I’m of two minds about guns. You might call one “Gunny Glenn” and the other “Gunless Glenn.” We talked through it the other day.

Gunless: “Tell me, Gunny, why do you own guns?”

Gunny: “They’re half yours.”

“No, the guns are all yours.”

“In that case, thanks for paying for half.”

“Don’t mention it. But they’re dangerous, you know.”

“So are the bathtubs and balconies, and we don’t even keep those things locked up.”

“Answer my question: Why do you own guns?”

“I might want to go hunting. I know you don’t understand that because you’re too moral to eat meat — unless it comes from animals born to be eaten.”

“Ha, you never hunt — you don’t even drink beer and you can’t bring Chablis on a hunting trip!”

“Maybe someday I’ll go to the shooting range.”

“Give me a break. We don’t like the noise at the shooting range. And don’t snarl at me like you’re Dirty Harry.”

“I need the guns to protect you, Gunless, because, as we know, you aren’t as physically strong as I am.”

“Oh, come on, Gunny. Do you expect us to leap out of bed in our birthday suits, run to the gun safe, unlock it, load a gun and shoot an intruder — all in the dark — in the 1.3 seconds we have before he neutralizes us? What are we, SEAL Team 6?”

“OK, Gunless. If you really want to know, here’s why I have guns.

“Our rulers are bought off with big money — not just big money from corporations and unions, but big money from foreign governments.

“Our universities expel students on mere allegations and innuendos that they might have behaved — or just believed — in a way that’s politically incorrect.

“One political party seeks to abolish our borders and allow non-citizens to vote in our elections, and the other party is bullied into going along lest they be labeled ‘racists.’ Entire cities are designated as sanctuaries for criminals.

“The president secretly delivers pallets of hundred-dollar bills to Iran.

“The FBI says the establishment’s candidate for president was ‘extremely careless’ with national security and her top secret government emails were found on the laptop of a sex pervert who is married to her closest aide. Her supporters demanded that her opponent agree in advance to accept the results of the election even if those results were tainted and then they rioted in the streets against the results of one that is not.

“The IRS targets taxpayers for having the ‘wrong’ political beliefs while the Justice Department pardons criminals for having the ‘right’ ones.

“The president excuses a Cuban dictator who murdered his own people for six decades but he honors thugs who get high and charge policemen. Sometimes those policemen get ambushed while fulfilling their sworn duty to protect us but not once — not once! — has the president honored a dead cop.”

Gunless: “Are you done?”

Gunny: “Done? Heck, I’m just gettin’ warmed up!

“The establishment treasures diversity except in thoughts and beliefs. To blind us to their corruption, they sedate us with drugs and sports — the modern equivalent of bread and circuses. They disempower us and, failing that, they disembowel us. Even agencies like the Fish and Wildlife Service have their own armed SWAT teams in case we act up.

“You see, the reason they want to take our guns is not because they hate guns. It’s because they hate us. They mock us as bitter clingers in rusty pickup trucks praying to our God rather than to their government while chewing tobacco, throwing beer cans out the window and denying a woman her right to choose to abort her child any time up to and after birth.

“You have to tip-toe and word-mince around every other demographic but there’s no name too vile to hurl and no action too extreme to take against a guy like me for the crime of working a lifetime, paying his taxes, raising a family, obeying the laws and trying to do the right thing. It’s open season on us. And don’t tell me one election will change all that.

“This is not a gun war. It’s a culture war. The gun-takers are willing to accept that their schemes to take guns away will never take guns away from criminals who refuse to relinquish them, because it’s not the criminals they’re targeting. It’s you and me.

“It’s a war between the Enlightenment and the Dark Ages. I have no illusion that my little collection of guns can defend me against the thought police and social justice warriors who’ve pointed their arsenals of totalitarianism at my head. I’m too old, too blind and too outgunned.

“But it’s all I have. That’s why I own guns.”

Gunless: “Hmm. Maybe you could show me how to use those guns of ours.”

Gunny: “Take a gun safety course, my friend. Afterward, we can have a glass of that Chablis we like.”

(Published Dec. 11, 2016 in the Aspen Times at http://www.aspentimes.com/opinion/beaton-why-do-we-own-guns/)