Lance wasn’t raised on plasma and energy guns. He knows full well metal jacket bullets and their according guns are mostly illegal aside from some farmers who have licenses, but he also knows their fun. He shoots his dads old rifle at an old tree in their back yard for a few years, along with a slingshot and some bolts and rocks he found. It’s when he turns ten his dad gets him his own one, rare as it is he got it free due his reputation as a good and fair buck hunter. He uses it for a few years, then a pistol his older sister stole from a cop one drunk night after she slept with his daughter and found it in a safe full of vintage stuff. Apparently even drunk she has a need to get gifts for her siblings. When he first uses a .50 Cal he genuinely thinks he’s felt what it’s like to be in love for the first time and that just makes it all the more disappointing when he uses it’s energy gun equivalent and it’s just feels… subpar. It’s powerful sure, but it doesn’t send a shock through his body and make his hair stand up all over his body. It does the job though, cleaner too. When he gets too marks with his aiming he can’t be too mad. When he’s thirteen he starts to build them, both types. The more legal type he does in a cadet program and the less legal ones he does with an old timer veteran who teaches him the ins and outs. He loves both, but something about smelting down a bullet, measuring the power perfectly, sliding it into a magazine… it’s so much better than a battery. It’s no surprise to Hunk when he finds Lance setting up a mini workshop next to his larger scale one. He knows his friend likes to make his own guns every now and again, even if his Bayard is most likely going to be superior. He’s a little confused when Lance brings in a crate with hazard signs all over it and starts to smelt down old mettle into thin mini cups. He’s not sure how he feels about it when he realises his friend is making a pump action shotgun and magnum revolver, but when he’s finished and he just dumps it to the side, Hunk relaxes. He’s not going to use it, just make it because. He himself had done that plenty of times, so nothing to worry about. It’s months later when their attacked and Lance, most likely sleeping in, isn’t brought in with them. Never, not in all the years they’ve been fighting, have they seen someone’s head be blown off by a single bullet. They all, including the Galra surrounding them, look down at the blood splattered floor and see the grey casing of a bullet. Then a bother shot flies, and another and then one hits Shiro’s restraints right off. They quickly realise its Lance’s work, but how is he shooting? Their Bayards were confiscated. When they meet up with Lance he’s in his normal outfit with a large gun hung over his shoulder and a pistol strapped to his thigh. He’s looking prouder, lighter and damn well gleeful as he approaches them. Before they can ask how he has such dangerous and quiet frankly illegal weapons, Lance is grinning at them and speaking, “Try doing that with a quiznacking plasma!”
