Talk:The Rifle

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Hello. Never commented before on Wikipedia and I hope I'm not screwing up anything. But I had to take exception to the editor's current conclusion that Paulsen's message is "guns don't kill people, people do." Paulsen's message is, in fact, precisely the opposite. This gun definitely killed somebody! And through some random accident no one could have foreseen. Paulsen indeed scathingly mocks a "gun nut" named Tim Harrow in this book, and offers some pretty biting commentary on American gun culture in general. Perhaps Paulsen prevents any easy conclusions by devoting half of the book to the rifle being so lovingly crafted, but in the end, the author comes down pretty hard on the anti-gun side of things, with the rifle in the last pages lurking as a kind of horror movie monster, waiting for its next victim. The Amazon website listed as a reference even cites the School Library Journal as saying the complete opposite of what it is supposedly supporting: "Although [Paulsen] seems to be saying that people don't kill people, guns do, this message is not sustained." BryanKeithley (talk) 11:29, 26 September 2010 (UTC)