The gun I want to talk about wasn’t an assault rifle. It wasn’t purchased illegally. It didn’t fall into the hands of a crazy person. It wasn’t fired in anger. It wasn’t fired by accident. It wasn’t fired for money.

It was fired in fear. So far, our latest national gun dialogue has addressed firepower, on which we’ve agreed to disagree, and personal responsibility, on which we’re set to hear more soon. But there’s a deeper truth about guns. And it has to do with fear.

The gun was a .32-caliber pistol. It belonged to Jolie Blackburn, a 23-year-old graduate student at the University of Texas. On a Monday night in February 1993, Blackburn heard a noise outside her apartment. She went to investigate. She found Anthony Steadman, who was 34, dressed in jogging clothes. According to prosecutors, she yelled, “Get the hell out of here!” And she shot him dead.

Later, court testimony revealed that Steadman, who was estranged from his wife, had been high on marijuana and methamphetamine. His blood alcohol level measured .10 percent. The police found his fingerprints on a bottle outside her window. In a taped interview with investigators, Blackburn described him as “hunching down, trying to look in.” Self-defense, her lawyers argued. They called him a window-peeper. Prosecutors did not contest that characterization.

The case, which I covered as a reporter for the college newspaper, unfolded amid the politics of its day. In Washington, a Democratic president was trying to enact an assault weapons ban over strong opposition led by Wayne LaPierre of the National Rifle Association. The case for a ten-year ban was gaining momentum from a spate of tourist murders in Florida; the massacre of five children at an elementary school in Stockton, California; the use of TEC-9s in a spectacular workplace shooting in San Francisco; and of course the siege on the Branch Davidian compound here in Texas.