Rifle Loony - a person, usually a man, who could have been an alcoholic or religious zealot (many like a drink or display an appropriate amount of religious zeal) but who, at the crucial moment in his psychological development, instead of taking the pamphlet from the bald person at the airport or the wino's bottle, found himself leafing through an old book ("Handloading" by Phil Sharpe or one John Barsness' "Gun Gack" series) or perhaps contemplating the magical and consequential extension of his will beyond his hand in the dying of a buck on a cold November morning. Whatever the triggering experience this man has found a mold of sufficient complexity and meaning to hold his soul. He can lose himself in the endless, esoteric physics or feel himself braced in the rush and violence of life as lived in the moment by prey and predator. If you ask him what a "Rifle Loony" is, you are apt to get a wholly unsatisfactory answer. No one feels this lack of proper clarity more than the Rifle Loony himself. But, how can a man describe what is essentially a way of being.
Gun Nuts, Rifle Aficionados, etc. are the various earlier stages in the development of the 100%, certifiable Rifle Loony. Interventions, water-cures, homeopathy can show some effect in these early stages if the condition is deemed undesirable in a specific case. However, once a man or in some cases a woman has reached the stage of Rifle Loonyism he is beyond hope or reproach.
