The .223 A Very Deadly Bullet

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83. There are gun owners and gun nuts.

A gun owner is a person like your grandmother - he/she owns an object that has utility in certain situations. A gun nut is one who owns a gun but includes guns in his/her self definition, just as there are sports nuts, car nuts and gardening nuts.

In any of these cases - guns, sports, cars or gardens - the person partially defines himself by the thing they have and how they use that thing. They evaluate others by how they have or use the same items.

I know several gun nuts. In every instance, my friends with guns are afraid of assaults of some kind, although none has a reason to think that might happen, and each is also ready to go on the offensive with a gun should a situation arise that would warrant that. Again, none of these friends can define what such a situation might be.

Defining oneself by one's possessions, and how one might use those possessions, is a slippery slope. Being define by external things is bad enough, but when those things can murder others, and one considers such use as a possibility, a line has been crossed.

Nobody has ever been killed by a gardening nut wielding a carrot.