Former NFL kicker and CBS Sports football analyst Jay Feely is under fire for tweeting a picture of himself standing between his daughter and her prom date with a gun on Saturday night. Feely’s photo, which has amassed 66 thousand likes, 11 thousand retweets, and 7 thousand comments thus far, is accompanied by the caption, “Wishing my beautiful daughter and her date a great time at prom #BadBoys.”
Wishing my beautiful daughter and her date a great time at prom #BadBoys pic.twitter.com/T5JRZQYq9e
— Jay Feely (@jayfeely) April 22, 2018
Feely’s photo, which is a reference to the 2003 movie Bad Boys II starring Will Smith and Martin Lawrence, was supposed to be a lighthearted joke.
Understandably, many weren’t too happy with Feely’s sense of humor.
If someone did this to my son. 😡
— Stephanie Marie (@smsauceda) April 22, 2018
Can you imagine seeing these pix of your son for the first time? Omg I would call the cops on that guy!
— Lorianne Gilmore (Cyanide) (@SipsOfCyanide) April 22, 2018
I mean, we get the reference, but this was terribly out of touch with gun safety. And out of touch with not making that picture and night about you.
— Siege (@ourdailyquest) April 22, 2018
And out of touch with the idea that the daughter might be in control of her own decisions.
— Sarah (@itamer) April 22, 2018
Let’s see…Daddy poses for a photo by standing between daughter and her date, while holding a hand gun!? The clear message is what? That you own a gun? You make a strong case that MANY GUN OWNERS SHOULD NOT OWN A GUN!! Totally irresponsible.
— Wayenin (@WeCU12) April 22, 2018
He is also apparently sending a message that he owns his daughter, and this kid better not trespass on his “property”.
— Anita Napp (@Anita_Nappzz) April 22, 2018
Others took it the way Feely intended, defending the image as just a joke and criticizing naysayers for their inability to see it as such.
In the wake of the backlash, Feely posted another tweet, clarifying his intent and insisting he takes gun safety seriously.
The prom picture I posted was obviously intended to be a joke. My Daughter has dated her boyfriend for over a year and they knew I was joking.
I take gun safety seriously (the gun was not loaded and had no clip in) and I did not intend to be insensitive to that important issue— Jay Feely (@jayfeely) April 22, 2018
Forgive me for not falling down in deference to Jay Feely. Regardless of how he intended it, the ages-old joke about threatening one’s daughter’s boyfriend with a gun is just that — ages old and tired AF.
It’s 2018 now, people, and the list of things wrong with this so-called joke is so long it needs a trim. For starters:
- At a time when we’re averaging about one school shooting per week, it’s probably not a good idea to joke about shooting a high school student. Just spitballing here.
- Daughters do not belong to their fathers and are pretty damn capable of making their own choices about their bodies, even if they’re only teenagers. They deserve and need their parents’ guidance, but they do NOT need to be treated like livestock who require a heavily-armed shepherd to keep them in order and the prey at bay.
- It’s not funny. Like not at all. Not even a little bit. Wait … I thought about it a little and … nope … still dumb as fuck.
As a mother to 3 boys, I’ll tell you what. If some amateur comedian in Dockers and a golf shirt pulls out a gat on my son as he prepares to take his date to a school dance (or at literally any other time ever), my head will spin damn near off my body and my husband will have to restrain me hostage-style. Because making Mr. Smith and Wesson Thinks It’s Funny to Pretend He’s Gonna Shoot My Kid’s great-great-grandfather regret the day he was born will become my new mission in life, and I’ll need a few minutes to get my mind right again.
And it’s not because I don’t think my sons can take care of themselves. Rather, it’s because there is literally no scenario in which an adult intimidating an innocent kid with a firearm is acceptable, even as a joke. And it’s a situation that needs to be addressed by grown-ups.
Can we all stop with the outdated assumptions that daughters need their daddies to threaten bodily harm on young gentlemen in order to keep them safe? And can we stop with the outdated assumptions that all boys are ne’er-do-wells out to tarnish their girlfriends’ “purity”? These are kids, for Chrissake, and this isn’t a movie.
And furthermore, can we stop glorifying gun violence through tone-deaf wisecracks and declarations that “it’s just a joke”? There’s nothing funny about it.
There never was.