This is today’s Miami Herald’s Online poll. Since English is not my native language, it must be a nuance I don’t get.

If you figure out how to respond, let me know.

“Why Do East Tennesseans Love Their Guns?” is a well written article by Jesse Fox Mayshar who appears to be a Non-Gunner. None of the snide remarks we are used to or condescending tones.

The closing is one I agree with

Unlike some gun enthusiasts, he doesn’t necessarily think there’s anything wrong with anyone who doesn’t want to own a gun (or 19 of them). But he does wish that people who don’t like guns could just think of it the way he thinks of golf: as something that other people enjoy, for some unfathomable reason.

“You really don’t have to understand it,” he says, almost plaintively. “I hate to use this buzzword, but I will: It’s tolerance.”

In other words, gun people say: We’re here. Don’t fear. Just get over it.

Mr Mayshar deserves kudos for a good article. It is thoughtful and amazingly deep. He did a darn good job of presenting rather than judging.

Sharp as a Marble points out that Floridian’s blood turn to slushie when temps drop below the 50° mark. And even though I can see the instant smirk from our brothers and sisters up north, I want to let them know that our temps just do not drop but implode. At more Northern latitudes, they go through an adjustment period called Fall when their 2 weeks tops of “heat” they have in Summer, gently slides down over a period of months to a freeze-your-butt frigidity. We are not that lucky since apparently LIN, the God of Weather decide to do cast his magic gas and the temp drops almost 50 degrees overnight after eight months of Two Degrees Hotter Than Hell weather.

I am betting on snow this winter and not the one from Colombia.

Where the hell are my socks?

Still more old stuff found in old back ups.

What’s in Jack Bauer’s bag?

Three vials of sodium pentothal
Chase’s other arm- there is no way that Jack was unaware that Chase broke Kim’s heart. Jack always gets his revenge.
Copy of CTU Distress Codes (2004 Edition)
Three Cruise missiles
Four pairs of flexicuffs
Sun Tzu’s The Art of War
Medieval Iron Maiden
Pair of pearl-handled Colt revolvers
Habib Marwan’s heart
Sunglasses
Cell phone and PDA chargers
Band-Aids
Swiss Army knife
Box of Powerbars
Two Fruit Punch Gatorades
Change of underwear
Schematics of every building in Los Angeles
Two claymore anti-personal mines
Driver’s License, Helicopter Pilot’s License, Airplane Pilot’s License, SCUBA certification card, CPR certification card, Frequent Finagler card
Bamboo shoots (for torture)
Branding irons (for torture)
Three pints of type sensitive blood
iPod
Kim’s senior portrait from high school
Approximately 17,000 9mm bullets
Flare gun
Night vision goggles
Centrum A-Zinc vitamins
Copy of Barstool Sports
Arab-English dictionary, Spanish-English dictionary, Farsi-English dictionary, Russian-English dictionary
Heroin
Mass Card for Edgar’s wake
Hit List
Picture of him and Tony Almeida performing “Love Is a Battlefield” at CTU: Los Angeles’ Annual Karaoke Christmas Party
Business Cards
Pepper Spray
AK-47
Altoids
Gas Mask
EpiPen
Ticket for year long vacation, flight leaves tomorrow at 8:30 AM

Our sweet Siamese cat Krysty passed away this morning. The first time she came home, she was so small she fit in my shirt’s pocket and did not stop complaining from the pet shop till we got home. I had the honor of accompany her on her last trip out of our lives. In the pic, she is with Missy, our rescued Maine Coon mix with nutcase whom she accepted from second one without any jealousy or conflict. For a childless couple, she was our child and we are mourning her passing almost as if she was human.

And that is all I have to say.

Don’t ask me where I got this list. I found it in some old CD Roms. Some are dated and some turned out to be prophetic!

Enjoy!

If you recently sold your million dollar business and your half a million dollar house for a huge loss and happily moved into a shack in the Carolinas to get away from California’s latest Assault Weapon Ban, you just mite be a gun nut.

If you hate Rosy McDonald and all of  her Anti-Gun Sisters but still can’t pass up a sale at the K-Mart gun counter, than you just may be a gun nut.
If you canceled an all expense paid trip to Hawaii because you found out the SHOT Show was at the same time, but in a different state, you just mite be a gun nut.

