Almost humiliated in my writing group

I find the idea of westerns amusing. I watched a documentary about the movie Stagecoach on the Criterion Channel and found it strange that anyone would make a serious movie in that genre.

So, I keep writing western stories in this writing group I'm in. All you do it write "A tale of the Old West" under the title and there's no further need to describe or explain anything---your work is two thirds complete.

The old people sat listening silently as I read about dead bodies, killings, teenagers being shot outside their school, college students murdering each other, blind hatred over a minor religious point. Did they think I was a monster?

That day, one guy had written about a childhood incident, one wrote about planning a party for her 80th birthday, one wrote about how she took up bicycle riding in her 50's and another wrote about her daughter who had become a truck driver working in the U.S. and Europe. Another guy used the word "prostate" when he meant "prostrate".

My story opens with a local Unitarian standing over the bodies of four men he killed. He tells the sheriff that they tried to murder him because of his religious beliefs. The Unitarian had run to get the sheriff but when they returned, the dead men's guns were gone. Someone had picked them up.

In the next scene, some impoverished girls on a failing farm strap on the gunbelts they had taken off the dead bodies.

Another girl pleads with her father for a gun. The mean rich girls at school have all started carrying guns. They had been socially dominant before; now they rule over their classmates with threat of violence. Even the school marm is intimidated. The father finally gives in. He gives her a set of dueling pistols he used in college.

At school, the mean girls laugh at the poor girl's dueling pistols, so she shoots two of them. Out of bullets, she runs for her life as a rich girl shoots at her.

The fathers of the rich girls demand that the sheriff arrest the girl who shot their daughters, but the sheriff doesn't believe that a girl that poorly armed could be the aggressor. He threatens to arrest the wounded rich girls and demands that the rich parents stop giving their children guns. The fathers vow to give their daughters even MORE guns after this.

Well, they listened silently. I read, wondering if I could stop in the middle and apologize. But I read to the bitter end and when I was done, they all seemed amused by it. Thank God for that.

I remember an episode of Bonanza where they have to explain to Mitch Vogel that he couldn't come to school with a couple of six guns strapped to him. There was an episode of Death Valley Days where a school marm takes control of an unruly class by shooting at them.