Nicholas Kristof is headlined today with “Chicks With Guns.” I was so overcome with excitement, my keyboard appeared to momentarily levitate. Then – big, predictable mistake – I read the actual column.

A generation ago, women here at Mount Holyoke College defied convention by burning bras and moving in with boyfriends. These days, some women here are shocking the campus by embracing something even more dangerous than men — guns.

I’d like to know two things. One, what is Nicky trying to imply with “even more dangerous than men.” What, we can’t control ourselves and have to rape college girls? We encourage women to buy guns, and they’ll hurt their poor, pretty little selves with them? What’s he saying here? He’s starting to sound like ol’ Frumpy Dowdy herself. The other thing is Kristof’s immediate assumption that guns are inherently dangerous. Left to their own devices, they pretty much just sit there, and eventually gather rust.

So while we don't know whether more Americans will be killed by anthrax, we can be quite confident that plenty of us will be killed by these additional handguns.

And, as John Lott demonstrated a couple years ago, the vast majority of those killed will be bad men, by good women, in self-defense. Glad to know Nick is on the side of rapists, muggers, abusive husbands, etc.

The F.B.I. has figures showing that in the six months since the terror attacks it has conducted 455,000 more background checks for gun purchases than in the same period a year earlier. The agency says it has also conducted 130,000 more checks than a year earlier for applications to carry concealed weapons.

He says that like it’s a bad thing. Frankly, the more legally armed people there are, the safer I feel about the illegally armed barbarians. Maybe if we start letting decent people carry pistols on planes, the next Flight 93 can land on the fucking tarmac.

The impulse to seek protection through firearms is evident here on the lovely Mount Holyoke campus. Christie Claywood has a typical student's dorm room — piles of books, heaps of clothes, a laptop computer on the floor, bottles of liquor that she very hurriedly explains were for a birthday party — but there's also a stack of paper targets with holes from .22, .38 and even machine gun bullets.

Ah, now that’s gun control! Christie put her lead on the paper. Still – firearms and booze. It’s a good thing I’m already taken. Now quit being so condescending to the nice young lady, Kristof.

About 50 women at Mount Holyoke have signed up to join the college's chapter of Second Amendment Sisters. It is bizarre to sit on the campus of a liberal all-women's college in Massachusetts talking with students about their yearning for, say, a Smith & Wesson 9-millimeter semiautomatic — but maybe that's just because I'm not used to feminists with guns. "Shouldn't self-defense and being able to take care of yourself be part of empowerment?" Ms. Claywood asked sweetly.

Talk about condescension. Do you think Kristof would ever have written that last bit about a feminist with whom he agreed? I’m a bit paleo about opening doors and paying for dinner – but chicks who can shoot seems like a pretty strong brand of feminism to me. And I like it.

It turns out that, in addition to Women and Guns magazine, there is a growing number of such women's groups. These include Mother's Arms and Armed Females of America, whose Web site declares: "Those who push for `gun control' are of the same mindset as Palestinian suicide-bombers and the Taliban who kidnap women for rape and sex-slave trade. Both don't like the possibility of armed citizens, in these cases, especially armed WOMEN."

You go, girl!

I grew up on a farm where rifles were essential for hunting and for keeping coyotes away from our sheep. I got a .22 rifle at age 12, and my grade school in Yamhill, Ore., emptied of boys each year on the opening day of deer season.

So, as a country hick, I'm comfortable with guns. But there's abundant evidence that having more handguns also means more gun thefts, more armed robbery, more suicide and more murder.

Yeah, but now yer all citified and sophistimacated and know better than to mess with them hick pistols. Besides, everyone o’ us down on the farm reckon that more knives leads to more eatin’ steak. Why, we could all be vegetarians like that dead kid actor, if’n we’d only outlaw sharp things.

Japan, where I used to live, allows only about 50 people (all leading target shooters) to own handguns, and while criminals do smuggle them in, there were only 28 gun deaths (murders and suicides combined) in 1999, the most recent year for which figures are available. By contrast, the United States had 26,800 gun deaths in 2000.

So go back to Japan. Different culture, different rules. And you still haven’t explained how we get from here to there without provoking a civil war. Moron.

England has higher rates of assault, vehicle theft and burglary than the United States. But tight controls on handguns mean that England's murder rate is only one-sixth of America's.

In the years since the UK abolished handguns and the US has started liberalizing concealed-weapons permits, London has out-stripped New York City’s handgun murder rate. But let’s not mention that, because it would ruin Nicky’s “argument.”

Defenders of guns can intelligently argue that, as with fast cars, the pleasures of gun ownership are worth the increased mortality. That is an opinion with which one can agree or disagree. Likewise, it is true that the overwhelming majority of guns will be used responsibly (from the point of view of everyone except hungry coyotes). But it is pointless to try to deny the link between more handguns and increased murder and suicide.

I never did argue such a thing. What I argue is that in a culture with a historic comfort with firearms ownership, the best thing you can do is teach range safety – and let those who are legal, carry.

Our desire to defend ourselves from terrorism by buying firearms will mean, almost certainly, that thousands more Americans will die in the years ahead from gunfire. It's not terrorism, but it should be terrifying.

So why doesn’t Nick suggest something practical, like giving money to the NRA for its vaunted gun safety program. Or barring that, why doesn’t Nick just shut the hell up – there’d be one less person I want to shoot.