"Get a Backbone, America: Ban All Handguns," shrills the "Zero Tolerance for Slaughter" column subhead in Salon.com's perversely titled Mothers Who Think feature. The Mother Who Thinks we must ban handguns is "feminist" author Sallie Tisdale, someone who feels that her opinions on gun ownership are worthy not only of sharing, but of adopting as national policy. Under force of arms.

Still, gun owners owe Ms. Tisdale a nod of acknowledgment for plainly stating what we have always known to be the true motive of those proposing "reasonable gun laws."

"I am no longer an advocate of gun control," Sallie warns us, "I am an advocate of gun elimination."

Sallie was "glad to see, shortly after the Littleton massacre, an editorial calling for the abolition of the Second Amendment," but parted ways with its author when he called for "a compromise that balanced the needs and desires of gun enthusiasts."

"Why," Sallie indignantly demands, "do we need to balance [these] with anything at all?"

"Do we really believe," Sallie cries, "that Benjamin Franklin and Thomas Jefferson intended the citizens to be scared to send their children to school? Why must we listen to the claims of gun lovers, or make any effort at all to satisfy their irrational appetite for weapons?"

Sallie tells us how wonderful life is in other countries, how nations that ban private ownership of arms have not devolved into tyrannies, and how statistics demonstrate that gun ownership makes America the least civilized society in the industrialized world. Sallie challenges gun owners to prove this is not so, citing as authorities such unbiased sources as "Physicians for Social Responsibility, the Coalition to Stop Gun Violence and the Bureau of Alcohol Tobacco and Firearms."

"I'm unmoved by the insistence of the gun lobby that their desire to use mutilating lethal weapons somehow equals my need to allow them to do so," Sallie dictates. The claims of gun owners, Sallie maintains, should receive no more consideration than those of criminals, perverts and racists. "If an American cannot be happy without collecting and shooting deadly weapons, I invite him to move to a country where you can do so," Sallie decrees, reminding us that "most of them are religious or class-based tyrannies without many of the freedoms we enjoy here."

"The phrase 'gun nut' is no joke. I am afraid of guns; I am afraid of people who like guns and who own guns. I am a little scared all the time," Sallie whimpers.

"I want an absolute ban on the manufacture, sale possession and use of handguns and automatic weapons in this country, with long prison sentences for violations," Sallie commands. "The police need guns - at least until we get rid of the hundreds of millions of guns floating around," Sallie lets slip.

"It will not be easy or swift," Sallie admits. "200 million weapons is a lot of metal, a lot to find. It requires collective goals and government support."

That's terrific. I'm sure Sallie is joined by many other Mothers Who Think that a goose-like inability to form conclusions based on cause and effect passes for reason. Fortunately, what passes for thought in Sallie's circles and among Sallie's following really doesn't matter.

Because by dictating the terms of our surrender, Sallie has absolved us of any need to rebut her idiot assertions on a point-by-point basis. Still, it might be useful to do so, not because we could ever hope to persuade Sallie and her kind to change their ...ummm... minds, but rather to demonstrate what a hate-filled and dishonest gaggle of empty-headed harridans they are.

The reason, Sallie, you "need to balance" the concerns of gun owners is because there are millions of us, and we need neither your permission nor your approval to exercise our inalienable rights. Are you truly stupid and arrogant enough to think that our freedom depends on what you are willing to "allow" us, and that we will have no say in the matter?

As for Jefferson and Franklin, don't go there, Sallie, unless you really want to expose how pathetically ignorant of history you truly are. The quotes from the Founding Fathers concerning the right and the need for an armed citizenry are legion, and exemplified in Patrick Henry's admonishment to "guard with jealous attention the public liberty. Suspect any who would approach that jewel. Unfortunately, nothing will preserve it but downright force. Whenever you give up that force, you are ruined."

As much as this may affront your elitist sensibilities, Sallie, citizens through most of our republic's history not only confidently sent their children to school, but in many cases sent them armed. That we didn't suffer Littletons in those days before gun control speaks volumes, especially of the damage done to children, and to society and to freedom when they are raised by inane Mothers Who Think like you.

As shameless as you are dull-witted, you dare to equate America's freedom-loving gun owners with "sexual predators, heroin dealers or white supremacists." What a cheap, dirty shot, but somehow it does not seem out of character for you, Sallie, resorting to naked "hate speech" to dehumanize peaceable and productive citizens for their effrontery to hold different values. One would think, Sallie, that someone described as a "bisexual mother of three" would have more sensitivity and sense than to try scoring points against other human beings by resorting to sexual aspersions against their character. Especially since we're fighting for the right of ALL people to keep and bear arms, Sallie. We're not the ones trying to render minorities and the gay/lesbian community vulnerable to violence, whether it is motivated by hatred or by criminal intent. You are.

