Writing With Guns

I'm currently writing a story and in the middle of deciding what gun my protagonist should use. I've narrowed my choice down to either a hunting rifle or a shotgun; though can't decide if it should be lever-action, bolt-action, pump-action or break-action. As I haven't had much experience of either using or writing about guns, I thought I'd bring this issue up here instead.

My main in-story consideration is that my character doesn't have any military training or prior experience with handling guns. As such, the weapon of choice should be one that is fairly intuitive to use for someone who's never handled it before while still be a repeating firearm. And while I know handguns are the most intuitive to use, my story is set in Britain and handguns have been banned there - hence, my restriction down to rifle or shotgun.

A second consideration is a practical one - which one is easier to write for? Which gun's operations are easier and more interesting to describe? For instance, things like checking if the gun is loaded, reloading, etc. I've looked at Modern Battlefield Weapons for guidance but still feel unprepared. Any tips or reading suggestions would be greatly appreciated.

Of course, Rule of Cool does still factor into my choice - though that's not the main issue here.

edited 24th Jul '12 2:52:38 AM by peasant

Why on earth would it matter what gun your character uses?

EDIT: And how is he going to get ahold of the gun? Since it's in Britain, stealing a shotgun from a farmer or a shooting range (with clay pigeons etc) seems more likely than getting a hunting rifle.

edited 24th Jul '12 2:57:14 AM by imadinosaur

The weapon that a character chooses tells you a lot about them through the particulars: Range, size, reload speed, firepower, recoil, accuracy, size, weight, shape, cost, even aesthetics. All of them are little telltale signs as to what kind of person is wielding the weapon.

First point; if your character is completely untrained then a shotgun would be a marginally better choice- using a scope/sights correctly can be tricky. Of course, never having fired a gun before neither option will be terribly accurate, and the kick on either would be disorienting depending on the model of gun in question.

Second point; if you have limited experience with firearms I wouldn't get to heavy into the Gun Porn and/or Description Porn with either firearm (again, depending on the model), but I personally like the act of lever-action firearms as far as pure aesthetics go, and you can pull off a Dramatic Gun Cock with any of them (see the climax of Up for the lever-action version).

Shotgun seems smart - they require less precision (though don't make the mistake of assuming they have the ludicrously wide spread or short range depicted in video games), they're uncomplicated pieces of machinery, and they're popular amongst farmers for scaring off foxes or other wildlife. Furthermore, shotgun cartridges are subject to less restrictions regarding possession than live rounds, though rifled slugs and guns with detachable magazines and/or an ammunition capacity of more than two cartridges require an extra license. Oh, and sawn-off shotguns are totally illegal because they're so easy to conceal.

Incidentally, handguns aren't completely banned - you can pack a short-barrelled .22 if you have the license.

I've never put much stock in that because exterior factors often tend to rule over personal ones. Accessibility of firearms; what's issued rather than personal choice; and operational requirements (for lack of a better term) i.e. the expected area and the expected opponent.

The OP's concerns rather demonstrate it.

re: the actual questions

An Enfield No. 3/No. 4 would be a fairly iconic British weapon and it's a fine rifle, but it's bolt action and probably a poor choice. A better option if it's available would be a L1A1 SLR. Most of them were never modified to enable automatic or burst fire but are still semiauto, and 7.62mm NATO is powerful enough for most purposes. It is, however, a military weapon of recent vintage (the FN-FAL it descends from is still in active service in many countries) and probably restricted.

Most likely is a magazined shotgun with pump action, of the sort of which there are about 5000 different varieties and they're pretty interchangeable. Internal magazine, non-detachable, four or five rounds. Hard to reload but it's still five rounds.

edited 24th Jul '12 5:02:09 AM by Night

Thanks for such speedy responses!

Overall, my idea is that it's a weapon of opportunity rather than an ideal/deliberate choice. The user is a teenaged girl who manages to swipe it from her grandfather's cabinet. As for why the grandfather had said gun, it's set in rural Wales. So, I can handwave it as either being for vermin or hunting. As such, it's gonna be a civilian weapon.

