stephen king guns essay pdf

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Guns (Kindle Single) Kindle Edition

• Print length 31 pages
• Language English
• Sticky notes On Kindle Scribe
• Publication date January 25, 2013
• File size 105 KB
• Page Flip Enabled
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• ASIN ‏ : ‎ B00B53IW9W
• Publisher ‏ : ‎ Philtrum Press (January 25, 2013)
• Publication date ‏ : ‎ January 25, 2013
• Language ‏ : ‎ English
• File size ‏ : ‎ 105 KB
• Text-to-Speech ‏ : ‎ Enabled
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• Sticky notes ‏ : ‎ On Kindle Scribe
• Print length ‏ : ‎ 31 pages
• #2 in Kindle Nonfiction Singles
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About the author

Stephen king.

Stephen King is the author of more than fifty books, all of them worldwide bestsellers. His first crime thriller featuring Bill Hodges, MR MERCEDES, won the Edgar Award for best novel and was shortlisted for the CWA Gold Dagger Award. Both MR MERCEDES and END OF WATCH received the Goodreads Choice Award for the Best Mystery and Thriller of 2014 and 2016 respectively.

King co-wrote the bestselling novel Sleeping Beauties with his son Owen King, and many of King's books have been turned into celebrated films and television series including The Shawshank Redemption, Gerald's Game and It.

King was the recipient of America's prestigious 2014 National Medal of Arts and the 2003 National Book Foundation Medal for distinguished contribution to American Letters. In 2007 he also won the Grand Master Award from the Mystery Writers of America. He lives with his wife Tabitha King in Maine.

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Stephen King on Gun Control and Violence

By maria popova.

Here’s how it shakes out. First there’s the shooting. Few of the trigger-pullers are middle-aged, and practically none are old. Some are young men; many are just boys. The Jonesboro, Arkansas, school shooters were 13 and 11. Second, the initial TV news reports, accompanied by flourishes of music and dramatic BREAKING NEWS logos at the bottom of your screen. No one really knows what the fuck is going on, but it’s exciting. You get your still photo of the location; you get your map from Google or Bing. The cable news producers are busting their asses, trying to get some local news reporter on the phone. […] Twentieth, there’s a killer tornado in Louisiana, or an outbreak of hostilities in the Mideast, or a celebrity dead of a drug overdose. Out comes the dramatic music and the BREAKING NEWS chyrons. The shooting is relegated to second place. Pretty soon it’s in third place. Then it’s a squib behind that day’s funny YouTube video. Twenty-first, any bills to change existing gun laws, including those that make it possible for almost anyone in America to purchase a high-capacity assault weapon, quietly disappear into the legislative swamp. Twenty-second, it happens again and the whole thing starts over. That’s how it shakes out.

King cites the case of his early novel Rage , published under the pseudonym Richard Bachman, which resurfaced in the late 1980s and 1990s in four separate incidents of mass shootings, both attempted and actual, by teenagers who had read and seemingly imitated the novel. Even though by the time of the fourth incident in 1997 the book was already part of an omnibus, King insisted it be pulled by the publisher. While his argument bears a faint hue of apologism (one can only imagine the cognitive dissonance that comes with a situation like this), King makes a lucid case for the triggers of violence, be those guns or novels, as precisely that — triggers — rather than singular causes:

These were unhappy boys with deep psychological problems, boys who were bullied at school and bruised at home by parental neglect or outright abuse. They seem to have been operating in a dream, two of them verbally asking themselves afterward why they did what they did. […] My book did not break [them] or turn them into killers; they found something in my book that spoke to them because they were already broken. Yet I did see Rage as a possible accelerant, which is why I pulled it from sale. You don’t leave a can of gasoline where a boy with firebug tendencies can lay hands on it. Nevertheless, I pulled it with real regret. Not because it was great literature — with the possible exception of Arthur Rimbaud, teenagers rarely pen great literature — but because it contained a nasty glowing center of truth that was more accessible to me as an adolescent.

King goes on to argue how profoundly our adolescent experience shapes us, something science has corroborated :

Adults do not forget the horrors and shamings of their childhood, but those feelings tend to lose their immediacy (except perhaps in dreams, where even old men and women find themselves taking tests they have not studied for with no clothes on). The violent actions and emotions portrayed in Rage were drawn directly from the high school life I was living five days a week, nine months of the year. The book told unpleasant truths, and anyone who doesn’t feel a qualm of regret at throwing a blanket over the truth is an asshole with no conscience. As far as I’m concerned, high school sucked when I went, and probably sucks now. I tend to regard people who remember it as the best four years of their lives with caution and a degree of pity. For most kids, it’s a time of doubt, stress, painful self-consciousness, and unhappiness. They’re actually the lucky ones. For the bullied underclass — the wimps, the shrimps, and the girls who are routinely referred to as scags, bags, or hos — it’s four years of misery and two kinds of hate: the kind you feel for yourself and the kind you feel for the jackwads who bump you in the halls, pull down your shorts in gym class, and pick out some charming nickname like Queerboy or Frogface that sticks to you like glue.

In likening the current state of American political dialogue, including the debate on gun control, to “drunks in a barroom,” King argues the solution lies in the bursting of the “filter bubble” :

If I could wave a magic wand and have one wish granted, I’d wish for an end to world hunger; the small shit could wait in line. If, however, the god or genie who bestowed the magic wand told me my one wish had to do with American politics, I think I’d wave it and make the following proclamation: ‘Every liberal in the country must watch Fox News for one year, and every conservative in the country must watch MSNBC for one year.’ (Middle-of-the-roaders could stick with CSI.) Can you imagine what that would be like? For the first month, the screams of ‘What IS this shit???’ would echo high to the heavens. For the next three, there would be a period of grumbling readjustment as both sides of the political spectrum realized that, loathsome politics aside, they were still getting the weather, the sports scores, the hard news, and the Geico Gecko. During the next four months, viewers might begin seeing different anchors and commentators, as each news network’s fringe bellowers attracted increasing flak from their new captive audiences. Adamantly shrill editorial stances would begin to modify as a result of tweets and emails saying, ‘Oh, wait a minute, Slick, that’s fucking ridiculous.’ Finally, the viewers themselves might change. Not a lot; just a slide-step or two away from the kumbayah socialists of the left and the Tea Partiers of the right. I’m not saying they’d re-colonize the all-but-deserted middle (lot of cheap real estate there, my brothers and sisters), but they might close in on it a trifle. […] Think of the quiet that might ensue if all that shrill rhetoric were turned down a few notches! Think of the dinner table arguments that might not happen! There might even be (o lost and shining city) a resumption of actual dialogue.

