Gun

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Ann Coulter says the liberals are welcome to take her gun if they can dodge the bullets.
Just in case they don't see the light, I suggest we take their guns away before they come in.
—"Jim Bowie" in Comanche Territory

A gun is a device for launching projectiles at targets one wishes to damage, injure, or kill. They come in all lengths and calibers, with projectiles made of many materials, for various purposes. The principal uses for the gun are war, hunting, and target shooting, self-defense, and sometimes, compensation for emasculation.

[edit] Killing sprees

Guns are associated with atrocities because they make them so much easier to perpetrate. Mass atrocities are sometimes mistakenly called "killing sprees." According to criminologists James Allen Fox and Jack Levin[1]the term "spree killing" identifies events that fall neither into the categories of serial killing nor mass atrocity. Thus the 1959 killings of the Clutter family of four in Holcomb, Kansas by Richard "Dick" Hickock and Perry Smith were described in press accounts as a "killing spree." When the numbers of victims climb beyond the single digits and a political rather than criminal motive is evident then the event is normally called an atrocity. Unless of course one wants to diminish the horror of the event. The term "spree" connotes irresponsibility rather than rational intention. As in a "shopping spree." Curiously, some of the English language news coverage of the atrocity committed by Anders Behring Breivik uses the term "killing spree."

[edit] See also

[edit] Footnotes

  1. "Multiple Homicides: Patterns of Serial and Mass Killing." Crime and Justice. Vol. 23 (1998): 407-455]
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