Thanks to Steely McStupid for pointing this out to me.

Apparently, Philly.com is up in arms (sure…pun intended) about some really old photos of the Steelers shooting guns. You know, the ones I found back in January (at the old blogspot page here). The ones that made it to such esteemed blogs like Deadspin and Bob’s Blitz. Hell, I even used a closeup of Silverback in the above picture as my Twitter picture for about 4-5 months until I got a totally sweeter picture of Reducto.

I don’t claim to know the NFL’s policy on guns. Dan Levy reprinted some of it here, but does that pertain to photos from 3+ years ago?

Mostly, I’m amazed that it can take a situation like this to see how far print and mainstream media is behind the times. My website isn’t huge, but when these images make it to places like Deadspin, the word gets out. Why wasn’t the “shooting party” under investigation right after it happened? Is there that much of a miscommunication with our state police? That in itself is quite scary, that a questionable practice involving our state police was able to go unnoticed for 3 years. Why wasn’t there an inquiry when the photos I found made it around the web back in January? If Philly.com was taking advantage of the spotlight, which is pretty big on the defending champs in the middle of training camp, why didn’t they do so when the team was getting ready for the big game? ESPN.com had no problem taking that route.

So the end game is unclear to me. Is Phily.com trying to tarnish the crown on the defending champs? Are they merely pointing out the failures of the state police? Yes, I’m asking way too many questions, but this is too confusing to just let slide. Because as Philly.com chastises the police, they include this quote:

“Most disturbing is a group portrait of the athletes and troopers, in which two players adopt gangster poses and point their firearms at their comrades’ heads.”

Gangster poses? Please…elaborate. Do you mean black men? Thugs, perhaps? Because when I think “gangsters,” I’m thinking of Dick Tracy hiding from a tommy-gun-toting Flattop or Big Boy Al Caprice. And what I see in the picture is a black guy, as pointed out by their article, the second guy from our right, their left, pointing a pistol at the picture-taker.

All in all , this is a very confusing situation, and one that Phily.com failed at in several instances. I’m sure there will be more on this as it develops, so stay tuned, or the “gangsters” on the Steelers will shoot you.