[saxman]

Roadkill; I have given considerable thought to these questions over the last few years, and I can answer that I personally feel the power associated with holding a loaded gun, but also feel an even greater responsibility to handle it with all the care and respect for it's power that I can muster. I constantly force myself to observe every regimen of safety in the handling, use and storage of my guns. But I don't own them for the power. I have no desire to exert power over others as long as they don't threaten my family or myself. I enjoy the mechanical aspects of the gun, like I enjoy many other kinds of machines. You see, a gun is nothing more than a machine to throw a rock farther, faster and more accurately than by hand, by sling or by anything else mankind has come up with so far. Our ancestors struggled mightily through the ages to develop better rock throwers, because some group of goblins or other was constantly trying to take away from them what precious little they had, including their wives and children. The firearm is the ultimate development in a small, efficient machine that throws hard objects accurately at lethal velocities. Weapons of the not so distant future will be focused more on energy than projectiles, and the horror of them will make the firearm seem as a toy. Be that as it may, for now I get a good feeling knowing I have at least some means of defense - like during the recent power blackout from Hurricane Isabel when goblins were using open windows to enter homes at night.
What is it about the gun? Maybe it's knowing that it was made for battle, for providing meat, for security or for the greatest accuracy, and that it is the ultimate expression of form=function - a functional form that is so refined, even in mass-produced military weapons, that it has it's own kind of beauty.