Guns (Kindle Single)

by Stephen King

anyone who doesn’t feel a qualm of regret at throwing a blanket over the truth is an asshole with no conscience.

high school sucked when I went, and probably sucks now. I tend to regard people who remember it as the best four years of their lives with caution and a degree of pity.

the dream of my soul uncle, Martin Luther King,

The idea that America exists in a culture of violence is bullshit.

Superhero movies and comic books teach a lesson that runs directly counter to the culture-of-violence idea: guns are for bad guys too cowardly to fight like men.

(contrary to the belief of many conservatives who go to the movies but once a year, exhibitors tend to be quite strict about enforcing the R rating).

If you think the outcry against guns was loud following Sandy Hook, imagine what it would have been like had the public been exposed to pictures of what those gore-splattered rooms and hallways looked like when the first responders entered them.

The assertion that Americans love violence and bathe in it daily is a self-serving lie promulgated by fundamentalist religious types and America’s propaganda-savvy gun-pimps.

To claim that America’s “culture of violence” is responsible for school shootings is tantamount to cigarette company executives declaring that environmental pollution is the chief cause of lung cancer.

let me suggest that fuck you, Jack, I’m okay is not a tenable position, morally speaking.

Guns are not tools — not unless you reverse a pistol and use the butt to hammer in a nail. Guns are weapons.