Buy A Gun For Your Son.

Lyrics and Vocals: Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award, American folk singer-songwriter Tom Paxton whose career spans more than sixty years.

Tom Paxton wrote “Buy a Gun for Your Son” in the mid-1960s at the height of the Vietnam War era. He performed it on Pete Seeger’s Rainbow Quest in 1965. It is not a song in praise of guns or war; it is pure satire, using cheerful, almost advertising-like language to expose how casually children can be taught to admire violence.
Paxton released it on Ain’t That News with Elektra, and more than half a century later its bite is still sharp.
So before you listen to it, it is worth remembering, that the joke is bitter, the target is serious, and the question underneath it is still with us and asks what exactly are we teaching the next generation to value?

Buy A Gun For Your Son.

Hallelujah, Dads and Mommies,
Cowboys, rebels, Yanks and commies,
Buy yourselves some real red-blooded fun.
If you want to make the grade,
You’ve got to have a hand grenade,
And a fully automatic G.I. gun.

Chorus.
So buy a gun for your son right away, sir.
Shake his hand like a man and let him play, sir.
Let his little mind expand, place a weapon in his hand,
For the skills he learns today will someday pay, sir.

Pound that kid into submission,
‘Till he’s mastered nuclear fission,
Buy him plastic warheads by the score.
Once he’s got the taste of blood,
He’s gonna sneak up on his buddies,
Starting his own thermo-nuclear war.

Repeat Chorus.

Buy him khakis and fatigues,
And sign him up in little leagues.
Give him calisthenics as a rule,
Once you’ve banished fear and dread,
Then pat his seven year-old head,
And send him off to military school.

Repeat Chorus.

Once he’s grown to be a man,
He might get tired of blasting Granny,
Then you’ll see a crisis coming on.
Don’t get worried, don’t get nervous,
Send that kid into the service,
Let him rise into the Pentagon.

At the Pentagon he’ll rise,
The President he will advise,
His reputation growing all the while.
With your picture on the wall,
He’ll get that long-awaited call,
And press the firing buttons with a smile.

Repeat Chorus.

END