Right now, I'm contemplating making it a lever-action since it's a tad bit less intuitive; allowing for some added tension after the (ineffective) first shot as she struggles to figure out how to chamber the next round.

edited 24th Jul '12 6:00:04 AM by peasant

What time-period are you writing in? Because lever-action shotguns tend to either be rare, century-old antiques or replicas bought by obscure-gun nuts. They went out of fashion in 1920. A plain old modern 'working' shotgun in Britain is more likely to be a double-barrelled jobbie - a Winchester 21 if you want to go for an old-fashioned, treasured family hand-me-down, a Beretta 682 if you want something modern.

@Night: Magazined shotguns are actually less likely in Britain - remember those firearm laws I mentioned?

edited 24th Jul '12 8:10:08 AM by Iaculus

Yes, but a breakopen two-barrel is a singularly crappy weapon to intentionally get in a fight with (there's that operational factors bit again), so while it may be hard to get somebody who's looking for trouble or expects to regularly need a weapon in the course of their activities will likely make the effort to get it.

Or alternately they might just use their father's/grandfather's service Webley, I dunno.

edited 24th Jul '12 9:47:00 AM by Night

I meant a lever-action rifle.

As for the setting, it's present day but in rural Wales.

From what you describe, it sounds like shotguns are a lot more common than rifles. From my understanding, shotguns have their own license type which is easier to get approval; especially compared to rifles, which require a separate firearm certificate for each gun.

As such, how much rarer are rifles, by any chance? Would it be unexpected/unusual that a land-rich retiree who lives in the countryside to own a rifle instead of a shotgun?

As a working gun, it's be unusual. For sports shooting, not in the slightest.

Make sure that you know the gun laws in that particular area, so whatever you choose is legal.

Also learn a little bit about how the gun works, so you don't make any mistakes like giving it a safety when in reality it doesn't.

I don't know welsh gun laws, but if you're going for a sporting/varmit gun swiped from a rural gun cabinet, that pretty much narrows down to a few choices.

-lever action rifle, such as a winchester. AKA the cowboy rifle. Often uses handgun ammo but can use the rifle type. Don't know about legality but easy enough to get where they are legal. Would be quite handy on a farm too. -Single/Double barreled shotgun, break open shotgun. Really easy to use, probably the easiest to find and have legally. Fairly cheap as far as guns go. Annoying to reload. -Pump action shotgun. Easy to find where legal(fairly inexpensive), fairly easy to learn to use. Don't know how legal they are in wales. -Bolt action rifle.Another thing that would likely be in a hunting/gun cabinet. Easy to use, annoying reload.

The break action shotgun and bolt action rifle would probably be the easiest to find and use, but crappy in any kind of life threatening situation due the reload mechanism. The lever action rifle or pump action shotgun would be a little harder to learn to use and possibly much harder to find but something I would prefer to use.

And as someone else said, don't worry too much about description. If the character knows next to nothing about guns, I wouldn't mention much more about it other then what kind it is and how many bullets/shells it holds. Maybe drop the brand name if you think it will help the reader visualize it "It was a Smith and Wesson revolver", for example.

Really, as someone who knows about guns, the only thing that really bothers me is if you have someone fire 7 shots from a revolver(unless it's a 7 shot revolver, which exist but are rare) or forget what kind of gun it's supposed to be. Stephen King did this in "Misery" where he can't seem to remember if Annie had a rifle or a shotgun because it would flip back and forth between the two depending on the paragraph, and he uses both the same number of times so it's not like he made one typo.

To sum it up, decide what works best, pick one, have a basic understanding of how it works and remember that when you write.

edited 28th Jul '12 2:41:17 PM by hpl

Thanks so much for the advice - especially with respect to the peeves those who have knowledge about guns might have. Gives me something to keep in mind whilst writing.

