Guns Do

If this is Alphabet Soup4Nuts, then let's get at it - oh yeah, I'm going there! G is for the G.D. Guns.

The "Fab Four", in their day, sang "Happiness is a warm gun". Members of the ARA, whether those who like their gun warm from a recent discharge or those who just like the secure feeling of having a gun under the pillow/in the house, are hot for their warm guns. Why?

"It's my constitutional right and,besides, guns don't kill, people do".

First, that constitutional right was established for state militias facing vital situations of war and/or aggression. Second, every sociological study that I have read confirms the finding that guns, as opposed to hands/fists and knives, are the cause of both more crimes and more criminal deaths every year in the U.S. Third, even survival and sustenance are not sufficient reasons for an individual to own and/or carry a gun. Hunting for food is now a trip to the grocery store and survival today is usually at the expense of someone else.

Which brings me to the scheme (Guns For Goods?) employed by a city in Delco to have thugs turn in their guns for food vouchers (of equal value, I presume). If guns are the easy way to get what you're after, why would any 'packer' give up the long-lasting deliverance for a short-lived belly-fill? And what are thugs to do for the protection/intimidation that secures the money needed to eat/cheat another day?

So, Mr. and Ms. G.D. Gun, while you're taking solace in believing that guns don't kill, people do; think of those followers of the Prince of Peace who believe that those who live by the sword/gun die by same. Try warming to that recipe for happiness.