Author Stephen King has been very vocal about his thoughts on gun control, and on a lot of current political hot topics really, over on Twitter. The mystery and crime author has decried the proliferation of guns in the United States, particularly of assault rifles, but that does not mean he is as anti-gun as you may think.
When the founding fathers wrote the Second Amendment, they likely could have had no idea the repercussions that would follow, or just how efficient guns would become at allowing humans to kill one another. Now in some states, individuals can easily get their hands on weapons of destruction, ones that can mow down hundreds in mere minutes, a long way from the shotguns and rifles used when the Constitution was first written.
Despite the horror these guns wreak time and time again, and the fact that gun violence and mass shootings are on the rise across the country, where barely a day goes by without some unspeakable tragedy being committed using such a weapon, many are still adamant that it is their right to own such a weapon. King shared his opinion on the matter of owning these guns on Twitter, writing:
Of course, the gun-nuts were not happy and many in the comments section went after him for his “unconstitutional” opinion, with one such person assuming that King does not own a gun, which the author went on to correct.
Despite being against AR-15s, the author is not totally against guns. The fallacy that many gun lovers live under is that liberals, like King, want to take away all their guns. While though the idea of living in a gun-free utopia would seem to be the ideal case, many of these “liberals” do not in fact want to take away all guns, just the ones that are as destructive as the AR-15, whilst also implementing some screening laws, to stop any old random person, regardless of their mental health, affiliations with hate groups, or criminal history, from buying them.
It makes sense that an author who immerses himself in crime, thrillers, and mysteries might own a gun and it also proves he is not totally against gun ownership – just gun ownership with no oversight whatsoever. It is legal to buy guns in many countries around the world, such as the U.K., but the rules and regulations are extremely stringent. As a result in 2020, only 4 percent of homicides in the U.K. were attributed to guns compared to 79 percent in the U.S.
Some may say then that King is a hypocrite, and perhaps he is, but there is a difference between wanting to ban all guns (which in the U.S. is unrealistic and unlikely) and wanting to ban assault rifles that should really only be in the hands of the military, which was what they were originally intended for.
