<!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional//EN"> <HTML> Jordan Hayes wrote: <BLOCKQUOTE><<But enough about me; how about you go find the answer to your question (how often does a handy pistol turn road rage into a shooting?) and come back to us with your answer.>></BLOCKQUOTE> Actually, Jordan, that's your question, not mine.  My questions were along the lines of <<Does road rage never seize them when their handy-dandy pistolas happen to be in the glove compartment?>>  Not quite the same thing. <P>I'm not claiming that guns <<activate>> aberrant criminal behavior.  I am saying that guns facilitate the expression of aberrant impulses with gestures that will terminate any conflict just as certainly as they will make the person holding the gun an ex post facto criminal.  This isn't just salon theorizing.  In my own experience, two friends, both women, died after being shot by their partners.  I believe that both women would probably be alive now, had their partners not had immediate access to a firearm.  (Yes, I know I said "probably.") <BLOCKQUOTE><<What's I'm not interested in is pre-judging gun owners as criminals. <P>And that's exactly what you're doing when you say you're "afraid of guns" and it's exactly why I label that "irrational" ...>></BLOCKQUOTE> Wait a minute.  I didn't categorize gun-owners as criminals, did I?  What I meant to say is that ownership of a gun facilitates the expression of irrational impulses in ways that most of us would categorize as criminal.  I'll concede at once that such dæmonic urges never enter the minds of the vast majority of gun-owners, but it's hard to see how such bland optimism might console the survivors of the two women whose deaths I mentioned earlier.  Nothing irrational about that, in my opinion--or about fearing guns as the facilitators of such catastrophes.</HTML>