Guns: A Rebuttal

Andrew Clark

http://curmudgeons.net

An Unwanted Guest You sit straight up in bed. You heard a noise downstairs, at least you think you did. It sounded

like someone bumped something in the kitchen.

You ease the nightstand drawer open slowly, trying to be as quiet as possible, and withdraw your

pistol. Your heart is beating a little faster now.

You creep down the stairs, stopping whenever one of the treads squeaks a bit. You knew you

should have fixed that.

Finally at the bottom you slowly sweep around each corner, making your way circuitously

toward the kitchen.

There’s no one in sight, but it’s dark, and your eyes are still adjusting.

You check the whole downstairs, just to be sure, but every window and door is secure.

Finally you see it. The plastic lid to a brownie tin has popped off and landed on the floor.

You pick it up and replace it, this time securely. Smiling and shaking a bit, you start to relax and

breathe a sigh of relief.

You head back upstairs to tell your wife that everything is OK, no need to worry about your

children still asleep down the hall.

Me and Stephen Everyone knows who Stephen King is, and lots of people read his works. I’m a big fan myself,

The Stand being my favorite of his writing so far (I admit to not having read everything he’s

written).

In the wake of Sandy Hook and the subsequent gun-control push, King published Guns, an essay

in the form of a Kindle Single, proposing a path forward in the fight for tighter gun

legislation. He has a lot of opinion, some fact, and a lot of bluster. And he’s Stephen King.

So it’s vitally important, imperative even, that someone respond to him. My goal is to address

his opinion, supposed facts, and bluster.

To level the playing field, let me share a bit about myself. I’m 32 years old. I have a wife and

three children. I’m a Christian and a deacon. I’m a libertarian, closer to an anarchist really.

I love guns. I shoot them for fun. I have them to protect myself and my family. And I carry one

in public, sometimes concealed, sometimes openly.

Those of us who own and carry firearms have no desire to have to use them. The story above is

an ideal outcome for us.

But if that plastic lid had been an intruder, I’d rather be standing there with my 1911 than a cell

phone, waiting for help to arrive.

Why Do We Have Guns? King starts us off with a rundown of how a tragic shooting like the one in Newtown, CT plays

out in the major media. From the initial reports to the body counts and talking heads, King

completely nails it. It’s actually quite a disturbing showcase of the bloodlust that the MSM and

those who watch it have. If it bleeds, it leads, I guess.

I suppose his goal here is to elicit an emotional response right up front, to tear down the reader’s

guard before he moves in for the kill...so to speak. Emotion seems to be a key weapon used by

gun control advocates, but it’s highly selective.

It is right for us to be saddened and angered that anyone would kill a bunch of little

children. But this same anger and attention are almost never applied when there are multiple

separate incidents each with a body count of one or two. Conversely, we hear very little about

the death of someone by a 2,000 pound hunk of metal traveling at sixty miles per hour, unless

there’s a twenty car pile-up and the “death toll” is deemed worthy of the six o’clock news hour.

32,000 people were killed by motor vehicles1 in 2011 with 14,600 murders2 committed that same

year, yet we don’t hear anyone clamoring to ban “assault” vehicles.

Nearly 80,000 people die from alcohol or alcohol-related disease3 each year, but we have not

seen a push to ban alcohol. (I’m not suggesting we should do either of these.)

Buried in his essay are arguments against the two main reasons for Americans to own guns:

tyranny and self-defense. These are both important reasons, and they are linked.

Recently, gun-rights advocates held the first annual National Gun Appreciation Day.

The problem with this is that we don’t just “appreciate” guns. We need them, to defend ourselves

and our families from criminals, both street and political. More than needing them, we have a

right to them, and that right does not come from an old piece of paper saying we can “keep and

bear arms”.

for everybody has a natural right, not only to defend his own person and

property against aggressors, but also to go to the assistance and defence of

everybody else, whose person or property is invaded. The natural right of each

individual to defend his own person and property against an aggressor, and to

go to the assistance and defence of every one else whose person or property is

invaded, is a right without which men could not exist on the earth. And

government has no rightful existence, except in so far as it embodies, and is

limited by, this natural right of individuals.

–Lysander Spooner, Vices Are Not Crimes

King’s Guilt? King’s explanation of how he made the decision to remove his book Rage from circulation is

quite puzzling to me. After four separate school shooting incidents were each in some way

linked to the book, he told his publisher to pull it from circulation. The puzzling part is that King

says he has no regret about writing the story, which depicts a boy, Charlie, who “takes a gun to

school, kills his algebra teacher, and holds his class hostage”.

