[SUBMITTED 20/5/19] Good Guy with a Gun

[Candlewhisper Archive]

DRAFT THREE: Changes from last iteration underlined.

TITLE:

Good Guy with a Gun


VALIDITY:

Lotsa gun freedoms. Capitalism


DESCRIPTION:

Angry at being newly-unemployed, gunman @@randomname(male)@@ took to the mall and shot dead three people before a nearby coffee shop waitress disabled and captured him with five rounds from her automatic pistol. Unfortunately, as she stood over him gun in hand, a mall security guard thought she was the threat, and took her out with an SMG, and he in turn was shot by a libertarian who thought the state was finally coming to take his gun away. By the time the police arrived (and gunned down fifteen more would-be heroes who they had mistaken for terrorists) the total death toll had reached fifty-seven.

OPTION 1

"Personally, I call that a win," exalts @@CAPITAL@@ Rifle and Revolver Association representative @@randomname@@, firing a round into the air in celebration. "I mean, how many people would the initial gunman have killed if nobody had stopped @@HIM(1)@@? More than fifty-seven that's for sure. More guns equals more safety. Maybe the government ought to recognise that by picking up half the cost of every gun purchased. Oh, and uh... and thoughts and prayers to the families of the deceased and all that, yada yada."

OUTCOME:

financial investors are noting a boom in artillery

OPTION 2

"Hell, yeah!" agrees Sheriff @@randomname@@, spinning and holstering @@HIS@@ sidearm, and accidentally discharging a round into the floorboards. "Though, y'know, maybe more gun discipline would help. People who use guns should be forced to attend training seminars run by responsible and well-paid local sheriffs. That'll help them to learn target discrimination, gun safety and all that. And... uh... yes... what a tragedy... our hearts go out to the bereaved."

OUTCOME:

gun-wielding criminals always wear appropriate eye and ear protection

OPTION 3

"Uh, we could try not letting people have these devices designed to murder and maim," ventures a long-haired liberal hippy, insensitively disrespecting the dead by launching into yet another tirade of typical freedom-hating, commie, anti-gun ranting. It's possible @@HE@@ has more to say on this, but to be honest, no-one's listening, right?

OUTCOME:

it turns out that the government can have your guns by prying them out of your warm living hands

DRAFT TWO:

TITLE:

Good Guy with a Gun


VALIDITY:

Lotsa gun freedoms. Capitalism


DESCRIPTION:

Angry at being newly-unemployed, gunman @@randomname(male)@@ took to the mall and shot dead three people before a nearby coffee shop waitress disabled and captured him with five rounds from her automatic pistol. Unfortunately, as she stood over him gun in hand, a mall security guard thought she was the threat, and took her out with an SMG, and he in turn was shot by a libertarian who thought the state was finally coming to take his gun away. By the time the police arrived (and gunned down fifteen more would-be heroes who they had mistaken for terrorists) the total death toll had reached fifty-seven.

OPTION 1

"Personally, I call that a win," celebrates Sheriff @@randomname@@, spinning and holstering @@HIS@@ sidearm, and accidentally discharging a round into the floorboards. "I mean, how many people would the initial gunman have killed if nobody had stopped @@HIM(1)@@? More than fifty-seven that's for sure. The government should show our gratitude for our guns by subsidising the arms industry. Uh... and thoughts and prayers to the families of the deceased and all that, yada yada."

OUTCOME:

financial investors are noting a boom in artillery

OPTION 2

"Hell, yeah!" agrees @@CAPITAL@@ Rifle and Revolver Association representative @@randomname@@, firing a round into the air in celebration. "Though, y'know, maybe more gun discipline would help. People who use guns should be forced to attend gun club seminars, to learn target discrimination, gun safety, and all that. And... uh... yes... what a tragedy... our hearts go out to the bereaved."

OUTCOME:

gun-wielding criminals always wear appropriate eye and ear protection

OPTION 3

"Uh, we could try not letting people have these devices designed to murder and maim," ventures a long-haired liberal hippy, insensitively disrespecting the dead by launching into yet another tirade of typical freedom-hating, commie, anti-gun ranting. It's possible @@HE@@ has more to say on this, but to be honest, no-one's listening, right?

