Could you, would you, with a goat?

I think that Mikal's post on 'A day at the shooting range' might have angered my Inner Hippy.

Not that I want to prolong any talk of politics, but...

You know how people often come out as 'politically opposed' to things, when in reality, they're frightened of them?

(Of course, I'm generalizing, but most of the prejudiced xenophobic or pro-life or otherwise moralising politics seems to always stem from a fear of strangers, or homos, or God, or whatever...)

Most of the time I can recognise that. And I'm able to set whatever personal prejudices I have aside and try to deal with the facts alone. But on the gun front, I'm just like the Fred Niles and Rush Limbaughs of the world, in the sense that my fear overcomes my judgment. Truth be told, I find the concept of applying human ingenuity and brilliance in engineering towards the 'science' of killing people to be absolutely terrifying.

I'm afraid of guns. I'm also afraid of Death Adders. (To be honest, I'm less afraid of Death Adders, because they haven't been engineered by people specifically for the purpose of killing.) I'm afraid of these things because I don't like things that can kill me. I don't want to be shot, nor do I want my friends or family, or, come to think of it, anyone to be shot.

Any argument you may have with me on guns, or gun control needs to take into account that:

"I do not like them, Sam-I-Am. I do not LIKE things that go Blam!"

And as a result, I simply can't have a rational, academic discussion about the topic, any more than the Pope could have a truly subjective argument about atheism.