Not to long ago I was reading on Mexican criminal drug gangs. It appeared that one of them was branching out and had discovered that mining was lucrative without ay of the safety equipment, etc., and they could work the workers any way they wanted. One of the startling things is that the most ruthless killers they used are from M13 (hope I remembered correctly) and that M13 was a Los Angeles based street gang that teamed with them. So while I agree with much of what Stephen King says here, I think there is a culture of violence that he may not have been contemplating. But neither was the NRA fellow either.
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During my junior and senior years in high school, I wrote my first novel, then titled Getting It On. The story was about a troubled boy named Charlie Decker with a domineering father, a load of adolescent angst and a fixation on Ted Jones, the school's most popular boy. Charlie takes a gun to school, kills his algebra teacher and holds his class hostage.
Ten years later, after the first half-dozen of my books had become bestsellers, I revisited Getting It On, rewrote it, and submitted it to my paperback publisher under the pseudonym of Richard Bachman. It was published as Rage, sold a few thousand copies and disappeared from view. Or so I thought.
In February 1996, a boy named Barry Loukaitis walked into his algebra class in Washington, with a .22-caliber revolver and a high-powered hunting rifle. He used the rifle to kill instructor Leona Caires and two students. Then, waving the pistol in the air, he declared, "This sure beats algebra, doesn't it?" The quote is from Rage.
A PE teacher, in a commendable act of heroism, charged at Loukaitis and overpowered him.
In 1997, Michael Carneal, age 14, arrived at Heath high school, in Kentucky, with a Ruger MK II semi-automatic pistol in his backpack. He killed three and wounded five. A copy of Rage was found in his locker. That was enough for me. I asked my publishers to pull the novel.
http://www.theguardian.com/books/2013/feb/01/stephen-king-pulled-book-gun-controls
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