OUTCOME:

it turns out that the government can have your guns by prying them out of your warm living hands

DRAFT ONE

TITLE:

Good Guy with a Gun


VALIDITY:

Lotsa gun freedoms. Capitalism


DESCRIPTION:

Angry at being newly-unemployed, gunman @@randomname(male)@@ took to the mall and shot dead three people before a nearby coffee shop waitress disabled and captured him with five rounds from her automatic pistol. Unfortunately, as she stood over him gun in hand, a mall security guard thought she was the threat, and took her out with an SMG, and he in turn was shot by a libertarian who thought the state was finally coming to take their guns away. By the time the police arrived (and gunned down fifteen more would-be heroes who they had mistaken for terrorists) the total death toll had reached fifty-seven.

OPTION 1

"Personally, I call that a win," celebrated Sheriff @@randomname@@, spinning and holstering @@HIS@@ sidearm, and accidentally discharging a round into the floorboards. "I mean, how many people would the initial gunman have killed if nobody had stopped @@HIM(1)@@? More than fifty-seven that's for sure. The government should show our gratitude for our guns by subsidising the arms industry. Those guys can always use a little help."

OUTCOME:

financial investors are noting a boom in artillery

OPTION 2

"Hell, yeah!" agrees gun club enthusiast @@randomname@@, firing a round into the air in celebration. "Though, y'know, maybe more gun discipline would help. People who use guns should be forced to attend NRA seminars, to learn target discrimination, gun safety, and all that."

OUTCOME:

gun-wielding criminals always wear appropriate eye and ear protection


OPTION 3

"Look, some of us aren't happy!" interrupts paraplegic twelve-year-old @@randomname@@, who doctors say is lucky to have survived @@HIS@@ recent gunshot wound with @@HIS@@ life. "I mean, if I had a gun too, then I would have been able to shoot the guy who was shooting at me, and I wouldn't be in a wheelchair now. Leaving kids defenceless is morally wrong, @@LEADER@@, we should be allowed guns too!"

OUTCOME:

modified Nerf guns fire live rounds


OPTION 4

"Uh, we could try not letting people having guns," ventures a long-haired liberal hippy, with another round of typical commie anti-gun ranting. It's possible @@HE@@ has more to say on this, but to be honest, no-one is listening.

OUTCOME:

it turns out that the government can have your guns by prying them out of your warm living hands

[Candlewhisper Archive]

Draft 1 is too wordy, I know. Just sticking the story down first, and then seeing what I can trim.

Based on RL incidents, of course, though turned up to 11 for satire.
https://edition.cnn.com/2018/11/15/us/c ... index.html

[Trotterdam]

Angry at being newly-unemployed, gunman @@randomname(male)@@ took to the mall and shot dead three people before a nearby coffee shop waitress disabled and captured him with five rounds from his automatic pistol.

A waitress disabled him with his pistol? Did she somehow wrestle the gun away from him first, or did you mix up your pronouns when you meant to say she had a pistol of her own?

it turns out that the government can have your guns by prying them out of your warm alive hands

I think "living" sounds more natural than "alive" here. I'm not sure why, but even though you can say "the X is alive", "the alive X" feels wrong somehow.

Draft 1 is too wordy, I know. Just sticking the story down first, and then seeing what I can trim.

I don't feel the individual options are too wordy, although I do think that option 3 seems rather tangential to the main issue, so it could stand to be cut (or replaced with another option if anyone has any good ideas).

...That's all I have to say. I quite like the rest of the issue.

[The Sherpa Empire]

Not a fan of mentioning NRA by name, and it needs some polish for grammatical things like Trott pointed out, but should work once it's cleaned up.

[Candlewhisper Archive]

Thanks, Trotterdam, changes made. You're right about option 3, and actually cutting it entirely may address my concerns with option length. I think we've done the whole gun-toting child thing before anyway, or it's one of my other drafts.

Have cut it, cheers for the insight.

Re: NRA, I was sure they were already mentioned by name in another issue, but looking at it, it looks like that reference was fixed in the past. I'll take that out too. I see that there's been a @@CAPITAL@@ Rifle and Revolver Association in the past, so I'll use that.

[Trotterdam]

Thanks, Trotterdam, changes made. You're right about option 3, and actually cutting it entirely may address my concerns with option length. I think we've done the whole gun-toting child thing before anyway, or it's one of my other drafts.

Yeah, that was at my suggestion, actually, though you tweaked it by making it also about sexism.

It was more appropiate there because the children were already part of the narrative.

I can't find it in the accepted issues list, but I hope it makes the cut.

