Guns can be frightening. Guns can be fun. How many here have actually fired one? More than once? (Genuine questions -- not meant to rub noses, etc.)
As for allowing the state a monopoly on firepower, I'm generally against it, tho, as Carl says, if the state comes down on you, there's only so much resistance you can put up before you're crushed (see: Waco). I was much more gun-ho a dozen years or so ago, when I advocated in the tiny Manhattan weekly I edited -- and yes, at cocktail parties, too -- that pro-choicers should arm themselves in clinic defenses, including having snipers atop the bldgs. Apart from a few faint gasps, the reaction I got from the lib-left crowd was amusement, y'know, I was being "ironical." The more I pushed it, the more they laughed. I thought I was quite serious. Or was I? (Time dissolves in a spinning vortex of random memories . . .there's my high school! and my pet collie Beau! Mom, you look so young! Can you hear me?)
DP