Greg Hardy and America’s Shame

4 min readNov 8, 2015

If you know anything about the NFL, you know they aren’t very good at handing out punishments. The handling of Greg Hardy is the latest example of a sport struggling with its image and a country unable to come to terms with it’s guilty pleasures.

I listened this week to another excellent piece of radio broadcasting from @bomani_jones ,Bomani Jones, an entertaining and thought provoking journalist. The Greg Hardy case relates to incidents back in 2014 when Hardy was arrested for assaulting his ex girlfriend. Jones’ thoughts around the case were sparked by deadspin.com’s release of documents on November 5th, the date that Hardy’s record was cleared of the domestic abuse charges due to ‘non-co-operation’ from the witness. The website has released images that display brutal images of violence against a woman and a domestic abuse case has been played out on a national stage due to the infamy of it’s chief protagonist and his profession. Jones consistently wrings his hands about a public outcry that expects its sports leagues to legislate morality and repeats that sometimes, good things happen to bad people.

There is no lack of judgement in these cases and indeed, another NFL star Johnny Manziel continues to play for the Cleveland Browns after a woman he was driving a car with, claimed that she had been struck by Manziel.

There will be no judgement in the next few paragraphs; just images and captions. I was compelled by much of what the documents exposed about the case, but one black and white receipt jumped out at me — a list of Hardy’s weapons that were seized by the police following his arrest. It reads like a description of props taken from a Homeland episode. I would like to separate the issue of whether Hardy should be allowed to return to his place of work after this incident with an examination of the weapons in his possession and state :100% of people who don’t have guns don’t get shot by people who don’t have guns. In the embers of a terrible few months of gun related tragedies in America, and another heart felt plea from the President for gun reforms, why does a football player need this many guns ? Why does anyone ?

Via deadspin.com you can get the receipt for Hardy’s weapons here

Mossberg 590 Tactical Shotgun

From the folks at gunsandammo.com : “ Handguns are handy, but nothing says hello like a 12 gauge”

Tavor SAR

Catchy opening line from the TAVOR website —

“ The dynamics of the battlefield are forever changing. With the increasing threat of terrorism in our streets to the evolving situations of combat applications, a new paradigm in firearms was required ”

L1A1 Sporter

Known as an SLR , not for snapping pics though , Self Loading Rifle.

POF Patriot Ordnance Factory P-415

MK 22

with … you guessed it … Commando Sight attached.

According to Robert Farago’s review this gun is ideal as :

“a range toy, a practice weapon, a varmint rifle, a self-defense piece and, above all, a hoot. ”

That must have been why Mr Hardy felt the need for two. For the hoots.

Highlander rifle

A bit of English Country Gent in this Memphis Native …

Now time for something completely different

Maybe Hardy required this type of weapon for a different task. When in 2013 Hardy was asked about how he was going to live up to a lofty pre-season 50 sack target , the defensive end crowed :

“Why shoot low, right? If I’m going to shoot at it, I’m going to shoot at it with a 50 caliber. I’m going to shoot at a little bird with a 50-caliber bullet.”