Early in 2013, I published my reaction to reading "Guns" by one of my favorite authors, Stephen King. It is a short piece, not a book, but an article. And this one most certainly has nothing to do with telekinesis, or clowns, or haunted cemeteries for animals, or vampires. Yet, it is still about horror, although a real kind of horror: mass shootings in modern America.
After reading it, I decided to go ahead and write some of my thoughts in reaction to this article. Then, I published them here.
On this occasion marking ten years since the horrific school shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary in Newtown, Connecticut, it seemed worth republishing this one. So, here it is:
Guns by Stephen King
(Originally published on March 27, 2013)
Stephen King has already taken some heat for this essay on gun control. As he himself predicted in this essay, those who are opposed to any stronger gun control were apt to read this with the intent of picking it apart in order to discredit it. These days, in America, discrediting arguments usually means discrediting the person voicing the argument. In politics, they call that mudslinging. Yet, it has become a common feature for any political debate in general, politician or no politician.
King also predicted that many in favor of gun control would praise his words, and indeed, since I have already expressed my favoring greater gun control laws before (quite a few of them in the immediate aftermath of the Sandy Hook shootings), I am doing so here. I do so knowing that I am following his prediction, but this is because his essay essentially takes a common sense approach towards gun violence in this country.
Essentially, what he says makes sense. He advocates more serious background checks, and harsher penalties (jail time) for those who try to cheat a background check, as well as for those who actually use guns illegally:
The best we can do for handgun violence is to impose strict mandatory prison sentences on those who use them or carry them concealed without a license to do so (plus background check, which I'll get to).
King starts off with the way that such mass shootings are portrayed in the media, with all the hoopla and jumping through hoops that we see following every incident. It dominates news coverage, and there are certain patterns that can be seen following every incident, before it fades away into the background -as do any serious proposals for gun control. Just look at how the proposals to get rid of the very deadliest of weapons fizzled out on the floor of Congress, despite the enormous outcry to do something once and for all in the aftermath of Sandy Hook.
He mentions that the first novel that he actually completed as a teenager was a book about gun violence in a school, the novel that he published under his pen name, Richard Bachmann. This book, "Rage", he decided to pull of the shelves after several incidents involving gun violence in a school came to light. He decided to pull the book not because he felt it was responsible for the violent episodes, but rather because he felt that it hastened the process of getting these troubled young men to snap and victimize others.
His main argument is that, ultimately, the thing that will curb gun violence would be a ban on weapons that can hold many clips. Such clips allow the shooter to fire their weapons for a long time before having to stop to reload. You do not need weapons that can hold so many clips to defend your home from potential intruders, and other than for fun at a shooting range, they are used for only one purpose: to kill. He mentioned the recent, shocking shooting at Sandy Hook, and how Lanza had a Bushmaster AR-15, which is capable of firing thirty rounds in less than a minute, as well as a Glock 10 (which he used to kill himself at the end). He mowed his victims down with the Bushmaster AR-15. The principal of the school, Dawn Hochsprung, tried to physically stop Adam Lanza, but since he never had to stop and reload, there was no chance that she would succeed. Lanza used the high capacity weapon to simply shoot her down, and then go on to kill the kids:
In his war against the fist grade, Lanza fired multiple thiry-round clips.
As for the Glock: it was pried from his cold dead hands.
King challenges the popular notion that this country has a "culture of violence", which surprised me a bit, admittedly. He also refuted the argument that has been floating around that "guns are tools". Guns are not tools, they are weapons.
Also, importantly, he makes clear that gun-rights advocates are not bad people. They are not monsters, or rednecks. They are just people living their lives like everyone else. They do good things, are integral parts of the community. That said, he does challenge their reasoning behind opposing any and all measures of gun control. Ultimately, knowing that he will be dismissed as naive for so doing, he says that it wll have to be gun-owners who turn the tide and get any legislation on gun control measures passed:
Gun owners aren't dragons, and they don't have to practice.....simultaneously mourning the victims and denying the role speed-shooters play in these tragedies, forever.
He argues that it is absurd to automatically go to the most extreme scenario, and then use this argument as the basis for opposition against any measures aimed at further gun control. Speaking of opponents of gun control, he says:
"They see any control at all imposed on the sale and possession of firearms as the first move in a sinister plot to disarm the American public and render it defenseless to a government takeover; accidental shooting deaths, they argue, are just part of the price we pay for freedom..."
He also mentions President Obama's proposals in the aftermath of Sandy Hook, boiling them down to three main ones, and giving his opinion on each, from the most likely to succeed, to the least likely (I kept them in the order that he wrote them here):
- Comprehensive and universal background checks.
- Ban the sale of clips and magazines containing more than ten rounds.
- Ban the sale of assault weapons such as the Bushmaster and the AR-15.
Towards the end, he talks about the Australian experience, something that I also mentioned in some blogs favoring stronger gun control measures. To my knowledge, this remains the deadliest single mass shooting in history. On April 28, 1996, Martin Bryant killed 35 people and wounded 23 others, with a gun that he had bought from a newspaper ad.
Unlike here in the United States, Australians did pass legislation to restrict gun access. They also set up a big buyback program to get some of the guns already out there collected.
The result? Gun deaths have declined by 60%. He also points out that, although gun advocates here (and elsewhere, probably even in Australia) might not like that statistic and argue against how effective such measures would be, these are nevertheless the facts. Not opinion.
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