Former Steelers and Giants receiver Plaxico Burress continues to make the media rounds. Most recently, he appeared on Good Day New York -- and he discussed once again the very bad night that culminated in his incarceration.
“I believe it was totally blown out of proportion,” Burress said, per the New York Post. “I believe with everything that was said by the mayor and the media . . . that it was just over-generalized and I think it went a little further than it needed to go. But at the same time, I was accountable for my actions.’'
Burress is referring to his decision to take a loaded gun into a Manhattan nightclub, and the inadvertent firing of the weapon. It easily can be argued that the punishment didn’t fit the crime, since the bullet struck no one other than Burress. But it also can be argued that the goal of the law that put Burress, as Mayor Michael Bloomberg called it, “in the slammer” for an extended stretch has a goal of ensuring that accidents don’t happen.
Still, the fact that Burress did roughly the same amount of time as Mike Vick even though Vick admitted to gambling, dogfighting, and the killing of dogs deemed unfit to die while fighting other dogs, it’s easy to conclude that Burress got the short end of the legal stick.