In trying to peer past the us-vs-them rhetoric of the gun control debate, King speaks to the cluster of contradictions inherent to each of us:

When I think of the politically conservative gun enthusiasts who are opposed to any form of gun control, no matter how many innocents die in acts of gun violence, I remember something a Democratic member of the House of Representatives is reputed to have said about Gerald Ford: ‘If he saw a hungry child as he walked to work, he would give that child his bag lunch without hesitation, then go ahead and vote against school lunch subsidies without ever seeing the contradiction.’ Most anti-control firearms enthusiasts have similarly split personalities, and the slogan you sometimes see pasted to the bumpers of their station wagons, campers, and SUVs — YOU WILL TAKE MY GUN WHEN YOU PRY IT FROM MY COLD DEAD HANDS — does not make them bad people. It only makes them walking contradictions, and which of us does not have a few contradictions in our personalities? Most Americans who insist upon their right to own as many guns (and of as many types) as they want see themselves as independent folk who stand on their own two feet; they may send food or clothes to the victims of a natural disaster, but they sure-God don’t want charity themselves. They are, by and large, decent citizens who help their neighbors, do volunteer work in the community, and would not hesitate to stop and help a stranger broke down by the side of the road.

The only assertion I find worrisome is the bombastic certainty with which King dismisses how the “culture of violence” dominating the media, especially entertainment media aimed at young people, affects the development of the human psyche — not so much because I happen to have logged considerable academic hours studying developmental psychology in my own ancient past and remember well Bandura’s famous behavior modeling studies of violence , but mostly because sandwiched in King’s questionably substantiated contention is an outright affront to the general public’s capacity for intellectual stimulation:

The assertion that Americans love violence and bathe in it daily is a self-serving lie promulgated by fundamentalist religious types and America’s propaganda-savvy gun-pimps. It’s believed by people who don’t read novels, play video games, or go to many movies. People actually in touch with the culture understand that what Americans really want (besides knowing all about Princess Kate’s pregnancy) is The Lion King on Broadway, a foul-talking stuffed toy named Ted at the movies, Two and a Half Men on TV, Words with Friends on their iPads, and Fifty Shades of Grey on their Kindles. To claim that America’s ‘culture of violence’ is responsible for school shootings is tantamount to cigarette company executives declaring that environmental pollution is the chief cause of lung cancer.

What a tragic conception of culture, if we were to subscribe to the binary choice between violence and intellectually vacant entertainment. Let’s instead stay with David Foster Wallace, who reminded us that “what we need…is seriously engaged art that can teach us again that we’re smart” and embrace E. B. White’s conviction that the role of the media is “to lift people up, not lower them down.”

Ultimately, King returns to the ethics and rationale behind his decision to revoke Rage , echoing Anaïs Nin on character and responsibility :

I didn’t pull Rage from publication because the law demanded it; I was protected under the First Amendment, and the law couldn’t demand it. I pulled it because in my judgment it might be hurting people, and that made it the responsible thing to do. Assault weapons will remain readily available to crazy people until the powerful pro-gun forces in this country decide to do a similar turnaround. They must accept responsibility, recognizing that responsibility is not the same as culpability. They need to say, ‘We support these measures not because the law demands we support them, but because it’s the sensible thing.’ Until that happens, shooting sprees will continue. We will see the BREAKING NEWS chyrons, the blurry cellphone videos of running people, the tearful relatives, the rolling hearses. We will also see, time and time and time again, how easy it is for the crazies among us to get their hands on portable and efficient weapons of mass destruction. Because, boys and girls, that’s how it shakes out.

Guns comes as a kind of follow-up to King’s 2008 op-ed on video game violence and, at just $0.99, is well worth a read.

Public domain photographs via Flickr Commons

— Published January 28, 2013 — https://www.themarginalian.org/2013/01/28/stephen-king-on-guns/ —

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Stephen King and America’s ‘Gun Problem’

More from our inbox:, standing up for freedom of expression, a rabbi in pittsburgh sees support, the vatican synod, eco-anxiety and eco-activism.

To the Editor:

Re “ 18 More Deaths From Our Gun Addiction ,” by Stephen King (Opinion guest essay, Oct. 31):

Mr. King’s frustration with gun violence and his feeling of helplessness for our country are not unique, but they are born more from exhaustion than reality.

I reject his view that “there is no solution to the gun problem.” We may be “addicted to firearms,” but America has overcome addiction before with the same grit and persistence that helped end slavery and bend our collective views away from racism.

Cultural change takes generations. The gun culture we mistakenly fell in love with was bolstered by decades of green plastic Army men and Nerf and cap guns handed to preschoolers for play, classroom history lessons centered around military battles, and movie and television hailing the best gun handler as the hero. That was my reality, and I passed that culture to my children.

“The gun problem” is just that: a problem to be solved. Just as we created that problem, we can change it. Every shooting reminds us collectively that firearms violence has become the No. 1 killer of children and teens under the age of 19 , according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Shooting drills are a ubiquitous part of the lives of most schoolchildren.

A good coach knows when to substitute for exhausted players, and it’s OK that Mr. King and others need some bench time. Substituting in are parents afraid to send their kids to school, energized politicians, influencers, researchers and business owners looking over their shoulders for a catastrophic event. I am surrounded by them and their contagious attitudes.

Mr. King may find “little more to write” right now, and that’s OK. The fresh legs off the bench are many, and they are moving with optimism, impatience and persistence to find the right courses of action that will make America’s gun violence problem no longer exist.

I’m sure of that.

Katherine Schweit Centreville, Va. The writer, a retired F.B.I. agent, created and ran the F.B.I.’s active shooter program, set up after the 2012 Sandy Hook Elementary School massacre. She is the author of “Stop the Killing: How to End the Mass Shooting Crisis” and “How to Talk About Guns With Anyone.”

I agree with Stephen King. There is little more we can say when we cherish our guns over our children. This is the nonfiction horror story of our times, told repeatedly with the same ending.

Pam Leiter South Haven, Mich.

Re “ Magazine Editor Fired After Letter on Israel ” (news article, Oct. 28):

We are treading on thin ice when the editor of a major arts publication is fired by the publishers because an open letter posted by the editor and staff on the Israel-Hamas war “failed to meet the organization’s standards.”

This is only a thinly veiled excuse covering up their fear that advertisers will pull out. We have already seen major donors to universities stopping their support for similar reasons.

Democracy is already under threat here in the U.S. The war in the Middle East is only further exacerbating these divisions. Rather than retrenching, the arts community must stand up for freedom of expression, which is at the core of its foundation.

We have difficult days ahead, and it is not time to cave in to regressive forces who are wielding the power of the checkbook at the expense of those wielding the power of the pen, paintbrush or camera.

