It isn’t often that I take on political issues here – especially such a weighty one as gun control. I don’t do it because I find it useless to complain about issues for which I have no answer and I rarely have answers for even the simplest of questions. However in the matter of gun control, I have the ultimate solution.

Our political system is so broken that it might be beyond duct tape’s ability to fix. A younger me could be very opinionated about things political, but I later found that it:

a) only gave me heartburn

b) separated me from some pretty cool people

Current me likes to hear intelligent opinions from all sides and I despise leaders who toe the party line – that’s called following, not leading. Any politician who votes party line for five bills in a row should be slapped repeatedly with a fish and sacked. If you can’t think for yourself, we have no need of you deciding policy for anyone else.

Back to gun control. I stumbled upon the answer because of the creative genius of my daughter, Kendall. We celebrated her 18^th birthday in December. After unwrapping the presents, I found one of those little desiccant packets on the floor.

We’ve all been warned by overzealous parents about how desiccant packets will kill you! I didn’t go get tongs and a hazmat suit, but I did dispose of it. Since we have nearly a thousand pets, I asked that she be more careful in the future. This admonishment brought a giggle from the birthday girl.

This imaginative daughter has an entire alternate world floating around in her head. Oh, she has to live in ours, but the one she’s created is much more to her liking. She started talking about Kendallworld when she was three. We are only allowed to view it by bits and pieces because you have to be named Kendall to get in and an overabundance of information would be too much for us non-Kendalls to handle.

The desiccant brought us one of those rare glimpses. As it turns out, Kendall developed a plan long ago to protect Kendallworld (and secondarily, her family) in case of a robbery. After receiving the dreaded parental warning about the little packets, she stashed a few in her nightstand drawer. If someone were to break into our house, her plan was to shove them down the intruder’s throat!

That’s a good plan!

A little curiosity on my part brought me to HowStuffWorks.com (Disclaimer: I don’t recommend going there unless you have time to kill because I lost approximately 67.3 hours cramming my head with fairly useless knowledge). There I watched a video about the difference between adsorption and absorption, which make me feel very stupid because I couldn’t understand it – even after three viewings. Anyway, I learned that if you swallow a typical desiccant packet it will likely cause some discomfort on the way through, but there is no need to fear them as if they are an assault rifle lying in your den floor.

Wait… What? Assault rifle?

Hey!!!!! What if we took away all guns and replaced them with desiccant? Nothing would be permanent. Picture this: the bad guys shove them in the cop’s mouth and yes, he is uncomfortable for a time but recovers after they’ve made their getaway. Likewise, if the cops can get them in the mouth of the drug lords first, they are incapacitated just long enough to be put behind bars. Wars would be fought with desiccant cannons – its like a tickle fight with only temporary repercussions.

Brilliant!

All this squabbling party-line gun control crap and it simply took the creative mind of a child to solve the problem – lock, stock, and barrel.

 

http://science.howstuffworks.com/innovation/science-questions/question206.htm