#writing guns

[tlaquetzqui]

This has come up in my writing so I’ll spare you all some looking: the fastest human speed-draw without a custom holster, is 0.27 seconds from seeing a signal to hitting the target. It’s held by Bill Jordan, a border patrolman (and I think Marine vet?) who was involved in the development of several magnum revolver cartridges. You might call him the wheelgun Jeff Cooper.

[write-the-rights-of-writers]

I saw your answer to the gun question but what if they weren't actually shot that badly? Like a small cut.

*sigh* I covered this.

Unless you are shot on a regular basis (which would make you incapable of fighting) you will go into shock. Imagine it like this.

You’re standing on a deserted highway for whatever freakin reason you want. You have earphones in so you can’t hear anything.  You’re strolling on your merry way when you start to hear a very distant beeping. You turn around. An eighteen wheeler is barreling straight toward you. There is no way to escape except your alien friends manage to put up a shield between you and the truck so that you can live.How the hell do you think you’d react? This is the kind of shock we’re talking about. Someone points a gun at you and fires it. It hits you. It it had hit you a foot away from where it did, you’d have died.

You pass out.

The only exception to this kind of shock would be if the person was very, very, very, very, very used to it. That’s why they fire live rounds all around you during basic training. To get you acclimated to these bullets that can potentially kill you being around you.

The thing is, once you are hit, most of that conditioning goes out the window and you pass out.

That is what this shock is referencing.

Now, if it’s very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very shallow, it was not a bullet wound. Take a pencil and put it flat against your skin and push on the tip. What does your skin do? It stretches and twists. Now imagine that pencil as a metal projectile travelling at a thousand feet per second. That’s almost three football fields per second.

If this type of wound wasn’t gory, I’d put pictures up but it is so I won’t but a bullet grazing a piece of steel will carve out a groove.

So there. You go into shock. There is no small cut. The smallest cut I’ve ever seen from a bullet was two inches long and probably half an inch deep.

[neverafuckgiven]

Hey, fic writers. If you're involved in a fandom that's gunheavy (like the Walking Dead, Inception, etc), here's a link for you. A short description (written by the author of the tutorial) is below.

Dream A Little Bigger, Darling - the Inception Fic Writer's Guide to Firearms, Pt 1

This is a very brief, general tutorial written expressly for the purpose of educating fic writers on how to, and how not to write guns, and not meant to be any kind of instruction for any other purposes.