The belief that everything is available for the right price is a Hollywood myth that really must go. The Beatles sang better with, “Money Can’t Buy Me Love.”

For some reason, our fiat tokens are still being mistaken for real money. And yet, I haven’t seen .357 Magnum on the shelves in the last 12 months. Maybe that’s why it’s already happening: Ammunition is being used for barter.

Blame who you will. The green shoots of barter have appeared in anticipation of nobody knows what. Ivory tower questions of if and should (ammunition be used in barter) have been answered by the not so “invisible hand” of the market. That leaves questions of efficiency, demand, supply, resource allocation, liquidity and legality. For all its flaws, hassles and lack of precision, barter is a wonderful thing. It gets people talking, needs are fulfilled, the exchange is personal and everyone leaves the table with real goods.

Lately, it appears the real good people want to leave the table with is ammunition.

The lowlands corridor along Interstate 90 some 38 miles east of Seattle which runs through the Mt. Baker-Snoqualmie National Forest is being closed to recreational shooting starting this weekend and continuing for at least 12 months, while the Forest Service determines whether the closure should become permanent.    

The problem: Slob shooters. The bane of all responsible gun owners, these people are responsible for other such closures on public lands all over the map. For years, they have brought their garbage onto public property, shot it to pieces, and left it as an eyesore. On rare occasions, they accidentally shoot one another while ricocheting bullets off of boulders against which they have propped a target.    

Some years or decades ago I researched and reported on the Sullivan Act, one of America’s first gun control laws.

New York state senator Timothy Sullivan, a corrupt Tammany Hall politician, represented New York’s Red Hook district. Commercial travelers passing through the district would be relieved of their valuables by armed robbers.  In order to protect themselves and their property, travelers armed themselves. This raised the risk of, and reduced the profit from, robbery. Sullivan’s outlaw constituents demanded that Sullivan introduce a law that would prohibit concealed carry of pistols, blackjacks, and daggers, thus reducing the risk to robbers from armed victims.

The criminals, of course, were already breaking the law and had no intention of being deterred by the Sullivan Act from their business activity of armed robbery. Thus, the effect of the Sullivan Act was precisely what the criminals intended. It made their life of crime easier.

As the first successful gun control advocates were criminals, I have often wondered what agenda lies behind the well-organized and propagandistic gun control organizations and their donors and sponsors in the US today. The propaganda issued by these organizations consists of transparent lies.

Does the City of Seattle under Mayor Greg Nickels believe that one civil right is more important than another, perhaps at the peril of the city’s gay residents who will participate in PrideFest at the Seattle Center?    

It’s beginning to appear that way, as gay gun rights activists note with chagrin that, while the city will allow anti-gay demonstrators at the Seattle Center in recognition of their First Amendment rights of free speech and assembly, the city is requiring PrideFest organizers to prohibit firearms at the Center as part of its lease agreement.