attorney on the question of whether the Wizards star brought guns into the Verizon Center. According to the attorney, Arenas met with federal prosecutors and D.C. police detectives earlier today to formally answer questions about the incident. In his press statement, Agent Zero basically admits that the majority of the media accounts on this story have been true, noting that he did bring four guns to work with him, and that he did brandish them inside the locker room on Dec. 21. The only thing Gil disputes are his intentions: he thought having unloaded guns inside the District was OK, and he only meant “to play a joke on a teammate.”
What do you make of Arenas’s explanation? We can’t help but feel that ignorance of the law on the part of a gun owner doesn’t exactly hold water, and we’re hard-pressed to think of a single joke involving showing off a gun that’s at all funny.
“I appreciated the opportunity to meet with law enforcement officials today. As the person who caused this trouble in the first place, I thought it was my duty to be the first witness to come forward and meet with the prosecutors and detectives. I told my attorney I wanted to get in for an interview as soon as we could arrange it, and that was today.
I told the detectives and prosecutors the whole story about my storing the unloaded guns at the Verizon Center and what I was intending to do when I took them out of my locker on December 21st.
As I have said before, I had kept the four unloaded handguns in my house in Virginia, but then moved them over to my locker at the Verizon Center to keep them away from my young kids. I brought them without any ammunition into the District of Columbia, mistakenly believing that the recent change in the DC gun laws allowed a person to store unloaded guns in the District.
On Monday, December 21st, I took the unloaded guns out in a misguided effort to play a joke on a teammate. Contrary to some press accounts, I never threatened or assaulted anyone with the guns and never pointed them at anyone.
Joke or not, I now recognize that what I did was a mistake and was wrong. I should not have brought the guns to DC in the first place, and I now realize that there’s no such thing as joking around when it comes to guns — even if unloaded.
I am very sorry for the effect that my serious lapse in judgment has had on my team, my teammates, the National Basketball Association and its fans. I want to apologize to everybody for letting them down with my conduct, and I promise to do better in the future.
I also want to thank the detectives and prosecutors on the case for the professionalism and courtesy they showed me during the interview today. I stand ready to continue to give my full cooperation to them and to the League as they investigate this incident.”