Glenn Ruga Concord, Mass. The writer is executive editor of ZEKE magazine .

Re “ At Synagogue, Recovery Is Mixed With Renewed Grief ” (news article, Oct. 28):

The “deafening” silence of non-Jewish colleagues noted by a fellow rabbi in Pittsburgh has not echoed my own experience in the aftermath of the brutal attacks of Hamas on Jews in Israel.

Pittsburgh loves its Jews. Since Oct. 7, I have received many calls and emails of support from non-Jewish friends and colleagues. And the many non-Jews I work with in the health care system remembered the fifth anniversary of the Oct. 27 Tree of Life synagogue shooting and expressed their sympathies.

I still feel overwhelmed by the compassion of others and continue to believe that the good people in this world outnumber the evil people. Bishop David Zubik of Pittsburgh organized an interfaith service here recently.

I acknowledge that in recent weeks agitators have been busy trying to bring youths especially to their side and make ad hominem attacks on Israelis and the Jews, particularly on campuses and at our public high school in Squirrel Hill .

However, my non-Jewish friends and colleagues continue to affirm my role serving the Jewish community, the value of the Jewish state and the right of Israel to defend itself as a sovereign homeland for the Jewish people.

Jonathan Perlman Pittsburgh The writer is the rabbi of New Light Congregation.

Re “ Sensitive Issues Are Put Off as Vatican Synod Concludes ” (news article, Oct. 29):

It seems that a majority of the delegates to the recent Vatican synod agree that the position of women in the church needs careful consideration, but are not yet convinced that the same is true in the case of L.G.B.T.Q.+ Catholics, which is a pity.

This is particularly true since the real triumph of the synod may prove to be in its membership, voting and not, which included lay people and women for the first time.

But it is increasingly apparent that, like the House of Representatives, the most conservative voices sang most effectively, and seem to have prevented the more open dialogue for which so many of us were hoping. But the synod will reconvene next October, when it may be possible to hope for a more inclusive ending.

John C. Hirsh Washington The writer teaches medieval literature at Georgetown University.

In “ This Is What Keeps My Eco-Anxiety in Check ” (Opinion guest essay, nytimes.com, Oct. 24), Ron Currie writes that “instead of blowing up a plastics factory, I go and gather garbage by myself most days.”

There has to be a middle ground between picking up garbage on a beach and blowing up a plastics factory! I get that it is mind-cleansing to leave a space cleaner than when you found it, and celebrate Mr. Currie’s creative contribution to consciousness-raising.

But Mr. Currie could also be writing op-eds that help educate the public about major banks’ fossil fuel investments or the deforestation supported by asset managers. With fellow writers, he might help organize professional groups to vote for a resolution that condemns companies for investing in fossil fuels.

As someone active in the climate struggle, I know that we must proceed on multiple levels. I can appreciate someone’s not being a mass movement person, but the public has to begin to understand that individual acts, including recycling and buying electric cars, will not lower carbon emissions in time to save our plant, animal and human species.

And given the stakes, maybe a little climate anxiety is not so terrible.

Virginia Casper West Shokan, N.Y. The writer is on the coordinating committees of TIAA-Divest! and 1000 Grandmothers for Future Generations.

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Stephen King risks wrath of NRA by releasing pro-gun control essay

Stephen King has entranced millions with tales of dread but his latest volume will read like a horror only to the National Rifle Association and other gun-rights advocates. The best-selling author made an unexpected charge into the national debate on gun violence on Friday with a passionate, angry essay pleading for reform.

King, who owns three handguns, aimed the expletive-peppered polemic at fellow gun-owners, calling on them to support a ban on automatic and semi-automatic weapons in the wake of the December shooting at Sandy Hook elementary school which left 20 children and six adults dead.

"Autos and semi-autos are weapons of mass destruction. When lunatics want to make war on the unarmed and unprepared, these are the weapons they use," King wrote.

He said blanket opposition to gun control was less about defending the second amendment of the US constitution than "a stubborn desire to hold onto what they have, and to hell with the collateral damage". He added: "If that's the case, let me suggest that 'fuck you, Jack, I'm okay' is not a tenable position, morally speaking."

King finished the 25-page essay, Guns, last Friday and wanted it published as soon as possible, given the Obama administration's looming battle with the National Rifle Association and its allies. It was published on Friday on Amazon's online Kindle store, price 99 cents .

The novelist, who has sold more than 350 million books, last year issued a call for the rich, such as himself, to pay more tax . In his latest foray into politics, he acknowledges his liberal inclinations but stresses that he is an unapologetic gun-owner with at least half a foot in the conservative camp of the US divide.

In folksy, salty prose which blends policy prescription with dark humour, King alternately cajoles, praises and insults gun advocates in what appears to be a genuine pitch to change their minds. King kept Barack Obama out of it.

"Here's how it shakes out," the essay begins, before describing 22 ritual steps in which the US experiences a school massacre. Excoriating the media and television voyeurism, he writes: "Sixteenth, what cable news does best now begins, and will continue for the next seventy-two hours: the slow and luxurious licking of tears from the faces of the bereaved."

King recalls that the fictional schoolboy killer in his 1977 novel Rage, which was published under a pen name, Richard Bachman, resonated with several boys who subsequently rampaged at their own schools. One, Barry Loukaitis, shot dead a teacher and two students in Moses Lake, Washington in 1996, then quoted a line from the novel: "This sure beats algebra, doesn't it?"

King said he did not apologise for writing Rage – "no, sir, no ma'am" – because it told the truth about high-school alienation and spoke to troubled adolescents who "were already broken". However, he said, he ordered his publisher to withdraw the book because it had proved dangerous. He was not obliged to do so by law – it was protected by the first amendment – but it was the right thing to do. Gun advocates should do the same, he argued.

The idea that US gun rampages stem from a culture of violence was a "self-serving lie promulgated by fundamentalist religious types and America's propaganda-savvy gun-pimps", he wrote. In reality the US had a "Kardashian culture" which preferred to read and watch comedies, romances and super-heroes, rather than stories involving gun violence.

Much of the opposition to gun control stemmed from paranoia about the federal government, King argued. "These guys and gals actually believe that dictatorship will follow disarmament, with tanks in the streets of Topeka."

He assured gun owners that no one wanted to take away their hunting rifles, shotguns or pistols, as long as they held no more than 10 rounds. "If you can't kill a home invader (or your wife, up in the middle of the night to get a snack from the fridge) with ten shots, you need to go back to the local shooting range."

The mockery continued when he noted semi-automatics had only two purposes: to kill people, and to let their owners go to a shooting range, "yell yeehaw, and get all horny at the rapid fire and the burning vapor spurting from the end of the barrel".