Generally, guns aren't all that common in Wales (or the UK as a whole) since people there don't have the innate right to bear arms and self defense is not always accepted as a reason to own a gun. There are two types of licenses as well - a shotgun license and firearm certificates for individual guns - with a shotgun that has a capacity of more than two requiring the latter instead of the former. With my character, my thinking is that the grandfather had gotten the gun for self defense under the guise of something else since he knew he needed it to fend off the story's antagonist (to which he failed). Cue the granddaughter's arrival into the story.

Good idea about the name-dropping. However, I don't think I'll be able to do that since it would be somewhat out-of-character for the girl to be able to identify the type let alone individual model (since it's in first person). Hence, why I was asking which type of gun was easiest to describe for. Also, I now don't have the guts to name-drop a specific gun make/model just in case those who actually know their way around guns spot any inaccuracies in my description/use of it.

"Name-dropping" would be simple enough even for a non-weapons savvy narrator as most firearms of modern manufacture have the make and model clearly stamped on the firearm. The narrator could say "it had the word "Mossberg" set into the metal."

As to inaccuracies, finding out the specs - such as capacity, action, magazine type (if applicable) etc - is a simple matter of googling it, which will lead to a number of sites including wiki entries, manufacturer's site, reviews and you should be able to come up with something like "Mossberg 500 Series, pump action, 12gauge shotgun, 8-rounds capacity, tubular magazine." Even if you're not an expert and just have the narrator say "it took me a while to find out how to load the magazine" and "I loaded the magazine" or "I was out of ammunition so I had to reload" rather than going into lurid detail on how to load a Mossberg 500, you could still easily keep track of how many shots are fired and get it accurate based on the info you've gathered on the piece.

Consistency is key - always having the right reload breaks, not "doing a Stephen King" - and you can mask the fact you're not a world expert on firearms to a great degree. There's no law that you have to delve into minutiae, but there would be some things that even a total newchum would be able to spot if getting up close and personal with a firearm.

You can even find spread patterns at various ranges on the internet with a quick google search (I know, I have found them) so you could get a very accurate idea of how much damage a shotgun is going to do to something at various ranges.

A good ball-park figure is around one inch spread per yard from the barrel, which means that a torso shot within 4 yards is going to do a lot of damage but out beyond 7 or 8 yards there's a chance that only part of the spread pattern's going to hit the target.

If you're going with a shotgun over a rifle, you'll need to bone up on shot shell loads as the loads that are the most effective for self defence are not the same as the loads someone is likely to have around for hunting ducks - and they behave rather differently at further ranges.

Break action double or single barrel shotguns are a pain due to low capacity and slowness in reloading but they are very very common.

For any range at all, you're going to need a rifle.

Bolt actions are not as bad as a lot of people here are making out. Once you get the hang of using one they can be very quick and easy to use and also have the option of carrying them with one round chambered but not locked in and cocked - and needing only a slight push and swivel of the bolt handle to ready the rifle for firing.

A lever action can be carried with the lever not quite in position, requiring just a squeeze to lock the breech and ready it for firing.

Lever actions have the disadvantage that you can't use them whilst lying prone without raising them up or tipping them on their sides, thus taking the sights off the target in between shots = slower to reacquire the target for follow-up shots.

If you're raised up enough to work the lever, you're a bigger target for any hostiles shooting back. This is why lever actions are not used by military forces whilst bolt actions still are. A person who has practised enough with a bolt action can fire as fast as someone with a lever action.

Frankly, if I were in a fight for my life against armed opponents and had the choice of a 4- or 5-shot bolt action and a 7- or 8-shot lever action, I'd go for the bolt action. I'd get down low, stay down and make the shots count. Lever actions are fine when you're walking or riding and don't have to worry about the game shooting back.

And, yes, I can work the bolt of a rifle just as fast as I could work the action on the lever action I used to own.

If the story will allow it, I'd suggest that there's a bolt action rifle - preferably .243 or .308 for the nice flat trajectories (= more accurate for a newchum) - and a 12ga pump-action shotgun - but think carefully on what use the original owner had as that will dictate what ammunition's lying around.