Title: Guns
Genre: Kindle Single/ Political Essay
Year: 2013
Pages: 25
Origin: read on the Worm’s Kindle
Nod Rating: 3 nods out of 5
‘In the wake of the Sandy Hook shootings, gun advocates have to ask themselves if their zeal to protect even the outer limits of gun ownership have anything to do with preserving the Second Amendment as a whole, or if it’s just a stubborn desire to hold onto what they have, and to hell with the collateral damage. If that’s the case, let me suggest that fuck you, Jack, I’m okay is not a tenable position, morally speaking.’Stephen King is known for his stupendously large output of horror fiction. Plenty of his novels and short stories have been transformed into film: including friendship that blossoms in The Shawshank Redemption to the crazed utterances of Jack Torrance in The Shining. Yet in his latest offering – Guns – he takes a different tact. Not the world of fiction, but rather a message and sane voice on the issue of gun control in the United States.
It is the Worm’s first read of a Kindle Single; what is this – not down with the lingo? A Kindle Single is an e-book published through Amazon; taking its name from music singles that are shorter than albums and EPs. It is less than a book, but larger than a magazine article; and all this for the small sum of 99 pence.
During the course of this engaging, extended essay – in what The Guardian deems a ‘passionate, angry essay’ that opens up the question of reform – King puts his distinctive prose to work in the hope of putting to bed some of the myths surrounding the gun control debate. Furthermore, he attempts to do so without resorting to ‘useless screaming’. As a gun owner, he summarises the debate into one central question: should the country introduce greater control or not.
King is a realist, and this is a point he continually hammers home:
‘Let’s talk about reality. The death toll at the Sandy Hook school was 26, and I mourn every one of them, but the number of homicides in Chicago last year exceeded 500. That’s 200 more than the number of American troops killed in Afghanistan during the same period. And let’s remember that our troops volunteered to go in harm’s way. Their bodies come home to parades and flag-draped coffins. The dead of Chicago – 107 of them children, some just waiting to get on the school bus – don’t get the hero treatment, but they are just as dead.’He pinpoints the plethora of guns being sold every year; in 2012 alone, Californians bought three-quarters of a million rifles and handguns meaning the streets are awash with firearms (‘Honey, that’s a lot of firepower’). He asks just how many guns would a person need for them to feel safe in the home. Furthermore, he questions the idea that owning a gun is enough to be safe, stating the awful example of Herbert Clutter in 1959 who was unable to reach for and use his own firearms when attacked: ‘I guess the question is, 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 the reach of your inquisitive children or grandchildren?’
Also discussed is the case of mistaken intruders, such as that of Desire Miller in 2012 – with hundreds of cases occurring in the past few years. Some of the myths busted include the ludicrous claim that gun control could lead to a dictatorship. This particular point has been seized upon by gun enthusiasts who are always willing to label Obama as either “Communist-in-Chief” or the next Adolf Hitler (without hinting that they realize the patent contradiction). King, seemingly acquainted with the actual events in History, takes exception to this: ‘”Take away the people’s right to bear arms totalitarianism follows!” these Jeremiahs cry. “Look what happened in Germany!” No, no, no, no.’
But King also attacks the position of the media, especially those who finger-point to violent computer games and his own fictional works. He hates the hyped up attention given by news channels: ‘…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’s suggested answers to such killings include the need to limit the amount of ammunition that is available: restricting people from buying thousands of rounds of ammo. He points to the example of Australia, where since the Bryant shootings gun related deaths have decreased by almost 60%. Such statistics show the need for gun control to be the sensible thing; even if the moral thing could be debated. As he notes: ‘You don’t leave a can of gasoline where a boy with firebug tendencies can lay hands on it’
For 99 pence, King’s Guns cannot be disputed. It is especially recommended for those involved in discussing and debate the gun control debate. Hopefully, it can help calm some of those arguments in the hope of reaching a common sense agreement. As for the Worm, he has another Stephen King book on the horizon: The Shining. Whilst the Worm is suitably impressed by the Kindle Single premise to hope that it catches on, bringing across more hard hitting ideas to the public in an accessible format.
Buy it here:
http://www.stephenking.com/promo/guns/
