My ex-wife isn't a lunatic. She's just a volatile person with an anger-management problem. And she was more in love with me than I was with her, and she knew it and it bothered her. Even people without anger management problems can behave irrationally when severely stressed. Even you, Mrs. M. I'm glad you don't live with a violent person (trust me, it's NOT fun), and I know you're a widow, and I don't know if you're currently living with a lover. But imagine that you are, and that this guy not only cheats on you but brings home an STD and infects you with it, and you find this out on a phone call from your doctor, who also reveals that it's her own underage daughter that the creep fooled around with -- together with that underage daughter's sleazy boyfriend, who was probably the one carrying the bug. AND while you're having this discussion you look in your purse and discover that $500 cash and a couple of credit cards are missing . . . (Heh -- I'm going to have to put some scenario like that into my next novel, I think.)

There are going to be situations in which having a gun saves a person's life or protects his/her property. There are going to be situations in which it endangers the lives of their owners or their owners' family and friends. Statistically, the latter are much more numerous. I know that, and for that reason I do not plan ever to own and keep a firearm around the house. I have no irrational fear of guns; I grew up in Texas and used to go target shooting all the time. And yet I can still remember the time when a friend of mine who was over visiting took my dad's revolver out and, assuming it was unloaded, pointed it at my sister and pulled the trigger . . .

Luckily, he was right, it wasn't loaded. But you know as well as I do that you NEVER make that assumption. Kids, though, kids are irresponsible, it's part of being a kid. I look back on that memory and shudder at what could have happened, if my father had forgotten to unload the gun before putting it away.

I could see having a gun if I was in a high-risk situation for one reason or another, where the risk of having something happen where I would need the gun outweighed the danger of having the gun itself. But I don't expect ever to be in that sort of situation.