If you have more than two fifteen hundred dollar gun safes in your two thousand dollar trailer house, you just mite be a gun nut.

If you think the NRA is full of a bunch of “Left Wing Pansies” than you just may be a gun nut.

If your gun collection is valued at more than your 401K retirement plan, you just might be a gun nut.

If you know that the “unique” custom-type bedding block system on the new SIG-Sauer SHR 970 synthetic sport rifle was used by R. Reger of Konigsberg Germany in 1937, and by A. Francotte of Liege Belgium in the early 1930’s, you just might be a gun nut.

If you cancel travel plans to go and visit your oldest and closest friends because you just found out there is a gun show that weekend, you just might be a gun nut.

If you ever went grocery shopping with your last 20 dollars till payday and bought 3 gun magazines (the reading type) and some coffee, forgoing the bread, milk and eggs your wife told you to get, you just might be a gun nut.

If the people on SIG-L know more about you than all 9 of your sisters, you just might be a gun nut.

If seeing Bill Clinton’s picture automatically sends you into Condition Red, you just might be a gun nut. (Or possibly just someone who doesn’t like lecherous, dirty old men and liars!)

If the last truly sensitive, intimate and emotionally open conversation you had with your wife, was on the merits of the 7mm STW cartridge, you just might be a gun nut.

If you think HCI stands for “Hi Caps Installed” or is a new type of “High Concussion Incendiary” ammo, you just might be a gun nut.

If you go to three different gun shows within a month and your excited every single time, you just might be a gun nut.

If you watch La Femme Nikita just to see the weapons, especially the suppressed H&K MP5s, you just might be a gun nut.

If your wife and you argue over who gets to carry the SIG 225 during the summer months, you just might be a gun nut.

If you ever seriously thought about dabbing a little Hoppe’s #9 on your neck before going out on a date, you just might be a gun nut.

If you buy some checkering tools, checker all your gun stocks, and then start on the bedposts, you just might be a gun nut.

If you cannot recall how many firearms you own, you just might be a gun nut.

If you buy a gun that’s just like that other gun you have except the barrel is 1/2″ shorter (or longer), you just might be a gun nut.

If you buy a gun at a shop only to find out you used to own it a couple of years ago, you just might be a gun nut.

If you know twelve different names for one caliber of cartridge, you just might be a gun nut.

If you ever clean a gun that hasn’t been shot in the week since you cleaned it last, you just might be a gun nut.

If you consider naming your unborn child Winchester or Remington, you just might be a gun nut.

If you purchased two Glocks and two SIGs just to see which brand was better, you just might be a gun nut.

If your drive to work is filled with reverie about why Ed’s Red actually works, you just might be a gun nut.

If you strip all the paint off your car and then refinish it with cold blue, you just might be a gun nut.

If you ever bought ammo in a caliber for which you have no gun, because you thought some day you MIGHT get a gun in that caliber, you just be be a gun nut.

If your collection of American Rifleman back issues, Gun Digests and reloading manuals cost you a premium the last time you moved, you just might be a gun nut.

If you have more than one gun that “kills on both ends,” you just might be a gun nut.

If you buy high capacity magazines for a gun you have not bought yet, you just might be a gun nut.

If you take your guns out of the safe each night and handle them, just so you can wipe them off before putting them away, you just might be a gun nut.

If your mother-in-law asks what new gun junk you want for Christmas this year, you just might be a gun nut.

If you see TV footage of the war in Bosnia and wish you were there to pick up the brass, you just might be a gun nut.

If you drive 300 miles just to ogle (and fire) HK-MP5s (and Stens, Uzis, BMGs and whatever else shows up at Knob Creek), you just might be a gun nut.

If you keep a loaded gun hidden in every room in the house, including the bathroom and kitchen, “just in case,” and then keep one on you at all times just in case someone breaks in while you’re in the hallway, you just might be a gun nut.

If you consider it unpatriotic not to own at least one .45 and one .22, you just might be a gun nut.

If you named your pocket pistol “Little Guy” and your 12 gauge “Big Jake,” you just might be a gun nut.

