1. Steve Taylor says:

    The gun is an equalizer. If two big angry men come in my home when I’m not there then my wife can send them off to judgment. Without a firearm she’s a victim. In novels when the victim is armed there is hope but when unarmed we fear they will not survive. The weapon is probably the most important prop in fiction next to the modern day cell phone.

  2. Autumn Grayson says:

    An interesting thing my parents have pointed out is that famous actors who oppose guns still play in violent movies involving guns.  It’s a good point, but at the same time most people will watch or act in movies that have content they disagree with.  My parents will watch movies with some violence, and they believe strongly in gun rights, but they are more likely to think that very violent movies encourage violent behavior.  To some extent that may be true.  I think it’s interesting to look at other aspects of the issue, though.  Guns aren’t legal for most Japanese people to have, yet they are depicted often in anime, sometimes in an unrealistically violent manner.  As far as I know, they have very  little problem enforcing gun control and have less crime in general than many areas.

    I believe that gun rights are important, particularly in America, but I don’t think taking away or granting gun rights to people would have the same impact in all areas of the world.  People forget that individual beliefs, personalities, and culture a person grew up in greatly influences their actions.  Japan seems to have low crime more because of their culture, rather than a lack of guns, for instance.

    It’s somewhat the same thing with how media influences people.  Seeing a lot of violent murders on tv might make many people slightly more willing to use a gun, but most people will not except in self defense.  Or at least if they are taught to be responsible with weapons and are taught the value of human life.  I would rather teach people those things than simply take guns away from people or demonize guns in the media.  Otherwise, we will slowly devolve into a society of people that can’t even be trusted with blunted kindergartener’s scissors.  As it is, guns have already been demonized in the media enough that people get hysterical when they hear many people in the US don’t want to ban guns.  As if the very presence of guns in the world is a curse that causes genocide.

    • Mark Carver says:

      It is crazy to see how positively guns and other weapons are portrayed in entertainment and how negatively they are portrayed in the news media. I am a gun owner but it was only after I started shooting did I realize how inaccuracte movie and TV depicts of guns are (see my Walking Dead comment). I remember one movie where a guy uses a revolver to shoot a man on his knees in the head. The scene cuts to black and we hear the sound of the spent shell casing clink on the ground, but revolvers don’t eject the cartridges like a semi-auto gun does 🙂

  3. If you want a story involving superpowers and guns, try Steelheart. It’s a pretty huge inversion of normal stories since the people with superpowers are all villains, and the good guys with guns are normal people. I really appreciated how Brandon Sanderson included guns in the story since it changed things up when the story’s about good guys with guns going against bad guys with superpowers.
    Sanderson’s fourth Mistborn book also has revolvers in it.

What do you think?