In 1768, west of Philadelphia there was a man named Cornish McManus. He was in a
gunsmith business. He was thirty-five years old and had been an apprentice and
then an assistant to a master gunsmith, his name was John Waynewright. Cornish
was a good artist. While the time working for John Waynewright Cornish never got
to do anything special to the rifles. Later on Cornish opened his own business.
He was doing well. One day a customer came in with his daughter. It was love at
first sight. They eventually got married. She was pregnant with a baby. That
meant he had to work harder to support them. One day Cornish saw this peace of
wood in his pile. As soon as he saw it he thought of making a sweet rifle. A
sweet rifle is a rifle that looks so artistic and shoots so accurate. He spent
months and months on it. He would stay up all night in the candle light just to
do it. That is part of the reasons it took him so long. Finally he was done. He
went outside and shot at a log three times. He went down and checked the log.
There was only one hole in the log. He thought to himself, that is impossible.
He checked it again and there was three bullets in one hole. He was getting low
on money and supplies. So he was forced to sell the rifle. He sold it to a guy
named John Byam. Byam set off into the woods. He met up with British soldiers.
They were just going to hang a man when Byam shot one of the soldiers. When the
horse the man was sitting on heard the shot and ran out from underneath the man.
The man died. The soldiers shot at him. One of them hit his horse. So he grabbed
the sattle and got on his carrying horse. They went about a mile and came to a
ravine. Cornish’s horse made it cause it was so strong. The britishes
horse’s all fell and broke there legs. Cornish met up with these green coated
men. they surrounded him. They were good guys. They were called McNary’s
Rangers. They asked him if he wanted to join them. Byam decided he would join
there group, so he fought for them for a couple of years. In one of the battles
he grew sick, then he eventually died. This women bought the rifle for her two
sons that were in the war. As it turned out, the next thing she heard was that
her sons both died in the war. she put in her attack. About two-hundred years
later a man found it. He worked at a gas station. One day a man pulled up and
saw it. The man ended up a collector of guns. He traded an Elvis picture for the
Rifle. The man put the rifle on his wall. At Christmas time a kid next door was
putting up things on the tree. There was a candle next to the rifle on the wall.
Nobody throught after all those years to checked if the rifle was loaded, it
was. The candle hit the dried up gun powder and made the rifle shoot. It went
through the window of the house and through the window of the house the boy was
in. It went right for his head. It hit him in the head. Before he hit the ground
he was dead. The boy’s mom killed herself because she was so depressed. His
dad through the rifle over a bridge. A guy saw him and snagged it with a fishing
rod. The dad later died in a car accident. Cornish McManus was a artistic
person, who was a gunsmith. He was a very thoughtful person. He gave up his best
creation for his wife and kid. John Waynewright was a average person, who was
making rifles just for the money. He didn’t want to experiment at all. John
Byam was a wonderer, who liked to travel. He was a really good shot. He fought
in the war. I think this story is about how people are all different. It tells a
story of a rifle that went two-hundred years. It is sad at the end. I never
thought that a innocent little boy would die. The story shows how important and
dangerous guns are. The conclusion is that if you have a gun someone or
something is bound to happen one day. It states that guns are dangerous.