"Hell, yeah!" agrees @@CAPITAL@@ Rifle and Revolver Association representative @@randomname@@, firing a round into the air in celebration. "Though, y'know, maybe more gun discipline would help. People who use guns should be forced to attend gun club seminars, to learn target discrimination, gun safety, and all that."

By the way, I assume the hypocricy here is entirely intentional?

[Candlewhisper Archive]

By the way, I assume the hypocricy here is entirely intentional?

Oh, absolutely. Hypocrisy is a fine tradition for NS option speakers.

[Australian rePublic]

How exactly did mall security make that mistake?

[Stormcalling]

Why would a libertarian observer mistake a mall security guard for a state agent? Should this issue only arise in nations with ubiquitous paramilitarism? If they saw enough to know that the barista wasn't the initial shooter, it would make more sense if it was an act of vengeance against a tyrannical state agent, but that still leaves open the question of why the nation's rent-a-cops look like jackboots.

Police retraining because of the "fifteen more mistakes" seems like it would be appropriate for this mess, but I think that's aptly covered by the implications of selecting option 2.

The celebratory mood of the pro-gun speakers is annoying, given that what I think would happen in the real world would be "hearts, prayers, and police retraining" speeches by conservatives. Still, the celebration represents the scenario as I've heard people express their expectations of it. I think people will recognize this isn't how anyone would really react.

[Candlewhisper Archive]

How exactly did mall security make that mistake?

Easy enough to imagine, I think. Imagine you're a security guard, and you get told there's a shooter on Level 3. You run there, and as you approach you see someone with a gun, standing over someone lying on the floor, pointing a gun at their head. The guy on the floor has a leg wound, and there's blood everywhere.

And as per the link above (and lots of other instances you can google) this isn't an uncommon thing at all. In fact, there was a police chief who commented that the presence of would-be heroes makes his job really hard, as there's no easy way to quickly determine who is trying to make the situation better, and who is making it worse.

[Candlewhisper Archive]

I'm going to add a line about thoughts and prayers, based on that comment I think

"Uh... and thoughts and prayers to the families of the deceased and all that, yada yada."

Added that to the option 1 cop.

Why would a libertarian observer mistake a mall security guard for a state agent? Should this issue only arise in nations with ubiquitous paramilitarism?

Naa, all they saw was a waitress with a gun being gunned down by a man in a uniform. It's all within the realm of satire.

Police retraining because of the "fifteen more mistakes" seems like it would be appropriate for this mess, but I think that's aptly covered by the implications of selecting option 2.

For sure, and I considered an "improve the police" option, as well as a "only let the police have guns".

The celebratory mood of the pro-gun speakers is annoying, given that what I think would happen in the real world would be "hearts, prayers, and police retraining" speeches by conservatives. Still, the celebration represents the scenario as I've heard people express their expectations of it. I think people will recognize this isn't how anyone would really react.

Right, it's satire. Satire with an anti-gun bias, to be fair, but I've tried to balance that a little by making the last speaker someone who isn't even worth listening to. I could go further, for the sake of balance, of course, but trying to be too reasonable is always going to take the bite out of satire.

[Trotterdam]

For sure, and I considered an "improve the police" option, as well as a "only let the police have guns".

Isn't option 3 the "only let the police have guns" one?

I mean, it could be interpreted as banning all guns for everybody including the military, but that's a pretty extreme position that I'm not inclined to assume just from "has more to say on this, but to be honest, no-one is listening" (even if the speaker does support that somewhere in the rant, we're not going to implement the parts we're not listening to, right?).

The celebratory mood of the pro-gun speakers is annoying, given that what I think would happen in the real world would be "hearts, prayers, and police retraining" speeches by conservatives. Still, the celebration represents the scenario as I've heard people express their expectations of it. I think people will recognize this isn't how anyone would really react.

Right, it's satire. Satire with an anti-gun bias, to be fair, but I've tried to balance that a little by making the last speaker someone who isn't even worth listening to. I could go further, for the sake of balance, of course, but trying to be too reasonable is always going to take the bite out of satire.

It might be a factor that currently both of the first two speakers have pretty much the same personality (celebrating through recklessly-unsafe gun usage, then half-heartedly offering condolences as an afterthought), differing only in the exact position they're supporting. I think a more diverse cast would be preferable.

