Grrl Power: “That’s why we carry guns.”
There is a Golden Age SF short story on this topic, actually. A guy lands on a uninhabited planet to test out a fancy new death ray pistol. Said pistol was supposed to be the ultimate weapon: no light, no sound, nothing could protect against it. You just pointed it at something, and it made a hole. Well… it turned out that you can’t scare off a wolf-analogue pack with something that just kills them; and in the process of flailing about trying to kill off all the wolf-analogues our hero manages to slice up his entire ship, too. When a rescue team finally arrives, they find the guy in the middle of a wooden palisade, armed with a bow. Wolf-analogues worked out what the heck an arrow in the rump meant pretty darn fast.
And the death ray pistol? Dude was using it as a hammer.
Moe Lane
PS: Note that the trigger finger was carefully drawn to be fully extended outside of the trigger. Refreshing.
I’ve heard similar problems of coal-powered* automobiles in traffic: no one can hear them coming so folks step into the road and go splat. They’re working how to make these things more noisy now.
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*Electric=Coal. Same difference.
“The Gun Without a Bang” by Robert Sheckley. Circa 1958
THAT was the name of it! Thank you. 🙂
That link should carry a TvTropes type warning. “Warning! Clicking on this link can lead to several hours vanishing from your day!”