1

http://www.nhtsa.gov/About+NHTSA/Press+Releases/2012/New+NHTSA+Analysis+Shows+2011+Traffic+Fataliti

es+Declined+by+Nearly+Two+Percent

2 http://www.fbi.gov/about-us/cjis/ucr/crime-in-the-u.s/2011/crime-in-the-u.s.-2011/tables/table-1

3 http://www.cdc.gov/alcohol/fact-sheets/alcohol-use.htm

The violent actions and emotions portrayed in Rage were drawn directly from

the high school life I was living five days a week, nine months a year. The

book told unpleasant truths, and anyone who doesn’t feel a qualm of regret at

throwing a blanket over the truth is an asshole with no conscience.

But why only Rage? Virtually all of King’s works are violent. The main antagonist in The

Stand, Randall Flagg, uses guns to execute people. The lead character in The Dark Tower series

is a gunslinger who uses his revolver to kill people on nearly every page.

King’s miserable high school experience is by no means unusual. But he doesn’t delve any

further into it. High school sucks, kids (especially boys) feel anger, frustration, and any number

of other emotions, but that’s just the way it is. Now give up your guns.

Two things are conspicuously absent from King’s description. First, what happens to kids who

are feeling these things? The answer, most often, is that they are medicated, usually with mind-

altering psychoactive pharmaceuticals which damage their brains and in many cases, cause them

to be psychotically suicidal and homicidal. Per a 12-year National Institutes of Health study4,

boys are prescribed psychostimulants (like Ritalin and Adderall) more than three times as often

as girls.

The second question he fails to ask is whether there is any link between the introduction of these

types of “medicines”, beginning with Prozac in 1987, and an increase in violence from school

children.

Since about 1850 there have been approximately 239 school shootings5. Only 35% were

committed in the period up until 1987, the other 65%, 155 shootings have occurred in the last 25

years.

One might argue that this is because of the abundance and availability of guns today, compared

to previous generations, but this argument rings hollow as you could mail order a gun from Sears

up until the Gun Control Act of 1968 was passed.

4 http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/22420039

5 Data compiled from the following:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_attacks_related_to_primary_schools

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_attacks_related_to_secondary_schools

Why Should We Care What Stephen King

Thinks? King tells us that if he was granted a wish related to American politics it would be to force

liberals to watch Fox News and conservatives to watch MSNBC for a year. Somehow this

would cause everyone to move to the middle, as if that’s a desirable place to be.

This blending of liberal and conservative agendas never leads to an increase in liberty,

prosperity, or safety. Both sides compromise toward the other, giving in on things they don’t

care about to get things they do. The result is more government intervention and restrictions on

our rights.

This is especially true in the wake of a horrific event, 9/11 being a prime example. Both sides

came together to give us the TSA, the Patriot Act, warrantless wiretapping, and indefinite

detention without trial.

King preempts his critics by telling us that “those of a red persuasion” (which I am not) are

“itching to begin long-winded blogs that will explain how naive I am, how wrong my facts are,

and how I should stick to writing books.” Well, guilty on the first two at least. Although I’d

probably rather read an opinion piece by Stephen King than by most other talking heads out there

spouting the same crap ad nauseam.

It’s here that King confesses to owning guns and not being in favor of repealing the second

amendment, but admits that he thinks strict gun control would “save thousands of lives”. I’ll

deal with this later in the Facts section.

To get us rolling he gives us the Chicago murder rate for 2012: 500 plus. What troubles King’s

essay throughout is what is missing from statements like this, just itching to be tagged onto the

end, but no, he cherry-picks to produce the proper story for gun control.

Yes, Chicago did have over 500 murders. It is also one of only a few places where guns (even

for law abiding people) are banned. And where guns are banned, only the bad guys have

them. I’m not sure if I’d call this naiveté or subterfuge.

We’re also supposed be scared that during gun buybacks in Los Angeles over the past few years,

two rocket launchers were turned in. Again, we’re not told that they were intentionally non-

functional and marked as such because they were former military training aids. They also did

not come with any “rockets”.

Wayne LaPierre Is Not My Friend At this point, lest the reader think I’m simply out to bash Mr. King, let me be charitable and say

that I agree with him on the current NRA vice president and spokesman, Wayne

LaPierre. LaPierre is full of it. Not that there isn’t a culture of violence in America (there is),

but that LaPierre couldn’t care less about it. His only job is to maintain the illusion that the NRA

cares about your right to own a gun. And it’s just that, an illusion.

The NRA is no more than a political organization. And like all such organizations it is

susceptible to corruption.

