Not if your aim is to change hearts and minds rather than draw battle lines.

Last weekend, members of a Downstate pro-gun group made that point pretty well when they drove up to Chicago and turned in about 60 rusted-out and broken guns in exchange for $6,200 in gift cards. This was their supposedly amusing way of ridiculing a gun trade-in program run by the Chicago Police to get dangerous firearms off the city’s streets.

The group, Guns Save Life, based in Champaign County, said they’d use the gift cards to buy ammunition and firearms for a youth program that teaches gun safety and marksmanship.

Clever, huh?

While in town, though, we have to wonder if the pro-gun group happened to read about Heaven, the 7-year-old girl who was killed last Wednesday by goofs with guns who shot into a crowd outside her mother’s house. And we have to wonder if they happened to catch the news about the eight other people killed over the weekend, including a 3-year-old boy, and the 17 who were wounded — all shot by people with guns.