McFreedom

Eugene Volokh wonders what John Lennon meant when he wrote the song, "Happiness is a Warm Gun." He then prints reader speculation it's drug related. As is often the case, there is less here than meets the eye (or ear). I was a big Beatles fan in my younger days and recalls reading that he'd seen the title on an American gun magazine and thought it was sick, and wrote the song in a critical mind about America's gun culture. Here's what he had to say about it:

George Martin had a book on guns which he had told me about - I can't remember - or I think he showed me a cover of a magazine that said "Happiness Is A Warm Gun". It was a gun magazine, that's it: I read it, thought it was a fantastic, insane thing to say. A warm gun means that you just shot something.

He went on to dispel the heroin story, in 1972, "Thay [sic] all said it was about drugs, but it was more about rock 'n roll than drugs. It's sort of a history of rock 'n roll... I don't know why people said it was about the needle in heroin. I've only seen somebody do something with a needle once, and I don't like to see it at all." Finally, in 1980, he expanded on the original idea, "A gun magazine was sitting around and the cover was the picture of a smoking gun. The title of the article, which I never read, was 'Happiness Is a Warm Gun.' I took it right from there. I took it as the idea of happiness after having shot somebody. Or some animal."

All quotes are unsourced, and from The Internet Beatles Recording Index but I've definitely read the first quote in reputable sources in the past.