Lethal Passage_ The Story of a Gun - Erik Larson [83]
But surely, I argued, Lund knew that some customers would try out the advice and instructions included in his books, particularly Kill Without Joy.
“I understand someone could conceivably misuse the information,” Lund said. “I know that. Absolutely. There’s no question in my mind about it. But I am not responsible for someone misusing information.”
“Why publish the book at all?” I asked. “Does the world really need a five-hundred-page book on how to kill?”
For the first and only time during my visit, Lund flared with anger: “If you want to pin me down on moral culpability, I cannot accept it. I cannot accept it.”
Besides, he argued, Paladin published much more than books on how to kill and bomb. He cited books on military history and self-defense, and a handbook for law-enforcement officers.
Paladin’s eclectic tastes can lead to some odd juxtapositions in its catalog. For example, Streetwork: The Way to Police Officer Safety and Survival appeared on page forty-four of one of its catalogs. According to Lund, its author was a San Diego police officer. Kill Without Joy appeared two pages earlier.
Paladin readers are not crooks, Lund said. Many customers, he argued, buy his books as a “cathartic,” a means of harmlessly working off frustrations with bosses, ex-wives, and intractable institutions by imagining acts of violence and revenge. “I think there are many, many Walter Mittys on our mailing list, people who live in a fantasy world.”
Michael Hoy, owner of Loompanics Unlimited of Port Town-send, Washington, another mail-order publisher with a taste for handbooks on violence, told me he doubted Paladin’s books or his own triggered any crimes—although he was quick to add that a “couple hundred” of his own customers were already in prison. Once a week he prepared a special catalog just for them by tearing out pages on improvised firearms and other topics that prison officials tended to frown on. He did not believe that killers needed to read such books as Kill Without Joy, which Loompanics buys from Paladin and resells. “I just don’t think that’s how serial killers operate, reading books and all.”
One Loompanics offering is Physical Interrogation Techniques by Richard Krousher. The book, according to a Loompanics catalog, “tells you the best ways to tie and bind a subject for physical interrogation, where to obtain tools and devices needed, and even how to get the guy to torture himself while you’re out for coffee.”
Hoy’s own lead-stomached staff refused to proofread it, so he took on the task alone. “It’s a pretty gruesome book,” he told me. “I was pretty sick of that stuff myself by the time I was done.” Nonetheless, by the time we spoke in December 1992 he had sold 5,500 copies.
A big fan of Lund and his company, Hoy gushed, “It’s just a joy doing business with Paladin Press.”
Paladin seems to have a good many satisfied customers. Many write fan mail to the company, applauding both its efficient service and its daring. A San Antonio customer wrote: “I’ve got to give you credit, you offer controversial, often shocking literature that is invaluable to all Americans. It’s a pity that all mail-order companies don’t follow your example.”
Here are three of the five books this particular customer ordered, along with excerpts from their catalog descriptions:
Expedient Hand Grenades, by G. Dmitrieff. “Almost anyone can now master the art of constructing an effective hand grenade. One of America’s leading ordnance designers makes it simple with easily understood instructions that describe the equipment and methods needed to make two optimum models: the fragmentation and incendiary grenades.”
Improvised Explosives: How to Make Your Own, by Seymour Lecker. “With ease, you can construct such devices as a package bomb, booby-trapped door, auto (mobile) trap, sound-detonated bomb or pressure mine, to name just a few.”
The Mini-14 Exotic Weapons System (no author listed). “Convert your Mini into a full-auto, silenced, SWAT-type weapon that is capable of field-clearing firepower. Note that this conversion process requires