Should "Rage" be back in print?

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Hill lover35

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Jan 8, 2017
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Alberta canada
Ms. Mod, if you ever can find a video of that, it would be helpful, I would love to see it.

I remember some of that, about the book and the Columbine shooting. I didn't realize the book was found to be related in other shootings, but I can believe it.

It doesn't change my opinion, but I can see how it might be difficult for King's conscience to keep the book in print.

I believe firearms should be regulated intensely; I can't stand the NRA, it is a hysterical organization to me (and it completely, purposefully misses the point of the Second Amendment debate, just to make money and to justify its misguided, horrific, political existence). Yet, I am forced to borrow a phrase from that group of intellectually-stunted ludicrousness -- books don't kill people, people kill people. The reason such a phrase should not be applied to the debate over firearm regulation is because firearms were designed for one purpose, a purpose for which books were never intended. I do believe that the nonexistence of a particular, specific book might indeed mean that a tragedy might not occur -- put more simply, less inelegantly, perhaps, yes, maybe a certain work might cause someone who has read it to do something he may otherwise wouldn't have done had he not read the work in question. We can't argue against that because we know movies might influence someone to smoke, to vote in a certain way, etc. Product placement in TV shows has value, so why wouldn't idea-placement in a piece of fiction possess similar advertisable consequences?

Thankfully, most humans don't seem to work that way. If we suddenly made a law to allow everyone to trade LEAP options in their 401k plans, most people probably wouldn't do it, only a few would do it in haphazard ways that would crush their portfolios; the majority would stay in safer securities. And we have laws in place, as well as policing institutions, that at least make it difficult for the less sane amongst us to run amok. In addition, we know that certain beneficial implementations will cause small amounts of harm here and there -- e.g., raising a speed limit.

I thank you again for the discussion, and please don't take my thoughts as trying to change your mind on the subject. I enjoy putting some organs and flesh to a bag-of-bones argument, if you will (I hope I am remembering and using that metaphor correctly, I think it was in the book about TR-90 or King mentioned it in an interview about the title).

I do not rember rage being found with the two shooters of columbine. i do not rember that one. I know their was 3 of them spanning 3 decades but i dont think columbine was one of them. perhaps we think of columbine as it was so high profile
 

CoriSCapnSkip

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Jan 16, 2015
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It's up to Stephen whether or not this book ever gets reprinted again. Frankly I'm tired of folks taking him to task for making a personal decision that ultimately is none of their business. Dean Koontz wrote a number of pornographic novels back in his very, very early writing career and those have been out of print far longer than Rage has. Why is no one going after Koontz? If one absolutely HAS TO READ Rage, then take the steps to find a used copy of it (and be prepared to pay hundreds of dollars for it!) or find a used copy of the omnibus The Bachman Books, which has all four of the original Bachman paperbacks in it along with black and white facsimiles of their respective covers, and read it. Leave Steve alone about it. He is the artist that created it, it's his decision whether or not anyone gets to read it again. It's his decision.

Being from the area, I suppose you remember the Barry Loukaitis case very well. It appears he'll die in prison. As I recall, a year to the day later, the cousin of one of the shooting victims shot his mother, sister, and himself, and the father came home from work to a house surrounded by crime scene tape.

Barry Loukaitis, Moses Lake school shooter, breaks silence with apology

My dad taught public schools for years, and back in the day when kids were allowed to openly carry guns into school. (Which one did, as part of a costume on "Cowboys and Indians Day," and shot my dad. Luckily just a BB gun and Dad was unhurt but very upset.) School shootings, even fictional such as on an episode of Promised Land, caused him to froth and foam at the mouth with outraged indignation.

