FOR BARTER OR WORSE : Exchange Guns for Goods? All It Takes Is a Little Incentive
There are such nice, redemptive, even cathartic feelings attached to swapping bad things for good ones, like trading Uzis for Janet Jackson concert tickets.
Give up that century-old Mauser carbine and get seats at a Mighty Ducks game. Hand over the .38 Smith & Wesson and walk--well, drive--away with $75 worth of transmission work. Exchange a .22 for a carwash and wax.
Until its monthlong drop-your-gun amnesty ended last week, the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department gave away nothing but warm fuzzies in its “Give Up Your Guns for Mother’s Day, With No Questions Asked” program. And still, on Day One alone, people surrendered two shotguns, five rifles and two handguns. If precedent holds, they’ll be melted down at a foundry that turns gats into rebar--a much-appreciated post-quake trade for us all.
Guns for goods is not novel, of course, except for the caliber. For several Christmases now, Alliance for Survival in Venice has taken in children’s war toys and handed out teddy bears in their stead.
Barter is the oldest and gentlest form of commerce and still the most enticing: The allure of getting a bargain and the risk of getting skinned has it all over the crass transfer of cash. Jack got the deal of a lifetime when he exchanged a cow for magic beans. Aladdin got snookered when he gave up his battered old enchanted lamp for an ordinary new one.
The “swop” column in Yankee is always the best part of that magazine, full of delicious offers from someone wanting an almost-new skiff in return for the yield of 20 acres of sugar maples . . . or an 18th-Century Bible-verse sampler for a new or rebuilt engine to a John Deere combine.
So why stop at guns? Extend the deal to any vice, any dangerous or unhealthy substance. Coax out the man who’s cached DDT in his potting shed. Think behavior modification. Think incentives:
Turn in shoes with four-inch heels . . . and you’ll go home with a pair of Birkenstocks and a coupon good for a half-hour with an orthopedist.
Your gold card . . . a signed thank-you letter from Alan Greenspan.
Weapons-grade plutonium . . . lunch with Warren Christopher and your own consulate.
Butter . . . five pounds of oat bran. Hand over your coconut-oiled movie popcorn as well and get a Susan Powter tape. (Turn in Susan Powter and win the gratitude of the nation’s hairstylists.)
Blush wines . . . Kool-Aid. (You won’t notice the difference, honest.)
Firecrackers . . . a junior firefighter’s helmet, plus your mother’s solemn pledge to never again nag you with, “Be careful with that or you’ll put your eye out!”
Press-on nails . . . typing lessons.
Violent video games . . . a deluxe Parcheesi game set.
An Alan Robbins campaign button . . . a Tom Hayden campaign button.
A can of spray paint . . . a box of No. 2 pencils and a book on penmanship.
A Barbie doll . . . one training bra, unpadded, and the junior edition of “Our Bodies, Ourselves.”
A gas-swilling, air-soiling clunker . . . Ed Begley Jr.’s bike.
TV remote control . . . a Thighmaster.
Oreos . . . fat-free Fig Newtons.
Tanning lotion . . . an Al Gore sun hat and a bottle of SPF 99 sunblock, guaranteed to protect your skin through the total disappearance of the ozone layer.
Leaf blower . . . a rake and a compost bin.
The book “The Bridges of Madison County” . . . the video “Thelma & Louise.”
Cigarettes . . . nothing. This one is its own reward.
