Tuesday, January 29, 2013

Stephen King's Pro-Gun-Control Essay

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?


4 comments:

  1. 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.

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  2. So, 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:
    http://www.thedailybeast.com/newsweek/2013/01/28/gun-laws-and-the-fools-of-chelm-by-david-mamet.html

    orlin sellers

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  3. It's well written. It stimulates vivid images as you read it. It's also wrong.

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  4. Due 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.

    The 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.

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