I have an odd connection to the Moses Lake shooting. A year before, we were commencing on restoring the local theater, and there was a conference in Moses Lake about restoring theaters. The group was asked if anyone could attend, I said I could if anyone knew a place to stay. The wife of the pastor of the church I attended said a couple there had mentored them when they were starting out, so they arranged for me to stay there. The couple had an unusual last name on which I remarked. The wife said the husband's brother was pastor of a church in a tiny little town in Upstate New York and I named the town! She wondered how on earth I knew and I said that was the church my grandparents attended (notice I am very careful in saying "we attended" rather than "our church" as my mom and grandparents actually belonged to another church) and this pastor preached my grandmother's funeral! When she told her husband, he said he or some relative was vacationing in Switzerland and someone from their hometown in the midwest, sitting right behind them, said he knew it was a member of that family just from the shape of the head! Anyhow, this man was the chief surgeon at the Moses Lake hospital and would have been responsible for treating the one survivor of the shooting, which qualifies as a mass shooting, just. A mass shooting is four not including the gunman, and he killed three and wounded one, if not for the actions of a very courageous teacher, might have been more. I went back to my old community college on Monday and notice that all the restroom stalls now have instructions on what to do during an active shooter event. When I attended there such events were practically unheard of.
 

kingricefan

All-being, keeper of Space, Time & Dimension.
Jul 11, 2006
30,011
127,446
Spokane, WA
Being from the area, I suppose you remember the Barry Loukaitis case very well. It appears he'll die in prison. As I recall, a year to the day later, the cousin of one of the shooting victims shot his mother, sister, and himself, and the father came home from work to a house surrounded by crime scene tape.

Barry Loukaitis, Moses Lake school shooter, breaks silence with apology

My dad taught public schools for years, and back in the day when kids were allowed to openly carry guns into school. (Which one did, as part of a costume on "Cowboys and Indians Day," and shot my dad. Luckily just a BB gun and Dad was unhurt but very upset.) School shootings, even fictional such as on an episode of Promised Land, caused him to froth and foam at the mouth with outraged indignation.

I have an odd connection to the Moses Lake shooting. A year before, we were commencing on restoring the local theater, and there was a conference in Moses Lake about restoring theaters. The group was asked if anyone could attend, I said I could if anyone knew a place to stay. The wife of the pastor of the church I attended said a couple there had mentored them when they were starting out, so they arranged for me to stay there. The couple had an unusual last name on which I remarked. The wife said the husband's brother was pastor of a church in a tiny little town in Upstate New York and I named the town! She wondered how on earth I knew and I said that was the church my grandparents attended (notice I am very careful in saying "we attended" rather than "our church" as my mom and grandparents actually belonged to another church) and this pastor preached my grandmother's funeral! When she told her husband, he said he or some relative was vacationing in Switzerland and someone from their hometown in the midwest, sitting right behind them, said he knew it was a member of that family just from the shape of the head! Anyhow, this man was the chief surgeon at the Moses Lake hospital and would have been responsible for treating the one survivor of the shooting, which qualifies as a mass shooting, just. A mass shooting is four not including the gunman, and he killed three and wounded one, if not for the actions of a very courageous teacher, might have been more. I went back to my old community college on Monday and notice that all the restroom stalls now have instructions on what to do during an active shooter event. When I attended there such events were practically unheard of.
When I was young and in school the worst we kids had to think about was someone bringing a knife. That's where I'll stop as I don't want to steer this into a 'Hot Topics' area.
 

CoriSCapnSkip

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Jan 16, 2015
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After checking, I didn't think it was on the shelf with hardcover fiction and it definitely isn't. So is in one of the other three places. For anyone interested, I posted about it in the Buy/Sell/Trade area.

If the two hardcover editions were published in 1985 and 1996, this is unquestionably the 1985 edition. In relatively good shape, hardcover with dust jacket.
 

Blake

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Feb 18, 2013
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Yes. You see much worse things written, like people blowing up ships and stuff. What about shows and movies on television where the psycho is strapped with plastic explosive. The reason it got pulled in my opinion is because of the school killings. Because there are 40,000 deaths cause by cars, does that mean you stop driving or writing about cars? You can get it second-hand on the internet anyhow (I've even seen a free pdf copy of it on the internet (I've seen a free copy of 'on writing' on the internet.)