What is the theme in The Rifle by Gary Paulsen?

Guns killing people is the main theme in this story. With The Rifle, author Gary Paulsen takes aim - pun definitely intended - at right-of-center Americans who argue passionately for gun rights and advocate for the Constitution's second amendment, the right to bear arms. Paulsen directly quotes the National Rifle Association (NRA) bumper-sticker slogan that "Guns don't kill people, people kill people" in order to refute that sentiment. The entire narrative trajectory of the novel, with its intricate physics and chance encounters, seems to stress that guns are perfectly capable of killing people with no more than purely accidental human intervention.