[Logophilia Lyricalia]

Love the description. It occurs to me that the speakers in the first two options should be reversed - i.e. the sheriff is more likely to want some kind of gun safety rules than the arms dealer gun rights activist. That or comprehensive gun laws for "the wrong sort of people" - why, didn't you know that Bigtopian-@@DEMONYMPLURAL@@ are more than twice as likely to be imprisoned for violent crimes as other inhabitants of our fair country???

This is gonna be a good'un.

[Fauxia]

I’m pretty pro-gun and was still laughing my head off, I only hope other pro-gun individuals can as well.

Just a couple of comments:

Not sure people are going to understand what “SMG” means off the bat, even if they get the gist.

I think the description would read better if it was “shot three people dead” instead of the current phrasing of those words.

[Altmer Dominion]

Love the description. It occurs to me that the speakers in the first two options should be reversed - i.e. the sheriff is more likely to want some kind of gun safety rules than the arms dealer gun rights activist.

I see you haven't yet met any of the Sheriffs from Colorado's 2nd Amendment Sanctuary counties.

That said, the line "the government should show our gratitude for our guns by subsiding the arms industry" should probably be attributed to the '@@CAPITAL@@ Rifle and Revolver Association' instead of a Sheriff, if kept in at all. It's almost verbatim a frequent talking point the American Left accuses the National Rifle Association of doing. Essentially, if the line is kept in, that's the only speaker where it really makes sense, considering the wider political context. However, attributing it to an NRA-analogue will make any American reader immediately be able to detect the writer's bias -- they'll know where it's coming from.

Honestly, the line is a bit on the nose anyway. Don't have anything off the top of my head, but it could stand to be subtler without explicitly mentioning the (presumably) affected industry.

[Aclion]

How is option three not the "right" option?

[The Marsupial Illuminati]

How is option three not the "right" option?

Because it is anti-freedom.

[Trotterdam]

That said, the line "the government should show our gratitude for our guns by subsiding the arms industry" should probably be attributed to the '@@CAPITAL@@ Rifle and Revolver Association' instead of a Sheriff, if kept in at all. It's almost verbatim a frequent talking point the American Left accuses the National Rifle Association of doing. Essentially, if the line is kept in, that's the only speaker where it really makes sense, considering the wider political context. However, attributing it to an NRA-analogue will make any American reader immediately be able to detect the writer's bias -- they'll know where it's coming from.

Honestly, the line is a bit on the nose anyway. Don't have anything off the top of my head, but it could stand to be subtler without explicitly mentioning the (presumably) affected industry.

The problem here is that NationStates doesn't like options which do nothing. The first option doesn't really say anything beyond "what just happened is fine, and we don't mind it happening again, so no change is law is necessary" except that it also asks for those subsidies, without which it would be a pseudo-dismiss. (I guess maybe you could add something about implementing a violent version of good samaritan laws, where people are explicitly protected from being prosecuted for killing someone they thought was a menace, even if they later turn out to have been wrong.)

[Aclion]

How is option three not the "right" option?

Because it is anti-freedom.

Suppose the recipient doesn't value gun rights.

[The Marsupial Illuminati]

Because it is anti-freedom.

Suppose the recipient doesn't value gun rights.

This issue will only be assigned to nations that greatly value gun rights.

[Candlewhisper Archive]

Right.

Draft 3 will flip the speaker's around and tighten up the wordings. Good calls, y'all.

[Chan Island]

The celebratory mood of the pro-gun speakers is annoying, given that what I think would happen in the real world would be "hearts, prayers, and police retraining" speeches by conservatives. Still, the celebration represents the scenario as I've heard people express their expectations of it. I think people will recognize this isn't how anyone would really react.

Not always though. There was a lot of celebration after the San Antonio Church Shooting for the guy who stopped the shooter, especially on the sort of NRA TV type places. Not that they were celebrating 26 people tragically killed, but it sometimes was a bit downplayed in order to hammer through a pro-second amendment argument.

Right.

Draft 3 will flip the speaker's around and tighten up the wordings. Good calls, y'all.

It's looking good! Really enjoyed the set-up and am looking forward to this being in the game.

[Candlewhisper Archive]

Draft 3 up. Swapped the speakers, and tweaked their propositions slightly to give more self-interest.

[The Marsupial Illuminati]

You can submit this now.

[Candlewhisper Archive]

Heh, I normally let them sit for at least a month, often two. Six days would be super quick for me. But if you're telling me you want this issue sooner, I can certainly send it in.