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[bsnott]

The tick-tock of the clock was off rhythm. Every minutes, it called out a second. All characters stand frozen to their places.  It was a brief moment of fear and panic that marked the very meaning of terrorism itself. Slowly the tick-tocks sped up, the scene began to unravel. The covered man's instrument of destruction came over his shoulder, and the barrel pointed to the ceiling. Now seconds came far too quickly, the characters now moving frantically to either escape or to take cover.

The room filled with sound as the weapon fired off shot after shot into the lifeless ceiling. What the man did not notice however, was that he was not the only man in the room with a weapon capable of taking lives. The unseen hero in the corner did neither ran nor hid, he simply drew his own weapon. Smaller it was, but it was enough to tranquilize the situation. The hostile intruder didn't even see the hero until it was too late. He fell before he took even a single life. The authorities arrived late, as expected, but weren't of any real use but clearing out the scene and congratulating the hero.

In another reality, the innocent people of this world are not to carry weapons of lethal ability. The tick-tock of the clock was off rhythm. Every minute, it called out a second. All characters stand frozen to their places.  It was a brief moment of fear and panic that marked the very meaning of terrorism itself. Slowly the tick-tocks sped up, the scene began to unravel. The covered man's instrument of destruction came over his shoulder, and the barrel pointed to the ceiling. Now seconds came far too quickly, the characters now moving frantically to either escape or to take cover.

The room filled with sound as the weapon fired off shot after shot into the lifeless ceiling. The man needn't take caution, these people had no means of defense. A mother with a suckling baby ran, tears in her eyes, to the emergency exit on the other side of the building. Her life, along with her infant son's, was cut short by the armed man's bullet. A teenage couple attempted to hide under their table, but bullets penetrate wood. As men and women attempted to run from the man, they were simply mowed down by the power of the illegal weapon.

The authorities arrived early enough to get a good look of the scene; bodies strewn all across the room, blood coating the walls of the diner. The man had turned the weapon on himself as a means of escape, he understood that it would either be a bullet of his own or a policeman's. What is the difference between these two scenarios? The armed intruder, the one that was to break the law in the first place, simply broke the law that he wasn't to carry a weapon. The law-abiding citizen listened to the law, and carried on himself no weapon for defense of himself or others. What are laws like these if the people that they are meant to protect are only hurt by them?

[bsnott]

Criticism is accepted. No arguing on this topic, either.

EDIT: Actually, argue. I want to see if anyone would disagree, and their reasons why.

[10ebbor10]

Well, since we're allowed to argue, here's my argument(s).

Guncrimes, can, quite easily, be split up in 2 parts.
      -Premediated crime
      -Non-premediated crime

Now, the majority of gun crimes falls into the other category. People are drunk, angry or clouded in vision for some reason, grab their gun, the situation escalates and somebody dies. That or, a crime in process is interupted by a good guy with a gun, the bad guy shoots first, and people die as well. With gun control, there's no gun, hence no death.

The second part is where I disagree with the actual story. A good guy with a gun will not stop a bad man with a gun. As the history of shootings at military bases shows -a location where you expect people who have and know to operate guns to be -, a bad guy with a gun is very hard to stop.

The third part is where the story is actually unrealistic. It's an argument that only holds true against absolute gun control. Background checks and such do not prevent good people from owning guns.

[bsnott]

1. One of the messages I was trying to convey was that the bad guy would have a gun no matter what. They break the law already, why not break it by owning a weapon illegally?

2. At least if someone in that situation has the capability to end it then and there, that's better than no chance at all.

3. It's not as if everyone that fails the background checks is really a dangerous person in general.

4. May I refer you to Switzerland? "Switzerland trails behind only the U.S, Yemen and Serbia in the number of guns per capita; between 2.3 million and 4.5 million military and private firearms are estimated to be in circulation in a country of only 8 million people. Yet, despite the prevalence of guns, the violent-crime rate is low: government figures show about 0.5 gun homicides per 100,000 inhabitants in 2010."

[Nirur Torir]

Criticism is accepted.

I really think this belongs in general discussion. Run spell check. I dislike how flowery your words are. Check your plurals better, "every minutes it called out a second."

No arguing on this topic, either.

What? Why would you post a five paragraph story, which you didn't even spell check on, that's only about supporting a political view, if you weren't looking for a discussion?


I'd be interested in statistics in spree-shootings stopped from civilian gunners in the crowd vs. deaths from gun availability (spur-of-the-moment gun use, accidents, shootings caused by an innocent holding something that looks like a gun but isn't, etc).

[bsnott]

Did you read that entire comment? Why do you think I did a strikethrough? Also, if anyone wants to move this to general discussion then they can go ahead.

[Bauglir]

It's very heavy-handed. I'd call it more of a parable than a short story, but unlike a good parable, it's not a particularly effective way of demonstrating your claim - you're essentially saying that people with guns can stop people from misusing guns, but taking several paragraphs to do it. Also, several of your word choices take it far too close to propaganda-style writing; you don't want to refer to the guy who defuses the situation as a hero, for instance, because (again) it's such a hamfisted way of telling the reader that he's the Good Guy that I automatically suspect you couldn't think of any other way to do it. Show us why he's a hero, don't tell us. As it stands it reads like a version of that old Poe's Law bit about the liberal muslim homosexual ACLU lawyer professor and abortion doctor teaching a class on Karl Marx, known atheist.