And we understand that you, Sallie, along with fellow anti-defense fanatics Hillary Clinton, Donna Dees-Thomases, Sarah Brady, and Rosie O'Donnell would rather see your idiot lemming "Million" Mom followers trussed, sodomized at knife point and butchered like hogs than trained and equipped to defend themselves.

It is not lost on us, Sallie, that by adding the arbitrary qualifier "industrialized" to the comparison of international homicide rates, gun hating "statisticians" can omit or include countries as they see fit to support whatever conclusions they aim to reach. Funny how Israel and Switzerland, both with higher gun ownership rates than the U.S., have such dramatically lower incidents of violent crime. Funny how you think places that call their citizens "subjects" don't abridge freedom, Sallie. And just out of curiosity, perhaps you could point to even one "religious or class-based tyrann[y]" that allows uncontrolled private gun ownership?

Is it not true, Sallie, that these always, without exception, employ the very gun prohibitions you endorse, and that their citizens, always and without exception, are powerless slaves, employable or disposable at the whim of the state? How many tens of millions of disarmed innocents have been murdered in the past century, Sallie, by rulers who agree with you that they should enjoy a monopoly of force?

In a way, it is kind of amusing that you live in such self-induced perpetual fear, Sallie. What a rabbit you seem compared to the free and confident armed women whom secure and trusting men cherish and admire. But your dismay does seem misplaced, Sallie; after all, look at the most heavily armed population of individuals in the planet's history, the 4 million members of the NRA. How many people have been murdered in the past year by one of these, Sallie? In the past ten years? The past 100?

Would you say that their violent crime rate is lower than England's, Sallie, lower than Japan's? How about lower than the police, who should take note of your plot to disarm them after they have tried disarming the populace they are sworn to protect and serve?

You want to use the force of the "collective" to criminalize and assault peaceable people who simply want to be left alone, to raid every third home in the land to "find" all "200 million weapons, " and you're afraid of them? Thank you, Sallie, but you can take your silly little neuroses with their monstrous repercussions and go quiver and slaver and hiss somewhere else (perhaps one of those countries you want to exile gun owners to).

The short answer to your demands is "No." The longer answer is two words and starts with "F." You can't have our guns, Sallie. We're not going to give them up. There aren't enough of you to take them from us, and if you try we will resist. Now go away.

Go back to writing your trivial books for inconsequential Women Who Think that it's chic to be self-indulgent weaklings; somehow, your newest endeavor, Pigs in a Blanket, seems so apropos. But it's your earlier titles, The Best Thing I Ever Tasted: The Secret of Food, and Talk Dirty to Me: An Intimate Philosophy of Sex, that really divulge what makes you tick.

Why, Sallie! Suddenly, what you're all about is clear. You're preoccupied with self-gratification and fulfillment through food and sex. Why Sallie, you carnal little dear, you're obsessed with filling holes! Gluttonously so, it would seem, because you're bent on filling ones other than your own.

Holes were filled at Lexington and Concord, Sallie, when the government tried to disarm the people. Out of this was born the codified acknowledgment that they would never be permitted to do this again. More holes were filled at Ruby Ridge and Waco, Sallie, when the government, emboldened by dupes such as yourself, decided to test their ability to infringe on the right of the people to keep and bear arms.

How many more holes will you demand be filled, Sallie, in your insatiable and blasphemous quest to strip us of inalienable rights endowed by our Creator? How many of your fellow citizens are you willing to have agents representing your will imprison? How many of us do you want raided and crushed to advance your contemptible, tyranny enabling agenda? What's your tolerance for slaughtering those who would defy you, Sallie? How many of us are you willing to have killed?

How many holes will be filled, Sallie, if you and your fellow subversives continue to dig away at our freedoms? Be warned, Sallie. The wretched, superficial paranoia you live in now is nothing compared to the horror you and yours will visit on this land if you don't back off, and back off now. Push peaceable people far enough and hard enough, Sallie, and they will eventually push back. Pray that you never see America's "backbone," Sallie. Stop digging us into that hole.

Molon labe, Sallie. And no, sorry, it's not a reference to labia, your personal and professional fixation with such matters notwithstanding.

It was spoken, Sallie, by the heroic Leonidas, King of Sparta, at the battle of Thermopylae. It was his reply to the conqueror Xerxes, whose multitude of Persian invaders surrounded the brave, doomed three hundred Spartan warriors, and who demanded that they surrender their arms.

Only this time, Sallie, the defenders outnumber the aggressors.

Molon labe, Sallie.

Come and get them.

Read Sally Tisdale, Gun Banner's "Zero Tolerance for Slaughter" right here: http://www.salonmag.com/mwt/col/tisd/1999/05/06/elimination/index.html