NFL Urges Players Not to Own Guns But Eagles Receiver Josh Huff Carries Anyway

The NFL’s bars players from possessing guns on NFL grounds—including “any stadium or venue being used for an NFL event”—and urges them to consider how “dangerous” owning a firearm can be in other locations. But Eagles wide receiver Josh Huff, originally from Houston, sees it differently.

He keeps a handgun “with hollow point bullets” on his person for protection.

Huff made news on November 1, when police found an “unloaded 9mm handgun” in his car after cops pulled him over for speeding on the New Jersey side of the Walt Whitman Bridge.

Huff said, “I’m a professional athlete. What professional athlete don’t have a gun? I have a wife and I have a son at home. My job is to protect them at all costs, and my job is to protect myself as well, even though I know I have security here, but I have to protect myself as well.”

Huff stressed that he does not carry the gun onto or into the NFL’s prohibited areas, but he does keep one with him otherwise.

He said:

I’m from Houston. You can’t trust a lot of people in Houston. There’s always somebody out to get you. You’ve got to protect yourself. Even when I’m back in Houston, I always have a gun on me, because there’s been several instances in Houston where I’ve lost a friend to gun violence, and he was just in the wrong place at the wrong time, so why would I let that happen to me?

The NFL’s anti-gun policy not only includes discipline for violating a league ban on gun possession but also for violating “public law” regarding guns. The policy reads, “If you violate this policy on guns and other weapons, you are subject to discipline, including suspension from playing. And if you violate a public law covering weapons — for example, possession of an unlicensed firearm — you are not only subject to discipline, including suspension from playing, but also subject to criminal prosecution.”

But Huff is standing his ground and stresses his belief that “everybody in the Eagles locker room and around the league carries a gun.” They just don’t admit it the way Huff does.