What is a semi-automatic gun?
I’ve heard a lot of odd arguments, many of them based in “political realities” rather than reality realities. This oddball singling out of “semi-automatic” weapons seems to be a completely ignorant misunderstanding about what they actually are. Nearly all firearms today are semi-automatic. That is, any gun with a removable magazine, is semi-automatic. The spring inside the weapon and the action of the firing moves the next round into the chamber once it is discharged.
Stephen King should know this. He says he owns 3 handguns. Are they revolvers, which are arguably also semi-automatic, as a rotating chamber advances the next round into the firing position? The alternative is some kind of 18th century flintlock?
“Single shot percussion pistol”
So, this is pretty basic fact finding, determining what we’re discussing in the first place. A semi-automatic pistol is certainly a danger, and a lethal weapon. It is a problem, one that I’ve studied for quite some time in terms of self-defense, rights, tyranny, spree killings, insanity, etc.
The cognitive dissonance comes into it when people who apparently own semi-automatic weaponry, say things like this:
“If that’s the case, let me suggest that ‘fuck you, Jack, I’m okay’ is not a tenable position, morally speaking.”
But King makes no effort to rid himself of these semi-automatic firearms that he in other places argues in favor of.
“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…”
Yes, guns are destructive … and?
(They aren’t “weapons of mass destruction” however, ie. nuclear weapons. That is clear hyperbole.)
“[Stephen King] 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’.” (Guardian)
Why hasn’t King himself started the disarmament by getting rid of his own weapons?
“He assured gun owners that no one wanted to take away their hunting rifles, shotguns or pistols, as long as they held no more than 10 rounds. ‘If you can’t kill a home invader (or your wife, up in the middle of the night to get a snack from the fridge) with ten shots, you need to go back to the local shooting range.'”
Here is the crux of the problem. It’s a non-solution. It’s an empty, hollow, ineffective “feel good” liberal strategy which is in the politically feasible column, but not in the actually useful column. King has penned a halfway token gesture, insulting those — LIKE HIMSELF — who continue to own firearms, but pretending that the 10 shot cap (on individual clips) is the big moral question of the day. That’s a flimsy rationale, and the inherent bankrupt hypocrisy of his position discredits him.
That’s not the only cognitive dissonance found in the piece. King wrote a novel called RAGE, which was later quoted by a spree killer in a school shooting incident. King ordered the book removed from the market, but then had this to say about violence in the culture:
“The idea that US gun rampages stem from a culture of violence was a ‘self-serving lie promulgated by fundamentalist religious types and America’s propaganda-savvy gun-pimps'”
What? Come again? First of all it’s the “liberal” and “progressive” camps who usually seek violent culture as a motivator for acting out similarly. This is not without some support.
But, with the RAGE incident in evidence, King denies that this could have any affect on a spree shooting kid who quoted his own book, prompting him to self-censor it?
So why did he pull the book?
This is profound cognitive dissonance, possibly stemming from guilt. Guilt does a lot of strange things to people’s minds, and Mr. King is not immune.
“Plenty of gun advocates cling to their semi-automatics the way Amy Winehouse and Michael Jackson clung to the shit that was killing them.”
The way Stephen King clings to his own 3 handguns?
“If this helps provoke constructive debate, I’ve done my job.” -Stephen King
I’ll take him at his word. Faulty reasoning is not “constructive debate” but calling out its logical inconsistencies perhaps is.
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