Rudy Waltz is your typical, 12 year old boy raised by unappreciative, self-absorbed children of rich parents. Given the key to his family gun room after his older brother leaves for war, he finds himself cleaning a Springfield .30-06. Feeling the allure of the weapon in his hands, he points the loaded gun out the window and squeezes the trigger. In his own words, "I was the great marksman, anyway. If I aimed at nothing, then nothing is what I would hit." Except he doesn't hit "nothing". Instead, he hits pregnant Eloise Metzger right between the eyes, 8 blocks away.

Deadeye Dick is the unofficial sequel to Breakfast Of Champions, and leaves none of the levity behind. There are heavy parallels between Deadeye Dick and Vonnegut's own personal life, mainly through his relationship with his parents. Celia Hoover shadows his own mother, whose drug dependency and depression helps lead to her suicide.

City newspaper editor George Metzger writes on the front page of his newspaper, following his wife's accidental murder: "My wife has been killed by a machine which should never have come into the hands of any human being. It is called a firearm. It makes the blackest of all human wishes come true at once, at a distance: that something die. There is evil for you. We cannot get rid of mankind's fleetingly wicked wishes. We can get rid of the machines that make them come true. I give you a holy word: DISARM."

Deadeye Dick is not a book about gun bans or firearm safety; it is a book about consequences, or the lack thereof. Rudy faces lifelong consequences for the results of his actions, but nobody else seems to face consequences for theirs. Deadeye Dick is a book about addiction, prescription abuse, and depression. It's about police brutality and the danger of the rich, white man. Most importantly, it's a book about the randomness and chaos that permeates our daily lives.