lifeblood: songs: backgrounds: who sold the gun

2008-06-04: amy is a ray of light, the windy city times:

lawrence ferber: "who sold the gun" was inspired by the virginia tech shootings-can you talk about that?

amy ray: when that happened, it was just shocking to me and i felt this mixture of anger at the shooter and also compassion for him and his family. everything piled together, and i thought it was really ironic that as the media coverage went on, the coverage of the war started mingling with it and it became this weird statement: there's this war where all these people are being killed every day, and we're making all these bombs and landmines, and you can't help but think that someone who is already mixed up isn't going to be informed by all that. the song was a comment on no wonder this guy's so screwed up-look what he came from.

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2008-10-03: amy ray finds inspiration in lonely nights, the toledo blade:

on "who sold the gun" she pairs buoyant music with chilling lyrics that make the direct connection between mass murderers like the man who went on a shooting rampage at virginia tech university last year and the government's arms control policies.

"i just think it's important to try - not to empathize but to have some thought, or i guess compassion is a better word - about that person. and i just started thinking about the u.s. and guns and bombs and sort of the military-industrial complex. we're selling all these weapons all over the world.

"we're selling weapons to governments that have literally child soldiers fighting in their armies. we're so complicit on every level in this whole paradigm," she said.