The NRA, including LaPierre, in conjunction with the Brady Campaign, supported Project

Exile6, which moved the prosecution of technical gun possession offenses from state to federal

court and imposed mandatory minimum sentencing.

The NRA is also a big proponent of prosecuting people for unconstitutional gun laws and for

making concealed carry a privilege while droning on about supporting your right to “keep and

bear arms. Need I mention that they have also contributed to the election campaigns of

politicians who voted for gun control? I guess not.

As for the “culture of violence”, yes, we do live in one.

King tries to disprove this by regaling us with statistics on superhero movies, TV shows, and

videogames, feeding us the conclusion that “The message is clear: Americans have very little

interest in entertainment featuring gunplay”.

Perhaps King doesn’t have a TV, so we’ll forgive him on this point. The majority of popular

television shows may not feature non-stop gunplay, but what they do feature is the deification of

all things law enforcement and military.

And what do these agencies specialize in: Violence, in the form of the murder of half a million

Iraqi children through economic sanctions, the seemingly endless preemptive foreign wars, drone

strikes, and the murder of innocent people by trigger-happy cops.

The US Army has even developed its own first person shooter video game, America’s Army.

The US government, including Obama, is the number one purveyor of violence today. It’s a bit

hard to take being preached at by someone about ending violence when they turn around and

sign orders to murder innocent men, women, and children because they were born in the wrong

country.

Why is it that those who continually wring their hands about gun violence are rarely, if ever,

seen challenging their dear leaders on the gun and drone violence being committed in their name

against innocents all over the world?

Just The Facts, Stephen

6 http://cnsnews.com/news/article/virginia-attorney-general-wants-project-exile-expanded-nationwide

Before giving us his solution to gun violence, King tries to offer “evidence” that gun control

works. He details the shooting incident that led to Australia’s gun ban in 1997. Since then,

we’re told, “homicides by firearm have declined almost 60 percent in Australia”.

This is a common trick of gun control advocates. They like to compare gun crime rates, rather

than actual overall crime rates. It’s a bit disingenuous to focus specifically on gun crime

statistics if your stated goal is an overall decrease in crime. That is unless you weren’t really

serious.

I have yet to have anyone tell me that they’d rather be stabbed, beaten, or drowned to death

rather than being shot.

While the graph of Australian gun crime does show the decline King mentions, the knife/sharp

instrument graph is a near mirror image7, trending upward at exactly the same rate. Total

murders are virtually unchanged since the ban8. Assaults and rapes have also continued to

increase steadily9.

Instead of being shot to death, the Australians are now being stabbed to death. It’s hard to

understand how this is a win in any sense of the word.

The UK suffered the same fate after their gun ban, with violent crime increasing by 2.5 times

since then10. These statistics are freely available from the respective governments’ websites for

those who would care to look at the “arithmetic”.

The statistics from the United States are just as telling, but completely ignored by those seeking

to strip law-abiding people of their firearms.

7 http://www.aic.gov.au/statistics/homicide/weapon.html

8 http://www.aic.gov.au/statistics/homicide.html

9 http://www.aic.gov.au/statistics/violent%20crime.html

10

The UK doesn’t provide a year-over-year table of crime.

1998/1999 Report:

http://webarchive.nationalarchives.gov.uk/20110218135832/http:/rds.homeoffice.gov.uk/rds/pdfs/hosb1899.pdf

2011/2012 Report:

http://www.homeoffice.gov.uk/publications/science-research-statistics/research-statistics/crime-

research/hosb0812/hosb0812

Per FBI crime statistics11, over the 20 year period from 1992-2011 the violent crime rate and

murder rate have dropped 50% in the US. Note that the “assault” weapons ban ended a little

more than halfway through that period.

Incidentally, this is the same time period where many states passed “shall issue” concealed carry

laws.

History, A Cruel Master King only briefly touches on the Nazi’s disarmament of the Jews but it’s a totally incoherent

argument. People who’ve studied history and understand that governments who disarm their

people do indeed become totalitarian are labeled as hysterical and paranoid. King begrudgingly

assents that the Nazis refused to allow Jews to have guns, but himself refuses to acknowledge

that maybe they would have been able to fight back when the time came if they hadn’t given up

their weapons.

King tries to calm these paranoid gun-loving hystericals down by assuring them that no one

wants to take their hunting rifles, shotguns, revolvers, or “automatic” [sic] pistols, except if they

hold more than ten rounds.

History is not on his side on this point.

Where there has been gun registration, there has been gun confiscation, and in many cases during

the 20th century there has been genocide. Turkey, the Soviet Union, Nazi Germany, China, tens

of millions of people murdered by their government after being disarmed.