If you own reloading dies for caliber’s that you do not shoot, you just might be a gun nut.

If you tape American Shooter so you can pause, reverse and fast forward to do a complete analysis of the show, you just might be a gun nut.

If you understand Smith & Wesson’s model numbers, you just might be a gun nut.

If you ever bought two brands of the same weight and type of bullet, just to see if one “shot better,” you just might be a gun nut.

If you keep a collection of different cartridges at your place of work as a “conversation piece,” you just might be a gun nut.

If you take your wife on vacation to a gun show for your 10th Anniversary and she is as excited to go as you are, you just might be a gun nut.

If you ever had to explain, “It’s NOT the same gun, it’s a different VARIANT… ” you just might be a gun nut.

If you and your new father-in-law go to a gun show on your wedding day, you just might be a gun nut.

If you have life memberships in more than one shooting organization, you just might be a gun nut.

If you read that “Brady II” would outlaw possession of more than 1,000 rounds of ammunition and think, “I have more than that rolling around loose in the trunk of my car!” you just might be a gun nut.

If watching The Lion King gives you the itch for a .470 Nitro Express, you just might be a gun nut.

If, while watching the movie Terminator 2, you have to leave the room in tears and mournful sobs after Arnold Schwartzenneger throws the CAR-16 off the moving tractor trailer and it goes bouncing away, you just might be a gun nut.

If your guns are cleaner than your residence, you just might be a gun nut.

If you have 5 different guns being DROS’d at 3 different FFL dealers, you just might be a gun nut.

If you plunked down a $130 deposit on a Seecamp after waiting two years for them to accept your order, and are still willing to wait another two years for them to make your pistol, you just might be a gun nut.

If your mom gives you a new Springfield Armory .308 sniper rifle for Christmas, you just might be a gun nut.

If four local gun shops know you by name, you just might be a gun nut.

If you’re friends with 90% of the employee’s at all the local gun shops, you just might be a gun nut.

If you identify the gun on the cover of Dillons Blue Press before you even notice the girl, you just might be a gun nut.

If, when you stop in at the local gun shop, they ask you questions like: “How was work?” “How are the wife and kids?” “We’re gonna order some food, ya want in?” etc., you just might be a gun nut.

If you have more gunpowder stashed in your home than your local sporting goods store has on hand, you just might be a gun nut.

If you can wallpaper your house with old issues of Shotgun News, Gun List, Guns & Ammo, etc., you just might be a gun nut.

If all of your children are life members of the NRA, you just might be a gun nut.

If your children are named “Ogive” and “Meplat,” you just might be a gun nut.

If you make $30 per hour at work, but spend 30 minutes on your knees at the range looking for that last piece of .40 Auto brass, you just might be a gun nut.

If you have Brownells on speed dial, you just might be a gun nut.

If you trimmed down 100 10mm cases to form .357 SIG brass before commercial supplies of this brass were available, you just might be a gun nut.

If the custom door lock pulls on your Jeep are .223 Rem cases and the gear shift knob is a .50 BMG, you just might be a gun nut.

If your girl friend thinks that aura of Hoppes #9 is your favorite after shave, you just might be a gun nut.

If you have guns in your safe that you can’t for the life of you remember how you came by, you just might be a gun nut.

If you wish you could buy The Blue Book of Gun Values in hard cover, you just might be a gun nut.

If you watch old W.W.II movies and can identify all the rifles and handguns, but can’t remember who stared in the movie or what it was about, you just might be a gun nut.

If you consider it a point of honor to buy factory ammo only if you need the brass, you just might be a gun nut.

If your pickup is subject to search at any given time because, in your state, empty cartridge cases rolling around the floor are considered probable cause. you just might be a gun nut.

If you read the sports section of the newspaper just for the gun ads, you just might be a gun nut.

If you get a flat and realize that you’ve got 400 pounds of shot, a Hefty bag each of wads and empty hulls, and enough primers to re-open the main shaft of the Lost Dutchman on top of your spare tire, you just might be a gun nut.

If you wonder what size rings you would need to mount the Hubble Space Telescope on a varmint rifle, you just might be a gun nut.

If .22LR cartridges frequently find their way into your washing machine, you just might be a gun nut.

