All this confirms my wife's long-held suspicion concerning my almost total insensitivity. It never occurred to me that Mule Deer has been slyly insulting me from the pages of a magazine in my own home. And my immediate response to the reader's letter in "Rifle" was "Screw'im if he can't take a joke." Clearly, the sensitivity training is not working for me.
I can nevertheless understand Mule Deer's concern, but looking over the list of alternative terms, I failed to find one that would not offend someone somewhere for the reasons many of you have mentioned. If someone is looking for a problem, then they will generally find one--however inconsequential it might be.
Truthfully, my only complaint with the word "loony" is its slight inaccuracy. "Loony" is derived from "lunatic", which refers to an individual subject to periodic bouts of insanity. I don't know about the rest of you, but I am irrational on the subject of firearms pretty much all of the time. Frankly, I believe that I am a rifle idolator in both senses of the term: 1) a worshiper of idols and 2) a person that admires intensely and often blindly one that is not usually a subject of worship. I suspect, however, that few members of the board would appreciate that label.
Thus, I suggest that Mule Deer use whatever term he thinks best fits his writing style and his readers, and the "Rifle" reader who raised the issue should ensure that he does not in the future miss the morning pill cart.