King noted that homicides by firearm declined by 60% in Australia after strict gun controls were introduced. And that about 80 people die of gunshot wounds daily in the US.

In a line sure to affront the NRA , and delight the gun-control lobby, he added : "Plenty of gun advocates cling to their semi-automatics the way Amy Winehouse and Michael Jackson clung to the shit that was killing them."

The essay was published as a Kindle Single, a format launched in 2011 for pieces too long for magazines but too short to be books. In a statement following publication, King said every citizen needed to ponder the fact the US was awash with guns. "If this helps provoke constructive debate," he said, "I've done my job."

• Stephen King
• US gun control
• Obama administration
• Newtown shooting

More on this story

Obama welcomes police chiefs to White House in bid to tackle gun violence

Obama: gun control advocates must respect rural hunting culture

Dianne Feinstein launches assault rifle ban and proposes register of owners

How the fate of gun control is tied to presidential popularity

Newtown residents to join Washington march for gun control

Joe Biden hosts Google+ 'fireside chat' to discuss Obama gun control effort

Gun control opponents hold rallies across the US

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Stephen King’s Heartfelt Essay About Guns Could Have Used an Editor

Photo by BERTRAND LANGLOIS/AFP/Getty Images

This morning, Amazon published a 99-cent Kindle single by Stephen King called Guns . It’s an essay, and not a terribly long one, and it seems certain some magazine out there would have published it if King was interested in going that route. But King says he “ wanted it published quickly ,” and so, after finishing it “last Friday morning,” he sent it to Amazon, which accepted it more or less instantly.

It could have used an editor. King’s goal with the essay, he says, is to “provoke constructive debate,” and perhaps he’ll manage to do so—though an at least somewhat constructive debate is already going on. Judging from the essay, it seems that King believes he might be able to reach some who are resistant to gun control both because he’s an enormously popular author and a gun owner, one who grew up in a conservative home in fairly conservative towns in Wisconsin, Indiana, and Maine. He acknowledges, though, that he is now very much a “blue state American” and that he may be dismissed as such by many who disagree with him.

Which is why he should have led the essay with his gun ownership. Halfway through the essay’s third section, King says he owns three handguns, and with a “clear conscience.” This already puts him more in the middle on this issue than many gun control advocates, and probably gives him at least a little bit of credibility with some gun owners. Instead, King opens with a distressing diatribe about the stages in the news media’s coverage of every mass killing in this country. It’s not inaccurate, but it’s not that enlightening, either—especially since the heart of King’s argument has nothing to do with the media.

In fact, King argues that, contrary to what people on both sides of the aisle sometimes say, the United States does not have a “culture of violence.” King considers that notion part of the NRA’s arsenal in their fight against gun control, which may be why he tears it down. But his attempt to do so is not terribly persuasive. He points out that the top 10 books and the top 10 movies in the country do very little to glorify gun violence, specifically, and also cites a slight dip in the sales of some gun-centric video games, concluding that “Americans have very little interest in entertainment featuring gunplay.” That’s a rather sweeping and intuitively unpersuasive claim to make following such a brief and seemingly cherry-picked analysis of American popular culture.

It also seems strikingly different from what King said in 1999, after the Columbine shooting. Then, in a rare public address at a library conference in Vermont, he argued that the “atmosphere of make-believe violence in which so many children now live has to be considered part of the problem” and that “there needs to be a re-examination of America’s violent culture of the imagination .” Though he seems to have changed his mind on this subject, he doesn’t, in the new essay, say why.

He does, both in 1999 and today, discuss his own sense of implication in the culture of violence. In 1965, when he was still in high school, King wrote a novel called Getting It On , which, ten years later, he revised and published with a new title, Rage , under the pseudonym Richard Bachman . In the novel, a troubled kid named Charlie “takes a gun to school, kills his algebra teacher, and holds his class hostage.” In 1988, a student in San Gabriel, Calif., took his classmates hostage and said he got the idea partly from that book. A year and a half later a student in Kentucky did something similar; he had read Rage , too. In 1996, another student killed a teacher and two classmates and quoted a line from the book after doing so. A year after that the book was found in the locker of another school shooter, one who killed three people.

King is clearly haunted by these incidents; he ultimately asked his publisher to pull the book, and it is now out of print. And while he rightly does not feel responsible for those shootings—the young men in question all had serious psychological problems—he describes the book, as he did in 1999, as a possible “accelerant,” which he’d rather not have available. And he says he’s now asking the NRA and those who support it to similarly help make certain kinds of guns and ammunition unavailable, not because they must, but because it’s “the responsible thing to do.”

The analogy doesn’t quite hold up: King pulled his novel, but he doesn’t believe that the writing of such novels should be banned; on the contrary, he strongly believes writers should be free to express themselves. But he’s asking people who want the right to own certain kinds of guns and ammo to help pass laws that would make owning such things illegal.

As it happens, I completely agree with him—and would, in fact, probably go farther than he does in restricting gun ownership, were it up to me. But I wish this essay had been honed and shaped a little more in service of his stated end: persuading some of those who are not already on his side. I hope, in any case, that the essay surprises me by prompting more constructive debate than I expect it to. And, at the very least, it is , in fact, constructive—unlike, say, this other essay about guns by an acclaimed American author , which was also published today. That one’s available for free, but if you’re only going to read one, pony up the 99 cents for King’s .

clock This article was published more than  11 years ago

Stephen King releases gun control essay

Best-selling author Stephen King has just released a passionate call for greater gun control, titled “Guns.” In a coup for Amazon, the essay is available only through its Kindle Store for 99 cents.

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Stephen King’s New Essay “Guns” Calls for Common Sense in Gun Control Debate

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Almost as difficult to believe as the fact that there’s a ( thankfully waning ) “ Sandy Hook truthers ” movement is that, in the wake of the tragedy in Newtown, there’s any resistance at all to some common sense regulation on, y’know, the kinds of guns that can turn an elementary school into a hellish, blood-soaked nightmare.

But this is America, where a very vocal subset of the population clings to the idea that the only thing standing between our hard-won freedoms and totalitarian, despotic dictatorship is a small personal arsenal.

Never mind that the real powers that be have developed much more subtle , manipulative and profitable means of getting the American public to do their bidding.

Or that despotism would never fly in the US of A. There’s just no money in it.

Regardless, so entrenched and intractable is the gun crowd, that even in the wake of Aurora and Sandy Hook, those who would advocate for tightened controls on high-capacity assault rifles begin their endeavor with a sort of hang-dog inevitability.