If your gun safe cost more than your dining room set, you just might be a gun nut.

If you work for the military and have more shooting experience then the guys in uniform you work with, you just might be a gun nut.

If your teenage daughter’s next date is introduced to you while your sitting at the loading bench cleaning your M-1, you just might be a gun nut.

If you visit the shooting range more then twice a week, you just might be a gun nut.

If your wife says to buy a gun she would like you to sell one first, you just might be a gun nut.

If you have ever had your local sporting goods store call your house and ask, “We are doing a stock order, did you need anything?” . . . you just might be a gun nut.

If the checkering pattern of your favorite 1911 is permanently impressed in your palm, you just might be a gun nut.

If your bridal registry is at the local gun shop, you just might be a gun nut.

If you have more cubic feet of your home devoted to gun-related materials than clothing, you just might be a gun nut.

If you can identify on sight all rifle bolt-faces as in: “That’s a Ruger, that’s a Savage, that’s a Winchester . . .” you just might be a gun nut.

If the largest gun store in your area calls you if they need something they can’t get elsewhere, you just might be a gun nut.

If you’re a computer specialist and you have more issues of Shotgun News and Gun List than MacWeek and PCWeek, you just might be a gun nut.

You actually consider buying the camo sexy underwear advertised for your sweetie in some gun catalogs, you just might be a gun nut.

If you bought 7 or more AK-47’s just so you could have different ones from different countries (Bulgarian, Romanian, Russian, Yugoslavian, Egyptian, Chinese, etc.), you just might be a gun nut.

If your phone number, license plate, extension at work, etc. relates to some kind of bullet caliber  . . .  ON PURPOSE, you just might be a gun nut.

If you have framed targets hanging in your bathroom, hallway, or at work, etc. with tight groups that you have shot, you just might be a gun nut.

If you can read the same issue of SGN/GL/etc. everyday until the new issue comes out, you just might be a gun nut.

If you tag pages in SGN/GL for later reference, you just might be a gun nut.

If you own enough guns to arm everyone on your block, you just might be a gun nut.

If you own 4 AR-15’s configured EXACTLY the same but by different manufactures (Colt, Bushmaster, Olympic Arms, Armalite, etc.) just because you can, you just might be a gun nut.

If the last 5 guns you bought are never to be fired, you just might be a gun nut.

If, when buying a new gun, you plead with your gun shop to keep it until you have space for it, you just might be a gun nut.

If your wife wants to wear black leather so you buy her a carry holster, you just might be a gun nut.

You have Trijicon Night-Lights in your bedroom, you just might be a gun nut.

Your mailbox has a Weaver Rail on top, you just might be a gun nut.

You can’t figure out why your non-shooting friends laugh when you say, “Bushmaster”, you just might be a gun nut.

You would like to see Bill Clinton or Barbara Boxer spend even one hour after midnight at a Washington, DC bus-stop without their bodyguards, you just might be a gun nut.

If you build a gun rack in your bedroom and it’s closer to you than your wife, you just might be a gun nut.

If you can identify gunshots from faraway as to caliber, whether from a rifle or pistol, brand of gun, grains of powder used, *what* powder and at what velocity, you just might be a gun nut.

If you ever stumbled across a cache of once-fired brass for a caliber you don’t own, but hoarded it anyway, you just might be a gun nut.

If your answer to the recent rec.guns newsgroup thread, “How many guns do you need?” is, “How many do you have room for in your house?” you just might be a gun nut.

If you stockpiled thousands of primers during the infamous “Primer Famine of 1994,” you just might be a gun nut.

If a friend knows you reload and gives you a set of dies of a caliber you do not already have, and you go out a buy a gun so you can use the FREE dies, you just might be a gun nut.

If, when you do the wash, several spent casings fall out of your rolled-up sleeves, you just might be a gun nut.

If you go to a gun show and contemplate buying a particular gun for a half an hour before you remember that you already have that one, you just might be a gun nut.

If, when you go to the magazine rack, you check the Guns and Ammo cover to see if there are new guns as compared to checking the Playboy cover to see what it is offering, you just might be a gun nut.

If you own more reloading manuals than Bibles, you just might be a gun nut.

