Gun crazy

 This is all coming to a bad end, and it doesn't take 20/20 SeerVision to see it. I don't know what to say about that, except that America is the land of the free and the home of the batshite crazy.

More on that in a bit.

For now, let's check in on NBA star Ja Morant, shall we?

Oh, look, there he is in a car, waving what looks to be a handgun around while he sings along to a rap song. Live on Instagram, y'all!

This was two months after he was caught on video waving a gun around in a nightclub.

This was after he was sued by a high school kid after Morant and a friend punched him during a pickup game, and Ja went in the house and came back with -- gee, what a surprise -- a gun tucked into his waistband.

Sense a theme here?

The theme is Ja loves his guns, maybe more than basketball, maybe more than the life basketball has built for him. After the nightclub incident the NBA suspended him and he said all the right things about realizing he has much to lose and how he needed to be "more responsible, more smarter and staying away from all the bad decisions."

Not two months later he was back to waving guns around on video -- even though the nightclub incident cost him $39 mill in incentives when he was left off the All-NBA teams.

Now the Grizzlies have suspended him from all team activities, and you've got to think his endorsement deals with Nike and Powerade are in peril, too. Once burned, twice shy, and all that. Especially when it's twice in two months.

And so all I can see, again, is a bad end. Because if you're partial to waving guns around, and you surround yourself with shady friends -- every one of the aforementioned incidents involved the same running buddy, Davonte Pack -- sooner or later that gun's gonna go off. Inadvertently or otherwise.

And when the shooting stops, who winds up lying on the ground with his life running out of him? Ja? Someone else?

It’s easy to suggest someone Ja Morant respects sit him down and lay out that scenario, and tell him to for God's sake put the damn guns away before someone gets hurt or he blows up his career. But, as I alluded at the start of this, look where we live.

America the crazy. America the geared up. An America with a sick fetish for calibration in all its forms, fueled by a misbegotten reading of a constitutional amendment and the creepy near-worship thereof.

In this America, families send out Christmas cards featuring Mom, Dad and kiddos proudly displaying the family firepower. Peace on Earth and goodwill toward Armalite, in other words. Merry Christmas from the Johnsons (or else!). Baby Jesus, the manger and the three wise men, coming with gold, frankincense and a pile of high-volume clips.

I see this, and I wonder if I'm the only one who gets how twisted it is. I know I'm not, but it sure feels that way sometimes. Because one day some guy drove into an outlet mall parking lot in Texas, got out and opened fire for the hell of it, killing eight people. And I'm reading this poor sick bastard -- and I mean "sick" in the clinical sense -- allegedly owned 42 weapons of various types.

Apparently he expected some stiff resistance from the moms, dads and kids shopping for bargains.

Meanwhile, because it's Texas, the politicians wring their hands as long as decency requires, and then go back to passing laws making it easier for Joe Mall Shooter to do his thing. In March, for instance, the Texas lege abolished the law restricting handgun ownership to those 21 or older. So now even colleges and universities in the state can't legally keep 19-year-old freshmen from packing heat on campus.

Insane. Absolutely insane.

Know what else is insane?

It's some fool named Will Cain going on the Magic Twitter Thingy to wonder why Ja was suspended, because the Second Amendment and blah-blah-blah. 

Seriously. He went there.

Lord help us.