Cue the chorus : We should enforce the laws we already have … Your proposals won’t fix the problem … Your proposals didn’t work last time … you’re infringing on the rights of millions who’ve never broken the law … guns save more people than they kill …

This weekend, Stephen King, one of America’s most prominent liberal gun owners and perhaps its most beloved novelist, took to the Kindle Singles platform to release an essay titled, simply, “Guns.” It’ll cost you a buck and it’s money well spent to delve into King’s obviously torn and tormented, but ultimately beautifully and passionately delivered, thoughts on the state of America’s gun culture.

Yes, as you might imagine, King’s in favor of stricter gun control, specifically with regard to semi-automatic weapons, which, he reasons, have only two purposes: “One is so owners can take them to the shooting range once in awhile, yell yeehaw, and get all horny at the rapid fire and the burning vapor spurting from the end of the barrel. Their other use—their only other use—is to kill people.”

King dispels the popular NRA trope of America’s “culture of violence,” positing rather that America’s is a “culture of Kardashian.” We love reality television, detective shows, superhero movies, Madden, Super Mario, mommy porn and a whole lot of football.

“The assertion that Americans love violence and bathe in it daily is a self-serving lie promulgated by fundamentalist religious types and America’s propaganda-savvy gun pimps,” he figures. “It’s believed by people who don’t read novels, play video games or go to many movies.”

King trots out some stats (that gun murders in Australia decreased 60 percent following stricter regulations in the wake of a spree killing ) and counters the popular self-defense anecdotes with some anecdotes of his own:

• The woman who mistook her boyfriend for a home invader and shot him in the stomach (he died); the father who mistook his son for a burglar and shot him in the head (he died); the wife who mistook her husband for a burglar and shot him (he died).

• There’s Herbert Clutter who, in 1959, had his home invaded and never even got a chance to use the two guns he kept on hand.

“How many guns does it take to make you feel safe?” asks King “And how do you simultaneously keep them loaded and close at hand, but still out of reach of your inquisitive children or grandchildren?”

While King’s arguments are compelling, perhaps his most salient point is a personal one. Rage , his first novel written when he was in high school and published under his pseudonym Richard Bachman, focuses on a disturbed teenager who brings a gun to school, kills his algebra teacher and holds his classmates hostage to avenge an earlier indignity. After Rage was cited by several real life high-school gun toters and shooters, King decided to pull the book from print. Protected by the First Amendment, he explains that he “pulled it because in my judgment it might be hurting people, and that made it the responsible thing to do.” He calls on the pro-gun forces to have a similar moment of clarity, to accept certain limitations because it’s sensible, not because it’s mandated.

But, alas, the stark split between 5-star and 1-star reviews (like American politics, there’s very little activity in the center) suggests, sadly, that sense may never have anything to do with this. Though you can’t fault him for trying.

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Recently Read – Guns by Stephen King

August 4, 2016 by Rebecca Bradley 6 Comments

Guns by Stephen King

Genre; essay.

King’s earnings from the sale of this essay will go the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence.

My thoughts:

I bought this book on Audible . It only took 45 minutes to listen to. It’s not a long read.

It is a hard-hitting read, though. King pulls no punches.

What did shock me about this was something he says about one of his own novels and gun crime. The story around it is unbelievable, particularly for a writer to listen to, and his response, measured.

Though, his response is not measured when he relays an argument he read online that a woman posted about why semi-automatic weapons should be kept. Her argument being that they are simply tools, like a spoon.

A spoon. Yes.

This isn’t a completely anti-gun rant. King admits to having his own registered weapons. But, he makes solid arguments for tight control and even talks about people who have accidentally shot family members believing them to be burglars. So I have to wonder if I actually heard him correctly when he said he owned some. (It’s not him narrating.)

From a UK resident perspective and in light of very recent events, this made for a strong read/listen and if you are interested in this topic and you like King, I’d recommend reading how he views this volatile topic.

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August 4, 2016 at 11:56 am

If he owns some guns, then he’s not anti-gun. There does need to be tighter policies and more control of who buys what. Can’t turn back the clock and the criminals will always have guns, but we can make it harder for nut jobs to get guns.

August 8, 2016 at 9:14 pm

No, he’s not anti-gun but tighter laws. That was the gist I got. But he was really unhappy with the currently uptrend in blowing away groups of people with semi-automatic weapons. His arguments about criminals having guns is that family’s are having accidents in the house and killing each other with their guns. Kids are getting hold of them or partners are thinking the other partner is a burglar and bang. Gone. He makes a valid point that there’s no need for a semi-automatic. I know it’s a messy tangled web over there where gun law is concerned. I love the States. I’d live over there. But it’s one area I like about the UK and it’s the lack of guns in homes.

August 4, 2016 at 12:23 pm

Sounds fascinating, Rebecca! And it’s such an important and timely topic. And, on a completely different level, it’s interesting when a fiction author takes up a non-fiction topic like that – especially one that’s so vital. Thanks for sharing.

August 8, 2016 at 9:08 pm

My pleasure. It was fascinating. Especially when we’re listening over here slightly removed from it.

August 4, 2016 at 4:08 pm

Never read a Stephen King and that is so not right. I’ll probably start with his early novels.

August 8, 2016 at 9:07 pm

I’ve never read any of his real fiction and as you say, it’s not right. I need to rectify that myself. In fact, I had this discussion with a friend of mine recently and they’re going to lend me one of his books. So I shall be able to say I’ve read one.

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Stephen King’s ‘Guns’: Exclusive audiobook excerpt

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After the December shootings at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Conn., that killed six adults and 20 children, novelist Stephen King decided he had to say something. He expresses his views on weapons, vehemently and forcefully, in “Guns,” an essay published as a Kindle Single on Jan. 25. It’s currently #1 in the Kindle Single store.

The audio version of Stephen King’s “Guns” was released by Audible.com this week, where it shot to the top of its bestseller list. It’s read by actor Christian Rummel, an award-winning audiobook narrator. (Listen to our exclusive excerpt below).

Audible’s Matthew Thornton tells us “any essay by Stephen King is something we’re thrilled to be able to offer to our customers.” The audio download costs 99 cents and is a 49-minute listen.

The short form is an atypical offering from Audible. “Audible members overwhelmingly prefer long, unabridged works of fiction and nonfiction that they can enjoy over several days or weeks of commutes, workouts, etc.,” writes Thornton. But some shorter pieces have been popular; “Go the F*** to Sleep,” narrated by Samuel L. Jackson, was downloaded hundreds of thousands of times.

Ricky Gervais, the New Yorker and New York Times are popular, too, as are self-help authors Deepak Shopra and Anthony Robbins.

Stephen King’s “Guns” could almost be described as “self-help” -- he is trying to persuade people to make certain life choices. King, a gun owner, supports specific gun control measures. His earnings from the sale of this essay will go to the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence .

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Carolyn Kellogg is a prize-winning writer who served as Books editor of the Los Angeles Times for three years. She joined the L.A. Times in 2010 as staff writer in Books and left in 2018. In 2019, she was a judge of the National Book Award in Nonfiction. Prior to coming to The Times, Kellogg was editor of LAist.com and the web editor of the public radio show Marketplace. She has an MFA in creative writing from the University of Pittsburgh and a BA in English from the University of Southern California.

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Book Review: Guns by Stephen King

During his junior and senior years of high school, Stephen King wrote his first novel. Titled Rage , it was a novel about a troubled high schooler and his abusive father, adolescent angst, and fixation on a schoolmate bully. When the protagonist is expelled from school, he returns to shoot and kill his algebra teacher and take his class hostage. While the class is being held hostage, a “psychological inversion” occurs wherein the class grows to see the bully as the villain rather than the protagonist. Keep in mind this was written in 1964, decades before school shootings were a thing.

When Rage was published years later, school shootings occurred which were directly linked to the book. People had read Rage and mimicked the violence depicted in it, resulting in actual people being murdered in cold blood multiple times. The book was pulled by its publisher but Stephen King says of the copycat killers:

“My book did not break them, or turn them into killers; they found something in my book that spoke to them because they were already broken.” 

To me, this part of Stephen King’s past puts him in a unique position to make insightful commentary on the subject.

This essay, another Kindle Single, is Stephen King sharing his personal thoughts on gun control. Unlike More Guns, Less Crime by John Lott this is not a substantiated argument backed by evidence, it is something of an opinionated rant. However, a rant by Stephen King holds weight due to his unique history with the subject matter. Also, he is Stephen King.

Although he’s an outspoken liberal, Stephen King is a gun owner. He understands the true nature of gun control, as most actual gun owners do, but believes that semi-automatic weapons can only be used to promote violence and should be banned. There are many obvious counter-points to his assertions but these aren’t addressed, perhaps due to the brevity of this essay. Because of this, it felt like an incomplete argument, but that could be because I judge Guns in the context of More Guns, Less Crime which I also read recently. Guns is a superficial look at the issue while John Lott’s book is a deep dive into the actual facts and figures.

As you’d expect, this book is written exceptionally well. However I feel that if you’re going to address the issue of gun control in a published work, you have a responsibility to to address all angles of the argument to do the subject matter justice. Guns by Stephen King doesn’t quite meet that standard.

Favorite Passages:

“Even if I were politically and philosophically open to repealing the Second Amendment (I’m not), I don’t believe that repeal, or even modification, would solve the problem of gun violence in America, particularly violence of the sort that’s at the root of that problem.”

“The assertion that Americans love violence and bathe in it daily is a self-serving lie promulgated by fundamentalist religious types and America’s propaganda-savvy gun-pimps.”

“I didn’t pull Rage from publication because the law demanded it; I was protected under the First Amendment, and the law couldn’t demand it. I pulled it because in my judgment it might be hurting people, and that made it the responsible thing to do. Assault weapons will remain readily available to crazy people until the powerful pro-gun forces in this country decide to do a similar turnaround.”

Amazon link: Guns by Stephen King

Learn more: Rage by Stephen King , Stephen King on Wikipedia , Sandy Hook Shooting on Wikipedia

Gun owner Stephen King adds voice to gun-control debate

• Novelist criticizes the National Rifle Association in Kindle essay
• Supports a ban on semiautomatic weapons
• Says he owns handguns %27with a clear conscience%27

In an angry essay released Friday, best-selling novelist Stephen King calls on gun owners — including himself — to support a ban on semiautomatic weapons and other gun-control measures in the wake of the school shooting in Newtown, Conn.

In the 25-page essay, Guns (available exclusively for 99 cents in Amazon's online Kindle Store), King writes that he owns three handguns "with a clear conscience."

He criticizes the National Rifle Association, the media (for knee-jerk coverage of school shootings) and politicians (for inaction). He also discusses why he pulled his novella Rage , about a teenage gunman, after it was linked to four shootings between 1988 and 1996.

King writes that "it took more than one slim novel to cause (the shooters) to do what they did. These were unhappy boys with deep psychological problems, boys who were bullied at school and bruised at home by parental neglect or outright abuse." All, he notes, had easy access to guns.

He adds, "My book did not break (them) or turn them into killers; they found something in my book that spoke to them because they were already broken. Yet I did see Rage as a possible accelerant which is why I pulled it from sale. You don't leave a can of gasoline where a boy with firebug tendencies can lay hands on it."

He writes that he asked his publisher to pull Rage -- published in 1977 under the pen name Richard Bachman -- "not because the law demanded it; I was protected under the First Amendment, and the law couldn't demand it. I pulled it because in my judgment it might be hurting people, and that made it the responsible thing to do. Assault weapons will remain readily available to crazy people until the powerful pro-gun forces in this country decide to do a similar turnaround. They must accept responsibility, recognizing that responsibility is not the same as culpability."

His essay also addresses fellow gun owners:

"No one wants to take away your hunting rifles. No one wants to take away your shotguns. No one wants to take away your revolvers, and no one wants to take away your automatic pistols, as long as said pistols hold no more than ten rounds. If you can't kill a home invader (or your wife, up in the middle of the night to get a snack from the fridge) with ten shots, you need to go back to the local shooting range."

And he asks:

"How paranoid do you want to be? How many guns does it take to make you feel safe? And how do you simultaneously keep them loaded and close at hand, but still out of reach of your inquisitive children or grandchildren? Are you sure you wouldn't do better with a really good burglar alarm? It's true you have to remember to set the darn thing before you go to bed, but think of this — if you happened to mistake your wife or live-in partner for a crazed drug addict, you couldn't shoot her with a burglar alarm."

In a statement about the release of the Kindle Single, King said, "I think the issue of an America awash in guns is one every citizen has to think about. If this helps provoke constructive debate, I've done my job. Once I finished writing 'Guns,' I wanted it published quickly."

David Blum, editor of Kindle Singles, said that King "finished this essay last Friday morning, and by that night we had accepted it and scheduled for publication today."

Launched in 2011, Kindle Singles are works that are considered too long for a magazine article and too short for a book.

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books , humor , politics , stephen king , writing

On Stephen King and his Essay about Guns

Even though Stephen King’s essay “Guns” is about gun control, my essay about Stephen King’s essay is not (about gun control). (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Stephen King wrote a 25 page essay about gun control, put it on the Amazon Kindle, and now it’s a top ten Amazon Kindle bestseller.  I’m not going to read a 25 page essay about gun control (that may be more a reflection on me than Stephen King).  I can barely read the 2 nd Amendment without seeing the yellow dots of sleep. 