If you own a BAYONET for a gun you haven’t bought yet, you just might be a gun nut.

If you buy a gun that is a duplicate of one you already have because the original one might break someday . . . you just might be a gun nut.

If you name your first-born boy SIGGY, you just might be a gun nut.

If you’d rather have a $10,000 PSG-1 and drive a $600 car rather than drive a $10,000 car and have a $600 gun, you just might be a gun nut.

If you preach how stupid gun laws/bans are at work when you work in a predominantly ANTI-gun company, you just might be a gun nut.

If you would rather ban alcohol than high-capacity magazines, you just might be a gun nut.

If you name your first-born girl LadySmith, you just might be a gun nut.

If your kid’s disposable diapers come in camo battle packs, you just might be a gun nut.

If it bothers you more when 007 runs out of ammo than when the BOND girl dies, you just might be a gun nut.

If your key-ring fob is a converted .50BMG cartridge, you just might be a gun nut.

If your driver’s license says “must wear night-vision goggles,” you just might be a gun nut.

If “Miller Time” means plinking at beer cans, you just might be a gun nut.

If the highlight of your week is discovering that 6 .40S&W hollowpoints fit perfectly in a plastic 35mm film canister (5 up/1 down in the middle), you just might be a gun nut.

If you put a Hogue Grip on your car’s parking brake, you just might be a gun nut.

If you retrofit a laser sight to your TV remote control, you just might be a gun nut.

If it takes you several minutes leafing through Small Arms of the World to find a gun you have never fired, you just might be a gun nut.

If you have a callus on your shoulder, you just might be a gun nut.

If you’ve ever sent a scope (that was never dropped) back to Leupold for repair, you just might be a gun nut.

If factories ask *you* how well their guns hold up, you just might be a gun nut.

If Hornady’s largest midwestern distributor informs you that you’ve bought over half of all the Vector ammo they’ve ever had in stock, you just might be a gun nut.

If you even had the thought, “I wonder what scale that little kids Animal Crackers are, compared to Regulation silhouettes?” you just might be a gun nut.

If your standard Sunday-afternoon question to guys selling surplus ammo at gun shows is “How much for all of it, so you don’t have to lug it home?” you just might be a gun nut.

If RCBS asked *you* for load data for the .357 SIG, (before it was published) you just might be a gun nut.

If you shoot enough Berdan-primed ammo that you are on a first-name basis with your local scrap metal dealer, you just might be a gun nut.

If, upon seeing your 1978 wildcatting project (a .375 on a .50 Sharps 3 1/4″ case, 3340 FPS with a 300 Sierra boat tail), Elmer Keith says “You’re nuts!” you just might be a gun nut.

If Keith Francis (at JGS, the chambering reamer company), answers your phone calls “What have you dreamed up *this* time?” you just might be a gun nut.

If you own a firearm listed in the Guinness Book of World Records, you just might be a gun nut.

You go to a marriage counselor, he asks you which you like better, shooting or sex, and you think it’s the stupidest question you’ve ever heard, you just might be a gun nut.

If you’re in the army reserves, and they can’t figure out why every time they send you out to shoot the M60 with 100 rounds, you return with a shot-out barrel (it never dawns on them you’re bringing your own ammo . . . ), you just might be a gun nut.

If you keep a copy of one of Elmer Keith’s books on your coffee table, you just might be a gun nut.

If you spend more on ammo each month than on food, you just might be a gun nut.

If you list your local FFL dealer as a dependent on your tax return, you just might be a gun nut.

If a topless joint with free admission is half a mile away, and instead you drive 40 miles to the shooting range on a Saturday night, you just might be a gun nut.

If you alternate Silvertips and Hydra-Shocks in your magazines because they look prettier that way, you just might be a gun nut.

If you guess range and windage whenever you look at road signs, you just might be a gun nut.

If you have more .50 caliber ammo cans than the local U. S. Army Reserves armory, you just might be a gun nut.

If your gun collection is worth more than your automobile, you just might be a gun nut.

If you have to run out to the range this weekend to shoot up some ammo because you need some brass to reload, you just might be a gun nut.

If you’re still reading this inane list, you are a gun nut.