Also, from an aesthetic perspective, I don't like narration of bullet time. It's dramatic enough in movies, but I don't think it's something that works well in text. At least the way you've got it done, it reads more like stage directions or something than a story.

Anyway, as for the perspective you're pushing, it's hopelessly naive. Just because such a situation can happen doesn't mean that it's likely to, and the data I recall seeing suggests that people who buy guns for self-defense look for opportunities to use them.

[bsnott]

It's very heavy-handed. I'd call it more of a parable than a short story, but unlike a good parable, it's not a particularly effective way of demonstrating your claim - you're essentially saying that people with guns can stop people from misusing guns, but taking several paragraphs to do it. Also, several of your word choices take it far too close to propaganda-style writing; you don't want to refer to the guy who defuses the situation as a hero, for instance, because (again) it's such a hamfisted way of telling the reader that he's the Good Guy that I automatically suspect you couldn't think of any other way to do it. Show us why he's a hero, don't tell us. As it stands it reads like a version of that old Poe's Law bit about the liberal muslim homosexual ACLU lawyer professor and abortion doctor teaching a class on Karl Marx, known atheist.

Also, from an aesthetic perspective, I don't like narration of bullet time. It's dramatic enough in movies, but I don't think it's something that works well in text. At least the way you've got it done, it reads more like stage directions or something than a story.

Anyway, as for the perspective you're pushing, it's hopelessly naive. Just because such a situation can happen doesn't mean that it's likely to, and the data I recall seeing suggests that people who buy guns for self-defense look for opportunities to use them.

Basically what I did was sit down, wanting to write about something, and decided to write about my views on gun control. I do understand that people do, for some reason, feel that just because they have a weapon; they should be using it on actual people. I personally think that if people weren't so sadistic in the first place, we wouldn't have these kinds of problems.

[10ebbor10]

1. One of the messages I was trying to convey was that the bad guy would have a gun no matter what. They break the law already, why not break it by owning a weapon illegally?

2. At least if someone in that situation has the capability to end it then and there, that's better than no chance at all.

3. It's not as if everyone that fails the background checks is really a dangerous person in general.

4. May I refer you to Switzerland? "Switzerland trails behind only the U.S, Yemen and Serbia in the number of guns per capita; between 2.3 million and 4.5 million military and private firearms are estimated to be in circulation in a country of only 8 million people. Yet, despite the prevalence of guns, the violent-crime rate is low: government figures show about 0.5 gun homicides per 100,000 inhabitants in 2010."

1. Only if it's premediated. If someone's drunk and a discussion escalates, he doesn't have the time to go to the black market and buy a gun.
2. Point is, that for every live saved by reduced gun control, so many more are taken by an increase in non-premediated gun crimes.
3. A system needs not to be perfect to be superior to the opposition. I mean, which is better. 5 bad guys with guns versus 5 good guys with guns, or 2 bad guys versus 4 good guys.
4. Switzerland has a militia. All conscripted people are legally required to keep a gun in his home. So it's actually an argument in favour of gun control, as the army teaches responsibility, and does background checks.. The idea of gun control is not to avoid gun ownership, but to ensure that they don't fall into the wrong hands.

[bsnott]

The fact remains that even if a man is under any influence, the armed people around him should be able to keep the situation calm.

[Gervassen]

Talk about drunk women. Drunk men, on the other hand, can and do kill people with far less than a gun. In China, crazy massacres happen with knives.

I find the political discussion unpersuasive on both sides, and the short story badly written. Read more good English literature before attempting to create.

[bsnott]

badly written

That's for the constructive criticism there.

[sackhead]

id like to respond to the story with a song
it sums up my views on personal firearms in public nicely to easily used in anger and often more dangerous to the man carrying them then those around him than any "bad guys"

also i didn't like how the story was written it seamed disjointed and didn't flow well. also their wasn't anything to focus on.

[Jafferey]

You can think up whatever imaginary story you want, but it doesn't necessarily have any connection to the way things work in the real world.

I live in Australia. Weapons are illegal, even like certain kinds of knifes, and probably like nun-chucks. I think you can still get guns if you have a good reason, like if you run a shooting range.

I hear about shootings in America. I don't hear about shootings in Australia.

I feel like you really like the idea of having guns, and dislike the idea of not having guns. But you have no actual understanding of things, because you've never seen the difference.

[Gervassen]

That's for the constructive criticism there.

You aren't at the point of needing specific constructive criticism. You're trying to write before you've read extensively. That's my constructive advice. Read more of the good stuff.

Here's one example that really annoyed me, though. "The one that was to break the law in the first place"

"Was to break" starts from a past point and looks forward toward something that is to be done in the past future at some point before the present. Julius Caesar started from nothing, but he was eventually to conquer all of Gaul before he died. Past, looking to a point in the past future. See? You used that wrong, and it hurt my head.

You wanted "had broken" which is sometimes called the pluperfect, the past before the past.

In reality, this single point of grammar really doesn't matter, because you simply haven't read enough to have good templates for expressing yourself. Horse, then cart.