I lived a lot of my early life in a world where gambling was an everyday activity. Everybody I knew had a bookie, or two, or three, and spent considerable time placing or figuring out bets to be placed. There were odds for anything. In todays world of online gambling I gather you can bet on anything.

It used to be that sports betting had “the official line” (ostensibly Las Vegas legit) which came out every Tuesday; because that gave everybody the weekend and after Monday Night Football to pay off or collect from outcomes of whatever games had played.                On Mondays, for those “in the know” (i.e. degenerate gamblers:), they had the ‘outlaw line” which was just an indicator to see how bets were lining up with balancing of bettors on both sides of a bet. Bookies make money on balancing the money between opposing side because they collect a fee for each transaction. You know, like Wall Street. Which I have been told, ad nauseam, is not like gambling at all.                                        Right. Brokers are not bookies. Right?

Anyway,  the last few years the U.S. has about 38,000 to 42,000 deaths due to gunshots, anually. About 2/3 of those are suicide. Still, a bullet is a bullet. A projectile fired from a gun.

This year, I bet, there are odds being offered, somewhere, about the total Corona Virus death toll. With lots of qualifiers as to determination process of final figures.

So, it crossed my mind this morning that even if this pandemic stuff occurs every year and we never get a handle on it, it’ll never equal gunshot deaths just in the U.S.

What if we gave Three Trillion Dollars to all the people in the gun business to just quit making and selling guns, except for military purposes?

I’d bet they would take it and move on to some other less deadly and socially disruptive enterprise.  Maybe. It really is hard to tell. Perhaps that’s a good ‘proposition’ bet with any bookie working on any Street corner, or bar where brokers  bookies gather.

Delusion is the mind telling

Its self it is not and

Can not be deluded

Because It knows that.