Yesterday the Daily reported a story about petty theft on campus. And while Ames isn’t Iowa City, thank God, it’s still not surprising some people can’t keep their hands off others’ stuff. That’s just the way it is when a bunch of people live in the same place.

The article did provide a few tips to make sure your stuff remains your stuff though, which were all fair, common sense points. But we have one more tip: Get a gun.

Let’s face some facts: If someone figures there’s a good chance he’ll get shot — or at least shot at — trying to steal your iPad, then he’ll probably think twice before trying. Actually, he probably won’t think about doing it at all. Peace through superior firepower.

Keeping your laptop safe is why the Founding Fathers wrote the Second Amendment. The Bible says so, or at least maybe Sarah Palin said it did. If that’s the case, it must be true. Now, we thought about recommending adopting Sharia Law, which Sarah Palin also says is taking over America. Sharia Law would let the government cut off the hands of thieves.

That’s a great idea, but putting punishment in the government’s hands means more time until justice is served, what with trials and all this crap about protecting rights, not to mention the garbage in the Third Amendment about no cruel and unusual punishment. Or is it the Seventh Amendment? We forget. We’ve never actually read the Constitution, but we heard about it on Fox News.

But ultimately Sharia Law just isn’t very American — like guns. What’s even better is that in an election year, where jobs and economic growth are the big issues, there’s a practical side to this, too.

See, if everyone runs out to buy a gun to protect their precious iPod (where would you be if you couldn’t iTune the world out by plugging your ears and listening to music every second of your life?), that means higher sales of guns.

More gun sales means more gun factory workers, higher demand for steel and aluminum, more metal foundry workers, and more truck drivers to ship the raw materials. Then, once we get busy shooting thieves, we’ll need more cops, coroners and janitors — shooting people is messy, so carpets will need replacing, walls repainted, and so on and so forth.

Think of the vast possibilities. The demand for labor will spike. We can be the model for job creation nationwide.

We are, of course, joking. With Obama’s failures and Romney’s impossible plan, however, we can only conclude that our presidential candidates think the economy is a joke too. It’d be more funny if it wasn’t so sad and shameful.

But hey, who needs a plan when they can get Bruce Springsteen to bribe your vote?