"A gun for your vote, my good man," saith the aspirant campaigner, hoping to win a seat in the U.S. Congress or in one of the legislative houses of his own state. "Here's a nifty assault rifle for you. Shoot up a storm, and remember to vote for me."

The paragraph just above may sound like a draft for a Saturday Night Live script. Alas and also alack, it is what one can hear on the campaign trail in this election year.

And speaking of SNL, you can imagine one of its writers pondering a wickedly sardonic commentary about the man who went to the Jewish center in Kansas to kill Jews yet managed only to kill Christians. It would tax common credulity to make up a story like that.

But, yes, several candidates, with the blessing of the National Rifle Association and its fawning politicos, are trying to buy votes with gun-giveaways as if the Newtown massacre and its mutant cousins had not blown away far too many innocent lives already.

A guy who helped run Mitt Romney's 2012 presidential bid told the New York Times recently that giving away guns "could get you a couple extra thousand votes you didn't otherwise know about."

I almost hate to put into print what my late father -- a day laborer, a florist, a factory worker, a lawyer, a prosecuting attorney and a judge in that chronological order across his 75 years -- would say were he to learn about what I have just written. "JESUS H. CHRIST!" would be merely the overture of his commentary.

Whilst spouting a stream of profanity in tones worthy of a first-class Shakespearean actor, Dad would wonder if the world had gone nuts overnight. I tell you that if a candidate for any office had been exchanging firearms for votes in his jurisdiction, you can bet Dad would have confronted whom he would've called "the dumb son of a bitch" doing the giving and demand that he cease and desist.

If the gun-giver had invoked the Second Amendment, Dad would have taken him by his lapels and said something like this: "Listen, buddy, the Second Amendment has to do with militia, not with people like you pandering to voters by giving away guns. We got plenty of militia, and they've got plenty of guns. Now put those things back in the trunk of your car."

Dad had a rather mordant sense of humor, and I can imagine him campaigning in that same election cycle by ordering a couple of thousand plastic squirt guns, giving them away to those whose votes he solicited: "Here, fill this thing with water and squirt it at the guy who tries to give you a real gun in exchange for your vote. An election is not a turkey shoot."

Dad was elected to eight two-year terms and one four-year term as prosecuting attorney of his county. While in that office, he prosecuted two popular so-called "public servants" who'd actually served themselves. For his trouble, by some Dad was vilified for it. Toward the end of his life, he donned the robe of a judge and whilst on the bench did not suffer fools gladly.

He was elected village president only after being importuned to run. He ran, but only on the promise that he would see to it that the town could no longer use the river that ran through it as a sewer. He pressed for the construction of a modern sewage disposal system and succeeded. Several of the village fathers -- whom privately he called the "village idiots" -- fought him every step of the way. Today he would be thought a hero.