San Francisco Judge Finds Inanimate Object Guilty of "Hate Crime"

San Francisco judge, the Honorable Nerf Dogoodily, made legal history today when he found an inanimate object-- a Colt .45-- guilty of a hate crime. A jilted lover of a gay porn star claimed that the gun was evil and had goaded him to murder his ex-lover. "The gun made me do it, Your Honor... and I always had this thing for Charlton Heston which made me want to have a gun. I had to get a gun and when I did this gun started speaking to me, goading me every day to do the crime. Everybody knows that guns are evil but I guess I've always been attracted to the bad boy type."

The teary eyed murderer went on to claim that it got so bad under the spell of the gun that he joined the NRA and started watching Faux News. A sympathetic judge ordered the man to seek counseling but sentenced the Colt .45 to be melted down and the proceeds to be donated to the National "Guns are Evil Coalition".

"We can all rest our heads much easier tonight, knowing that there is one less gun out there on the streets," the Honorable Nerf Dogoodily concluded with a rather tepid tap of his gavel which made him flinch none the less.

"With this legislative victory," crowed the coalition founder, Wayne Schtuphead, "we are going to expand our focus to other n'er-do-well inanimate objects like pencils that are guilty of misspelling words and Oprah's fork which we know for a fact is contributing to her inability to control her eating habits. Our goal is to have all of these evil objects banned for the good of society."

In related news: The Justice Department is "seriously" looking into banning the use of "crosshairs" which Attorney General Eric Doper described as a "hate symbol" quite capable of influencing otherwise law-abiding citizens to acts of violence.