How come I have never had the urge to own a gun?

[Aristus]

8. Keep going. I'm with you on this one.

I don't understand the attraction. Self-defense, I can understand. But when someone owns dozens of guns and thousands of rounds of ammunition, and sports a "You'll take my gun when..." attitude, I can only assume his life is so empty, miserable, and pathetic that guns are the only things that matter to him or her.

I did a play recently with a gun fetishist who was rhapsodizing about his guns and his 4,000 rounds of ammo. At the end of his firearm-porn polemic, he must have realized his was in a room with a bunch of pro-gun-control liberals, and got a little defensive; "I've got daughters to protect."

I took him down a notch by pointing out to him: "Problem is, your daughters aren't going to be threatened by some random gunman on the streets; they're going to be threatened by husbands, and boyfriends, and co-workers; people that they know. And all your guns won't do a lick of good to help them."

In light of today's 'random gunman' tragedy, I would have added: "Suppose your daughters were at the movie without you? Or you were at the movie without your guns? Or you had your guns with you, and in the noise, chaos, confusion and smoke, you accidentally shot one of your girls?"

But there's no appealing to logic with gun fetishists...