TOC and Foreword

Table of Contents

Chapter 01
Is It Worth It
Road Accident Analysis Unit
In the Hospital
Coroner’s Court
Legal Affairs
Funeral
Interlude
In Transit

Chapter 02
A Different Life
Mobility
Interlude

Chapter 03
Attackers
Second Attack
The Next Week
Starting School

Chapter 04
Second Gang Attack
Interlude
River Crossers

Chapter 05
Senior High School
Baseball
Employment Discussion
Alone Again, Almost

The titles in use are a Chapter, a Sub-chapter, and a section.

Foreword

In the early stages of writing this story I sought legal advice on the relevant laws of Texas about a minor having a handgun on a remote ranch in Texas. I asked the Texas Department of Public Safety who then told me to ask my local lawyer since they deal with the administrative matters on gun licenses and not law interpretation. So I made a similar request to the Sheriff of Maverick County, Texas, because that’s the area I’m basing the story in. However, I received no reply to my email.

When I made a public request for information on a forum a lot of private individuals from Texas provided information to show it’s either legal or accepted by the community. The federal and state laws are mixed because they give minimum age limits then they go into a lot of detail about precautions on using or carrying a firearm in public places as well as listing a lot of exempted uses for those under the stated age limit. Further mixing up the issue are the various city and county laws on the subject of gun laws. After several months I gave up on finding out the exact laws covering the situation.

The handgun I’ve selected for the character to use is a Bond Arms Snake Slayer IV with a four and a quarter inch long rifled barrel in .45 calibre which allows for the use of .410 shotgun shells. The National Firearms Act regarding short barrel shotguns isn’t relevant to the Bond Arms Snake Slayer when loaded with a .410 shotgun shell because it’s a gun with a rifled barrel which isn’t modified from the way it’s made by the manufacturer. The use of a different load is irrelevant to that law.

To enable me to include a more involved section of Pat’s time in school I emailed the school administrators of the schools involved, and when I had no response after several weeks I decided to minimise the school involvement sections, thus I kept them as generic as possible. I also removed any direct naming of the schools involved, despite it being so easy for people to work out which ones they are. This was done to stop any legal concerns which might arise if I named them.

The story starts in Australia then it moves to the USA.

Chapter 1 »