Gun Scenes (WARNING: POTENTIALLY TRAUMATIC CONTENT)

This is a thread for fiction involving guns, from perfectly healthy olympic competition and huntings, to psychotic spree killings and suicides. There's a particular emphasis in making sure that the research is done properly, that things are either realistic, or cool enough to excuse the lack of realism. It's not just about getting the technical details right, but also the feelings.

I'll open with this little piece came from a very dark place. Sort of ambushed me. We were talking about silencers, subsonic ammo, and the resulting quietness. And I remembered the Orlando shooting, and how the shots wouldn't be heard, in a nightclub. And the rest sort of built itself.

If y'all think this sort of writing exercise is inappropriate and in poor taste, I'll abstain from it in the future. Maybe open a Writer's Block thread instead.[[/quoteblock]]

A bit of a tasteless place to open with

I considered putting "trigger warning" somewhere in the title, but then I'd have to add "pun unintended" and expect people to believe me... so I came up with something else.

Fiction should be able to encompass horrible things to begin with instead of have it all sanitized. Especially if you write about psychopaths as part of a story.

So with this particular sample you have submitted what were you looking to talk about?

Well, mostly whether I got the technical details right. Like, I'm assuming that the bullets would go through several people at a time without meeting bone for narrative convenience, but is it jarring? Is the reaction time of the wounded plausible? Could a subsonic bullet travel through several people unnoticed, or does it have not enough energy? Would the smoke (and its smell) betray him? Or the posture, maybe? Is cleaning the prints, getting rid of one's clothes, and having a bath, good enough to erase all traces? Is the escape plausible?

Literary comment is of course also welcome. Is the mood conveyed right? Or is it bland and boring? I was going for a sort of "cynical dreamlike", like a muted, cold Hotline Miami; does the tone come across the way I want it to? Is it unsettling and disturbing, or just lurid and gruesome?

edited 19th Jul '16 7:12:00 PM by TheHandle

Most guns can potentially shoot through someone but the chances of a single shot carrying through more then 2 or 3 is fairly low especially given that simply hitting someone would cause a bullets trajectory to alter. Meaning even if you hit two or three people chances are pretty god the bullet is going to be hitting some bone somewhere. Especially if you hit the center mass and head targets. Most lower velocity rounds lose energy on impact really quickly and are unlikely to keep going through multiple people. They might go through one person and hit another but unless they have a lot of energy behind the slug they are likely to wind up stopped.

As for wiping prints that depends on how well the gun takes prints and whether or not some sort of alteration was applied to reduce how well it keeps a print. Particularly smooth grips are pretty easy to wipe down and carefully wiping them with a wd-40 rag or just spraying it real quick makes it harder to lift a print in the first place. It is easier to wipe down everything ahead of time while wearing gloves and wear gloves during the shooting. It minimizes accidental contamination and recues the chances of leaving behind useful biological bits. Also wiping down the cartridges and magazine then load up. There is likely a forensic article somewhere that covers this better.

A .22 using subsonic ammo is unlikely to produce a through-and-through wound, especially if it hits bone. To quote from my copy of Cartridges of the World:

This presumes, of course, that hospitalization or professional medical attention is not sought in a timely fashion. More people have been killed with the .22 rimfire than any other caliber in history, but that's mainly because there are more .22 rimfire guns in existence than any other caliber in history.

Wow. That seems even more vicious than I thought... Am I understanding this right? Would the victims not notice and then die a few days later without warning?

Sometimes yes. Some folks don't even realize they are hurt until well after the fact. There are a stories of folks discovering bullets lodged in their bodies and them never remembering they got shot.

But it doesn't happen enough that my villain could get away with his shooting going completely unnoticed, I hope?

Probably not. If you shoot several people chances of someone discovering they are injured after the fact tend to go up. Not a guarantee but the chances change with the situation.

edited 20th Jul '16 6:26:31 PM by TuefelHundenIV

Also bear in mind that while a .22 is potentially lethal, most other calibers can do the job a whole lot better. I once heard an anecdote about a teenage gang member who got shot square in the back with a .22 during a street fight. He finished the fight, went home, and went to bed. In the middle of the night, he woke up not feeling very well. By morning he was dead. The .22 can kill, but it has no stopping power.

