Gun

An All Too Common Story

Gun is the story of a parent confronted with gun violence in their own child’s school. It explores issues of our culture, power, notoriety, infamy, and the ramifications of choices.

LOGLINE: After an arrest narrowly stops a heavily-armed school gunman’s rampage, one average, middle-class father speaks out against guns and finds himself at the center of a war.

PILOT SYNOPSIS: It’s a typical rainy Pacific Northwest morning. A disabled car sits on the shoulder of I-5, the driver desperate to get it going again. A state patrol trooper stops to help, the driver flees, and we discover the driver is not only a heavily-armed gunman, but that he is on his way to commit his rampage at a local elementary school.

This news hits hard, especially for one father of a fourth-grader, Thom. This event serves as a breaking point, crosses a line. This average father speaks up, speaks out against guns in our society, soon finding out there’s danger in talking about taking people’s guns away.

Encouraged by people resonating with his message, Thom continues to speak out. From his bubble, things seem so clear. The truth is so self-evident and if we could all just have a grown-up conversation, if we all could just discuss the facts, we would all see how crazy this all is, how change is not only needed, but would be welcome. Thom believes that if the truth could just be spoken clearly and eloquently enough, change would naturally follow. People would stop honoring the opinions of paranoid idiots. Hubris and naiveté, it seems, make the world seem so simple.

Thom’s in for a hard reality check, ramifications abound. His wife isn’t on-board with his activism, especially if it stands to threaten their family’s safety. He has a conservative corporate job to think about, a job that relies on his quiet compliance. He must ask himself, how far will he go? What cost will he pay, both personally and for his family? Is he trying to change the world, or is this about him, about his own needs to be heard?

The pilot ends with Thom realizing he has concentrated an enemy, he has uncorked forces that will fight him. How will he respond? Will he fight back? Will he choose to keep going, or will he choose to go back to how things were? Will he go to war, answering a call to arms, or will will he heed the siren song of the safe beckoning him back. Thom must choose.

Later in the first season, Thom gains a nemesis in the form of a popular local talk-radio host. Throughout the series, Thom must struggle between the tension of truth and power, between fighting corruption and the corrupting power of fame and influence.