ONTD
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."
I find it shocking and unbelievable that apparently Stephen Kind doesn't know what semi-auto means. Is that possible? I like the rest of what he says very much. How about you?
King is a fine writer. I say that as someone who teaches writing and literature for a living. I've used his book, On Writing, in my composition classes from time to time. On the subject of guns, he happens to be wrong.
ReplyDeleteSo, King has an opinion, well, let's see what playwright-scriptwriter-director-producer-Tony-nominee-Oscar-nominee-Pulitzer-Prize-winner David Mamet has to say:
ReplyDeletehttp://www.thedailybeast.com/newsweek/2013/01/28/gun-laws-and-the-fools-of-chelm-by-david-mamet.html
orlin sellers
It's well written. It stimulates vivid images as you read it. It's also wrong.
ReplyDeleteDue to his monetary wealth, his deranged readership, and his often public status, Mr. King (unlike the common subject), has a valid reason to engage in the possession of arms.
ReplyDeleteThe mediocre author does however stumble on a fundamental truth: that because some firearms (semiautomatics with high capacity magazines) are capable of delivering obscene quantities of firepower in a short period of time, that such weapons ought to be eliminated from civilian hands with a higher degree of priority than more conventional weapons.
The fact that certain "assault weapons" pose a great deal of danger in civilian hands should not serve to detract from the lethality inherent in any firearm, or serve to justify the civilian ownership of "conventional" weapons.