the guns. Debates on this subject are rarely coolheaded. Gun advocates believe that gun laws are too strict; opponents believe ex- actly the opposite. How can intelligent people view the world so dif- ferently? Because a gun raises a complex set of issues that change according to one factor: whose hand happens to be holding the gun. It might be worthwhile to take a step back and ask a rudimentary question: what is a gun? Its a tool that can be used to kill someone, of course, but more significantly, a gun is a great disrupter of the natural order.     A gun scrambles the outcome of any dispute. Lets say that a tough guy and a not-so-tough guy exchange words in a bar, which leads to a fight. Its pretty obvious to the not-so-tough guy that hell be beaten, so why bother fighting? The pecking order remains intact. But if the not-so-tough guy happens to have a gun, he stands a good chance of winning. In this scenario, the introduction of a gun may well lead to more violence. Now instead of the tough guy and the not-so-tough guy, picture a high-school girl out for a nighttime stroll when she is suddenly set upon by a mugger. What if only the mugger is armed? What if only the girl is armed? What if both are armed? A gun opponent might argue that the gun has to be kept out of the muggers hands in the first place. A gun advocate might argue that the high-school girl needs to have a gun to disrupt what has become the natural order: its the bad guys that have the guns. (If the girl scares off the mugger, then the in- troduction of a gun in this case may lead to less violence.) Any mugger with even a little initiative is bound to be armed, for in a country like the United States, with a thriving black market in guns, anyone can