25 pages isn’t long for an essay about gun control.  I bet any gun control legislation that is passed (or proposed) will be way over 25 pages long (and probably filled with a bunch of stuff that has nothing to do with guns).  If it’s any consolation, I won’t read that either. 

I usually get annoyed at celebrities who spout off about politics, but I don’t get annoyed at authors who write about political issues.  That’s what writers should do.  If there’s one group of celebrity that should talk (or write) about politics, it’s authors.  I may not always agree with the ideas of other writers, but their views are probably better thought out than those of most celebrities (like actors, singers, musicians, or athletes). 

In fact, I hope other famous authors start writing about gun control too.  Maybe Tom Clancy can write a response, except he’d probably make it a 1,000 pages long with way too much filler.

 Maybe Sue Grafton could write about her views on guns, but she’d probably write an alphabet series of 26 essays and title the first one “A is for Automatic.” 

Maybe James Frey could write about his thoughts on guns, but he’d probably make up a bunch of really wild stories about hanging out in a destructive gun control, and then we’d find out years later that his stories weren’t true. 

Even if I wanted to read Stephen King’s essay on guns, I don’t want to pay to read it.  Why should I pay a famous guy to tell me his opinion?  If anything, he should pay us for reading his opinion.  Better yet, he should offer free e-copies of his older books (like The Shining or The Stand ) for downloading his essay.  I’d gladly read his essay about guns if I could get a free e-copy of Different Seasons .  I’d even take a quiz to prove that I’d read it. 

As a writer, there’s one thing that bothers me about this Stephen King essay: Stephen King reportedly wrote his essay while he was angry.  Then his editors approved it.  What editor is going to say no to an angry Stephen King? 

I have never written a book about writing like Stephen King has, but even I know that writing (and publishing) while angry is not a good idea.   Then again, saying no to an angry Stephen King is probably an even worse idea.  If I were an angry Stephen King’s editor and he turned in a manuscript that said “Whffl nk;rt vkld qtbl,” I’d say it was great! 

But I’m sure his essay is not written like that.  

Stephen King’s short novel Rage (about a school shooting) was linked to several school shootings a couple decades ago, so that gives King a perspective that most authors don’t have.  From what I understand, he discusses Rage in his essay, and that part is probably worth reading (but I’m still not going to pay for it).  

Maybe I shouldn’t get annoyed at celebrities who spout off about politics.  That’s their right.  I think the 1 st Amendment gives them that right (but I see yellow dots when I read that too).  The problem is that celebrities usually don’t know what they’re talking about, and the coverage of the celebrity’s opinion takes air time away from experts who might inform the public (if the public is willing to listen to experts). 

Maybe I should get annoyed at the news folk for reporting on the celebrities who spout off about politics.  If the news didn’t report it, then I wouldn’t hear about it, and I wouldn’t get annoyed.  Or maybe I get annoyed too easily. 

I don’t know if Stephen King’s essay is any good, and I don’t really care.  My mind is already made up on the issues of gun control, and I can tell from the reviews where he stands.  But I don’t have a problem with famous authors writing about political issues.  I’d rather have authors spouting off about politics than actors, singers, or athletes.  At least with an author, the sentence structure will be pretty good. 

If Stephen King writes an essay that can explain the fiscal cliff, I might pay $.99 to read that.

Related articles

• Stephen King writes post-Newtown essay on guns (boston.com)

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From → Dysfunctional Literacy

He only lives a couple of miles from me. Do you want me to walk over to his house tomorrow and ask him for those free books for you? Just let me know…

Thanks for the offer! I appreciate it, but if he’s still angry, it might not go over really well.

I must say, it was a pleasure reading an essay about gun control which is not about gun control, and one done with humor and even a bit of insight. Thanks for this.

And if E.L.James wrote about gun control, it would be something about a quirky and mysterious billionaire teaching a young female student to use a gun, then taking it away.

Ha! I know some people that would read that one.

I would read it. Don’t judge me. 😉

Nothing good ever come from writing angry (I guess unless you are Stephen King). Why then do I do most of my writing while angry? It’s just so motivating.

Loved your humor and that you didn’t write about gun control. Nowadays that’s kind of refreshing.

Writing while angry is okay as long as you don’t publish it while angry. It’s the publishing part that gets people in trouble (and sometimes causes others to write and publish while angry). If I’m angry, I usually wait a day or two before publishing. It’s less entertaining for others, but it keeps me out of trouble.

I’d be curious to read it too, just to see what he says, but you’re right: I’m not going to pay to read an essay. The problem with an issue as polarizing as gun control is that almost no one can be convinced (except perhaps by personal experience). People are just entrenched on either side and firing attacks back and forth. But of course, I’m a Canadian, so I’m staying out of the whole thing.

Good piece. Living here in Ireland we have had gun control for years, and yet lived in a civil war since the 20’s basically. Laws won’t change people in a road to Damascus flash of light, they will change how people use guns. I agree that a 25 page essay is an opinion and not an avenue to revenue too.

“Maybe Sue Grafton could write about her views on guns, but she’d probably write an alphabet series of 26 essays and title the first one “A is for Automatic.” (This made me snort in my coffee)

I love Stephen King. He is like your grumpy liberal arts grandpa.

I still think of Stephen King as a younger middle-aged guy because that’s what he was when I read his books, but that was 20 or 30 years ago, so I guess you’re right; he’s like a grumpy grandpa.

I once heard a comedian joke that Stephen King could sell the receipt to his grocery bill and people would buy it. Now I know that’s true.

I remember King in On Writing saying that he would never go back and rewrite one of his books because he’d be essentially ruining the story and stealing from that younger version of him. I respected that a great deal. Then he went back and rewrote The Gunslinger, for #%*(‘s sake. I like a lot of King’s older writing but I think he should stick to painkillers now and leave writing to the people who have a reason to do it. Somewhere along the way he lost track of what he was doing.

Simply put, this is the best post I’ve ever had the pleasure of reading. That is a wicked sense of humor you’ve got. I…have a lot to learn… Anyway, I wanted to stop by and say thanks for liking my post, “Down-Home Butter;” but this post grabbed me and I had to read it all the way through. Thanks for being excellent!

I really like reading your posts, so I nominated you for the Very Inspiring Blogger Award. He is a link to my post about the award and your nomination. Congratulations and I look forward to reading more of your posts.