See, a bullet does more than just like ballistic impact damage and then nothing. There is also a wave of pressure that wreaks havoc on organs, which is why they are so deadly. This, plus the fact that a bullet would likely have the same amount or more impact force as the gun (manifested in the kick) would mean that it is unlikely that someone would not notice they have been shot. This isn't even beginning to touch on how loud guns are, even with 'silencers'. To conclude, the reason mass shootings happen is because 1, most people freeze when in a life threatening situation because they don't know what to do, and because 2, shooters are able to put out a large amount of bullets in a short amount of time. A way to apply this to your story, which, in terms of craft, was well written, would be to, instead of no one noticing, have everyone panic as they realize what happened, and then have the mc continue firing at them as they struggle to get to the exit.

Sorry, missed the bit about .22s.

We were having a discussion on the gun thread. Apparently, subsonic .22 ammo, with a silencer, doesn't sound louder than a loud cough. We saw videos to that effect.

Also, thank you.

The thing to realize that how a specific individual will react to being shot isn't predictable ahead of time. Some people wont realize they've been shot, esp. if they are inebriated/high at the time. Others will scream in pain at the slightest graze. Your shooter might get away in the fashion you describe, but he can't count on it, and every additional person he shoots lowers the odds.

There are accounts of people who got shot multiple times and still lived long enough to kill whoever shot them.

Adrenaline is one hell of a drug.

The fabled Rasputinian Death? Still, unto itself, not very relevant to the case at hand, unless it turns into a fight.

Maybe I can have my psycho ponder the possibilities, and, horrifyingly, look forward to all of them. In a killing scene, to a Glory Hound Death Seeker, any outcome is good, except surrender.

edited 23rd Jul '16 7:45:50 PM by TheHandle

On an unrelated note...

Whenever werewolves appear in fiction, so do silver bullets. But in reality, silver bullets are extremely difficult to make. One author decided to do some first-hand empirical research on the subject. The results can be found here: [1]

The difficulty is due to the high melting temperature, huh? Still, we do not hunt vampires and werewolves because it is easy, but because it is difficult! They are even more dangerous than The Most Dangerous Game!

Do we have any good literature with hunting scenes, that goes into detail, conveys the feeling, and doesn't do any Dan Browning?

Ernest Hemingway and Theodore Roosevelt come immediately to mind.

Also look up Peter Hathaway Capstick, Jack O'Connor, Townsend Whelen, Elmer Keith, Jeff Cooper, Bill Jordan, and Skeeter Skelton. Bear in mind that these men were old-school gun enthusiasts, and could be quite outspoken in expressing their personal opinions, so they should be taken with the proverbial grain of salt. (But they too would be disgusted by Dan Brown's outright lies in defending his sloppy work.)

However, in the words of Elmer Keith: "It ain't braggin' if you can do it!" The highly active lives that these men led would be regarded as fantasy in today's world. Times were very different back then.

edited 24th Jul '16 7:21:12 AM by pwiegle

There is also quicksilver bullets AKA liquid mercury bullets, which mix the silver properties of silver with the ballistics of explosive lead.

Apparently very hard and illegal to make but bound to ruin the day of anything unarmored harder than a regular bullet would due to the expansion of the quicksilver bullet.

Thing is, bullets with liquid mercury cores seem to be nothing more than an urban legend. They've appeared in fiction and people talk about them in forums, but I've never run across one single documented instance of their actually being made or used in real life.

cf. "Devastator" bullets, which may or may not be the same thing, depending on who you ask. It sounds like something to be filed under "made-up BS" along with "assault weapons," "cop-killer bullets," etc.

edited 24th Jul '16 1:29:31 PM by pwiegle

They would be no more effective against humans than other kinds of bullets, but they would obviously be highly desirable against warwolves and the like. A kind of multi-capable munition.

You know, you should read Blood Meridian. Other than the books' complete lack of punctuation, it could teach you something about the dark sides of human nature. Not saying your writing is bad, just thought you might be interested

edited 12th Aug '16 9:13:54 PM by SephirotAero