But, gun-grabbers object, it could never happen here. We’re the United States, land of the free,

home of the brave.

As recently as 2005, in the aftermath of hurricane Katrina, New Orleans police, National Guard,

and US Marshals confiscated thousands of legally-owned guns from people, leaving them

defenseless while looters roamed the city. The same has happened in other states like California

where people voluntarily registered their weapons, only to have the government show up at their

door later to confiscate them.

The maxim “We need guns so the government can’t take them away” is a mutation of the truth,

created as a joke to insinuate, as King states, that we’re all just paranoid lunatics. The real

11 http://www.fbi.gov/about-us/cjis/ucr/crime-in-the-u.s/2011/crime-in-the-u.s.-2011/tables/table-1

maxim is this: We need guns so government can’t take them away and then kill us as they see

fit.

To believe that it could only happen in Europe and Asia during the 20th century is the height of

arrogance.

The King of Guns Finally we get to King’s first real argument against keeping guns for self-defense. Again, these

are three cherry-picked stories about accidental shootings of family members during a self-

defense situation. We’re told these are “three of hundreds in the last four years.” But unless the

shooter unloaded an entire magazine into their family member it’s hard to understand how

King’s solution of limiting magazines to ten rounds would have helped.

The problem gun rights advocates face here is that we cannot prove a negative. We have no

statistics for how many crimes are actually prevented by guns, but every once in a while one or

two slip through the anti-gun filter and people hear about it.

In mid-December 2012, a 22-year-old man entered the Clackamas Town Center in Oregon and

opened fire. Another man, Nick Meli, with a concealed handgun drew his sidearm, ready to

shoot. He did not fire, however, seeing there were people behind the shooter and knowing that if

he missed he could hit someone with a stray bullet. The shooter saw Meli, and possibly knowing

his spree was over, turned the gun on himself and committed suicide.

You may also recall that in the first week of January 2013 a Georgia woman successfully

defended herself and her twin boys from a home invader in the middle of the day. She did not,

as King suggests, use a burglar alarm. She used a .38 caliber revolver and she used all six

rounds. The man was still standing and even managed to drive the car away. But we’re told by

King that “If you can’t kill a home invader...with ten shots, you need to go back to the local

shooting range.”

Stephen, please tell us about all the gunfights you’ve been in where you put down a home

invader with ten rounds without missing.

What if there are two of them? Or four?

I guess you’d better be pretty judicious about the use of those ten rounds. And if you happen to

run out, well, I guess you just didn’t spend enough time at the range.

Too bad for you and your children.

King’s Solution To Gun Violence

So here are King’s three solutions:

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

The first problem King, and all other well-intentioned (as opposed to the cynical) gun-control

advocates have is one of presupposition. They believe that you can stop violence by removing

one of the instruments used to commit it. If only we didn’t have those pesky guns around, no

one would get hurt.

We have a violence problem not because of guns, but because of the human heart. It is flawed,

broken, fallen, and sinful. Cain did not need an AR-15 to kill his brother Abel.

As the Australians, English, and many other countries have seen, getting rid of guns does not get

rid of crime, it only exacerbates it.

The second, and perhaps more irritating problem they have, is assuming that a law will stop

criminals from doing certain things. If that were the case, then why are Chicago, New York, and

Washington D.C. the gun crime capitals of the US?

Conclusion

So, dear reader, you ask, what is my solution for the problem of gun violence?

To the extent that I care to differentiate gun murder from any other type of murder, here are

some radical suggestions.

Repeal the Gun Free School Zone Act 1990

These Safe for Criminals Shooting Galleries seem to be a magnet for the Adam Lanzas of the

world. Note that I’m not suggesting the government designate or post armed guards. Just

remove the restrictions on having guns within 1,000 feet of school property and let anyone carry

a firearm.

I would add shutting down all government schools, but that may be a bit too radical for most

readers, and deserves its own essay.

Repeal all concealed carry laws and allow anyone to carry a concealed firearm

Most will not be able to stomach this, but it goes hand in hand with the above.

Stop subsidizing big pharma by drugging children with mind-altering drugs

It’s amazing I even have to write that. Who can object to it?

Will these measures stop violence? Of course not.

Will a “good guy with a gun” always stop a “bad guy with a gun”? No again. But even the

government admits that having a gun improves your odds over not having one.

Otherwise the police would give up their guns in favor of that burglar alarm.

Andrew Clark

February 1, 2013

http://curmudgeons.net

This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 United States License.

To view a copy of this license, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/us/ or send a

letter to Creative Commons, 444 Castro Street, Suite 900, Mountain View, California,

94041, USA.