Very Inspiring Blogger Award Part 2

I had no idea – and you have sparked my interest … I might have to buy that – celebs using their status to promote or demote anything can be a slippery slope – clearly there is a right way and a wrong way … too bad we can’t make another Amendment that only the smart, well-read, well-spoken ones can comment in public 🙂

By the way, SK’s essay on guns is now a free audiobook on audible.com. I did buy it on Kindle, and read it when it came out. It meandered and went into detail about his Bachman novel, Rage, which he has tried to get removed from circulation because he felt like it was the right thing to do. And eventually, he proposes some middle-ground for both parties to meet, which will likely never happen because of the extreme perspective of each party. Is it a good read – yes. SK is indeed, a wordsmith. Is it a real solution – I don’t think so, but what do I know. And finally – should SK even open his mouth about this subject – like the celebrities who get involved in politics mentioned in the blog here, I don’t think King has the credentials. Journalists, certainly do, don’t get me wrong there. But authors of some of the most popular, violent novels on the shelf should probably be conscious of the glass houses they live in before throwing a stone.

I cracked up reading this…Frey sucks. I couldn’t get through his garbage of a book. What editor is going to say no to an angry Stephen King, haha, so true. 😛

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Article Regarding: Guns (an Essay By Stephen King)

• Thread starter VampireLily
• Start date Nov 20, 2013

This message board permanently closed on June 30th, 2020 at 4PM EDT and is no longer accepting new members.

• Written Works
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VampireLily

Vampire goddess & consumer of men's souls..

• Nov 20, 2013

The actual essay is available for Kindle here: Amazon.com: Guns (Kindle Single) eBook: Stephen King: Kindle Store  

The idiot is IN

• Nov 21, 2013

...and even as a mouth breathing knuckle dragging gun owner...I love it...  

FabulousJewels

• Apr 4, 2014

"Have I run too far to get home?"

Webmaster-at-Large

• Universal background checks
• Limiting clip and magazine capacity
• Creating a new assault weapons ban

booklover72

Very strange person.

• Apr 20, 2014

Can you get it in Pdf format?  

Jordan said: His three proposals were: Universal background checks Limiting clip and magazine capacity Creating a new assault weapons ban Which points do you have problems with? Click to expand...

booklover72 said: Can you get it in Pdf format? Click to expand...

• Apr 21, 2014

Thanks Jordan. About the essay i would be interested in his view. Ireland, Cest moi is not a normally gun carrying country Our Gardai(police) don't carry guns, but the special branch and the Rapid force do. There is a lot of illegal gun smugging in the country i.e drug gangs, usually there is a murder(s) every day and they will use any type of weapon such as hatchet. I think the Uk police on the beat don't carry guns. The gardai voted not to carry guns - although they are trained. I see them every day putting their lives on the line protecting us from the people who sell drugs(heroin crack etc). i ofter wonder what would happen if two gardai were put in extreme danger i.e a drug dealer with a gun, these people (and i use that term lightly) will kill them and feel no remorse.  

ghost19 said: Meh, one of those topics I'll never see eye to eye on with Mr. King. It's such a complex topic and so many factors go into where you land on gun control. I feel weird if I don't have my weapon on me, like I forgot to wear shoes or something....ok maybe the shoe comment is not such a great example since I'm from Arkansas...but you get the point...That's a pre-emptive Arkansas joke GNT, don't even bother sir.... lol Click to expand...

no bounce no play

ghost19 said: 3) Much as everyone seems to bash the 2nd amendment, it's there to make sure we don't strip our citizens of the right to defend themselves. I like being able to call 911 as much as anyone but what if you didn't have time to wait for the police? Intruders aren't going to respond to your pleas of mercy, but they may respond to the racking of a 12-gauge. Click to expand...

Just moseyin' through...

ghost19 said: 1) I don't have any problem at all with background checks. 2) I have no idea who came up with the limiting magazine capacity idea. If you have any experience with the weapon you are using, you can switch out magazines in about two seconds. Yes, that is two seconds more someone would have to run but that's more of a tactical issue and isn't going to be the deal breaker when some nut job plans a shooting. No matter how many rounds you limit the magazine to, said shooter can still pre-load a crap load of magazines to bring with him/her. 3) Much as everyone seems to bash the 2nd amendment, it's there to make sure we don't strip our citizens of the right to defend themselves. I like being able to call 911 as much as anyone but what if you didn't have time to wait for the police? Intruders aren't going to respond to your pleas of mercy, but they may respond to the racking of a 12-gauge. Not the en vogue point of view these days I know, but I've been around firearms since before I could walk. Having grown up in a gun culture , my views and opinions are going to be skewed that way. The fact that bombs are illegal doesn't seem to be preventing kids from threatening to blow up their schools nowadays. We've had over 20 bomb threats at area schools here in the last month. Banning something or knowing something is illegal is not always a deterrent. Click to expand...

GNTLGNT said: Click to expand...

skimom2 said: Those points are also true of me, and are exactly the reason why I hate the idea of people who have no idea what they're doing having free access to firearms. They're toys to so many people--that part really scares me. A gun is a tool, no better nor worse than any other, but misuse or use by someone who is untrained is way more frightening than most. Click to expand...

ghost19 said: Absolutely true. A firearm in the hands of someone who has no experience, or even worse, doesn't want any experience, just wants to look cool, is so dangerous. There is nothing like watching some idiot hold his handgun sideways while he tries to look like Neo from The Matrix..... Click to expand...

ghost19 said: I think those are my cousins......or uncles...maybe both..... Click to expand...

GNTLGNT said: ...and you all three are married to yer sister... Click to expand...

Well-Known Member

I have a problem with banning anything, because just about every book I've ever read and really liked has been banned. For that matter, why have all the books I like been banned but semi- or fully machine-fire rifles aren't even being considered for it? When's the last time a book killed someone from a distance? The NRA's legal advisors came right out and threatened our doctors with "taking action" against them if they tell their patients about gun safety. Claiming it violates the Second Amendment to warn a person about the dangers of firearms. Four of the doctors released information about that very topic a day after they received the threat. They weren't having any of the NRA's nonsense and no wonder; we see people who are drunk and playing with a gun who shot themselves in the hand, people who died from accidental gunshots and gunshots from altercations that turned deadly. My brother is a hunter and has owned firearms almost his whole life, which explains why I think some people are very capable of owning a weapon. If you go by how he's been responsible it would be easy to believe it. But working in Emergency Medicine has proven to me that OTHER people CAN'T handle the responsibility. Beyond being a victim of a gunshot myself, my views on this issue arise from what I see every week working in Emergency Medicine. I liked the essay because it made me be able to put the issue into a better focus. Doing my work would make it too easy to become unfocused about the issue. Both my brother and the essay allows me to see both sides. I still see more of the stupid or silly things people do with guns, but I have hope that some people are interested in being a responsible gun owner.  

• Apr 22, 2014

ghost19 said: Who happens to also be our aunt.... Click to expand...

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