<!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional//EN"> <HTML> At the conclusion of a recent post, Jordan Hayes wrote: <BLOCKQUOTE TYPE=CITE>Like I said, I only mostly really care about the 2nd because I think it's hilarious what kind of hypocracy it brings out in people.  You have people like Diane Feinstein who get on the tube and bitch and moan about guns, but she carries!  You've got Rosie O'Donnel who tries to get the cast of Annie Get Your Gun to *change the lyrics* to a song they are going to sing on her show because it mentions a bit of sharpshooting. /jordan</BLOCKQUOTE> You're right, of course, to nail O'Donnell and Feinstein for their rank hypocrisies. In an earlier exchange, however, you congratulated another correspondent for her willingness to acknowledge that fear of guns is "irrational."  Well, guns scare me, too, and I don't find anything in the least irrational about that. That goes for the guns that last week were used to kill a homeless woman in Los Angeles whose mental illness induced her to brandish a screwdriver at two cops worrying about the legitimacy of her claim to the shopping-cart in which she kept her belongings.  It also goes for the drawn gun in the hand of the Brink's guard in the supermarket as s/he supervises the passage of a shipment of cash to the armored truck outside while I wait meekly in the check-out line.  And, because my son and I live in a thin-walled apartment, it also goes for the guns that may or may not be snuggled in my neighbors' night-stands under their socks.  Hell, it just goes for guns anywhere, at any time. Give me a gun, and I'm no no less a lethal threat to my family and neighbors than anyone else holding a weapon, no matter how law-abiding I may claim to be.  Do all 60,000,000 law-abiding American gun-owners refrain at all times from the consumption of alcohol when in the proximity of their legally purchased 9mm's?  Do they never lose their temper with their partners, domestic or mercantile, when their snappy semi-automatics are near at hand?  Does road rage never seize them when their handy-dandy pistolas happen to be in the glove compartment? Arguments about gun ownership don't exactly thrill me either.  Underlying all such debates, friendly or not, is the gun advocate's tacit assumption of advantage: "I've got a gun--or at least, you think I do--and you don't."  OK, it's a fair cop; I give in.  It's a bit like playing chicken with someone when you're in an 87 Honda and they're in a 99 Ford Expedition.  (And incidentally, no, I don't think licensing procedures for gun-owners have anything substantive in common with licensing procedures for car-owners--or with the bumf that dog-owners, liquor-store operators and the parents of school-age children, for example, are obliged to deal with.) Here are some thoughts on firearms by the admirable Robert Earl Keen.  As recorded in "Blow You Away," Keen's chilling  ruminations on guns and the culture of violence that guns sustain are, I believe, beyond either dispute or disputation.     <<BLOW YOU AWAY You take off from work a bit early The boss doesn’t care if you stay The guard with the key has to check your ID But he’d just as soon blow you away The cops have stopped ten miles of traffic They’re sorry for all the delay No need for alarm as they’re waving their arms But they’d just as soon blow you away Two pretty blondes in a Porsche Their bumper says “We Love LA” They look pretty fair but they’re crazy out there And they’d just as soon blow you away You got in some trouble in high school But you feel like a new man today You keep to yourself because anyone else Would just as soon blow you away You’re standin’ in front of the teller She’s countin’ out all of your pay There’s twenties and ones and guards with their guns And they’d just as soon blow you away And one old ex-con at the station Fixes flats in the back of the  bay He winks and he jokes and he borrows a smoke But he’d just as soon blow you away You like the new girl at the hotel She drops your room key in the tray No words will pass through the bullet-proof glass ‘Cause she’d just as soon blow you away You climb up the stairs every evening To your room right above the café There ain’t much mystique but you pay every week ‘Cause they’d just as soon blow you away And you turn out the light that you read by You pray that you’re one of the few When you’re in with the lord there’s just one reward And they’d just as soon make it come true The mattress is mildewed and lumpy But you fall fast asleep where you lay Under the lump there’s a twenty-gauge pump ‘Cause they’d just as soon blow you away>> Words and Music by Robert Earl Keen ©1990 MCA Music  (BMI) from "A Bigger Piece of Sky" (Sugar Hill SH-CD-1037  ©1993 Sugar Hill Records)      </HTML>