Stephen King: Guns

Best selling author Stephen King has just released a passionate call for greater gun control, titled "Guns." The essay is available on Amazon's Kindle Store for 99 cents. ACN has obtained a copy of the essay.

King starts off by talking about how the events "shake up." He begins with point 1 - depicting the shooting:

"Few of the trigger-pullers are middle-aged, and practically none are old. Some are young men; many are just boys."

He also alludes to the Jonesboro, Arkansas school shootings. In 1998 two boys, Mitchell Johnson 13 and Andrew Golden, 11, shot their classmates and teachers killing five.

Next, says King, comes the news reports.

"accompanied by flourishes of music and dramatic BREAKING NEWS logos at the bottom of your screen. No one knows what the #$%& is going on."

Third comes the gruesome truth: blood has been spilled. Fourth is the first video that looks like an amateur filmed it; shows people running and screaming.

Fifth is the first reports. These are given by the local reporters who are really just props until the national A-team arrives. They use "linguistic construction" notes King to report the shooter's tally.

By the sixth step of events comes the final tally or as King calls it: The equation: X dead, Y injured. Seventh comes the first cop interview which is filled with nothing substantive just police jargon, as is his job. Eight is the shooter being identified incorrectly.

Ninth comes the report from the hospital where the audience sees a reporter standing with an ambulance in the backdrop as they give a report.

"Bonus points for an arriving ambulance with lights and siren."

 Tenth is where the shooter is identified correctly, and we begin to see his high school yearbook photos. At this point the media is scrambling to find a devious looking photo of the shooter.

Eleventh is when the real controversy begins. That's when the Talking Head gives his/her report. They may bring up gun violence and America's gun culture but it's usually too soon and has to wait until the third or fourth Talking Head report.

Twelfth comes the interview with an eyewitnesses who inevitably uses the phrase "popping sound" and the reporter who interviews them actually get's paid to ask stupid questions like "How did you feel?"

Now comes the wall-to-wall coverage of the shooting. By now cable networks have their package assembled and are bombarding you with coverage.

Fourteenth is the point that recaps of previous shootings begin. King says:

"We will be shown the superstars of America’s unbalanced and disaffected time and time again: Harris, Klebold, Cho, Mohammed, Malvo, Lanza. These are the guys we remember, not the victims."

Fifteenth and Sixteenth are with people who were impacted by the shooter, either friends or family and victims of the shooter.

"The best part of Number Sixteen is that the cable networks are now free to resume commercial messages. As a result, you can go directly from a funeral to info about adult diapers, or products to stiffen your penis, or how if you follow a certain green line across your kitchen floor, you’ll be able to spend your retirement living in Fat City."

 At step seventeen the NRA and it's affiliates announce they have no comment out of respect, and any pro-gun legislators contacted do not return a request for comment.

Eighteen is when politicians begin to declare the necessity of a national dialogue about gun control. The dialogue always centers around the same weaponry: automatic and semiautomatic weapons and high capacity clips.

"The gun Adam Lanza used at Sandy Hook to murder almost two dozen little kids was a Bushmaster AR-15. He also carried a Glock .10, a pistol so big it’s issued to rangers in Greenland, should they encounter polar bears."

Nineteen: The NRA declares itself dead-set against any gun measures and changes to existing gun laws. They blame the shooters and America's culture of violence.

"The NRA doesn’t come right out and say the victims are also to blame for thinking they could live in America without a gun on their person or in their purse, but the implication is hard to miss."

By the twenty first step the media has already moved on as the shooting is buried by some new "BREAKING NEWS" segment. Also gun laws have been introduced:

"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, the whole thing starts again.

In his childhood years Stephen King wrote a  book entitled Getting It On if seen by a teacher today would have earned him a rushed trip to the school guidance counselor. In his story a boy named Charlie is extremely upset at the school's popular kid Ted. Charlie brings a gun to school and takes the class hostage, and a psychological reversal takes place. The students, now well-adjusted, stop Ted when he tries to escape, seeing him for what he is, and "beat the shit out of him." According to King he never published the book under his name, rather released it ten years later under the name of Richard Bachmann and titled Rage. It sold a few thousand copies and that was the end of it, or so King thought.

In April of 1988 a boy named Jeff Cox at San Gabriel, CA walked into the school and declared that "urban terrorism is fun" before taking the class hostage demanding cigarettes, sodas, sandwiches, and a million dollars. He used a .223 Korean made assault rifle. The situation came to an end when one of the students tackled him while he was remarking he couldn't kill anyone.

"When police asked where he’d gotten the idea, he told them from an airliner hijacking story on TV. Oh, and from a paperback novel called Rage."

17 months later another situation came up when a high school student took hostage a classroom with eleven students. As he looked at his gradebook he remarked how smart he was and let the kids go until it was just him with his gun.

“He seemed to be carrying out the scenario of a book he had been reading.” The book was Rage."

In February 1996 a boy walked into his WA class with a .22 revolver and killed his instructor and two students.

“This sure beats algebra, doesn’t it?” The quote is from Rage."

One year later a 14 year old walked into his high school and armed with a Ruger MK-II, opened fire on a prayer group killing three and wounding five.

"A copy of Rage was found in his locker."

King drew the line at the first two shootings and asked his publisher to pull the book from publication. But he never apologized for writing his book. He notes that it took more than a novel to make the boys do what they did.

This was a synopsis of parts 1 and 2. The essay is quite interesting. More on this story will be updated at a later time.