and and all else and along comes a mugger. Mean, cruel, unshaven, roughly dressed, long hair, 4'11", 110 pounds, feeling rather fortunate for finding such an easy mark, a man with a purse, strutting in his flip-flops, in no position to give chase even had he the inclination. After all, it's a purse. Puffing himself up, he approaches you from the front and demands money.

You do what you're trained to do. Lightning quick, no indecision, with the reflexes of A Boy Named Sue, you swing your purse at the poor guy, who doesn't expect it to contain an arsenal. An autopsy later reveals the barrel of the .45 crushed the little guy's medulla oblongata, instantly killing him.

Would that fatality be considered the result of a concealed firearm? Would the mugger have attacked if this apparition had the .45 on a hip, clear, plain for all to see? What if the little guy were black, would that affect matters? Could you be said to be trying to lure someone into mugging you?

Can you see how that purse complicates things? How it muddles the issue, goes against 250 years of American manhood, and cost a poor mother her only son, only child, the light of her life, heir, her only chance for progeny, effectively terminating that line, that lineage, her chance to live on in the genes of grandchildren, great-grandchildren?

What next? Ruffled collars, codpieces, shoes with turned up toes, tu-tus? Alas and alack, woe is us, the end is near, the final collapse, Pat Robertson is right, so is Jerry Falwell.

I cant sea th scren for te teers in my eeys. i hav to close