It was just a prop gun. Someone must have switched it with a real gun .. So you must have put a real gun where the prop gun was supposed to be.

That middle income was the Goldilocks zone, the happy median ha ha, or so the PowerPointers claimed, but we shook our heads knowingly.

...what should I read? Looking for casefics mostly, as viscerally horrifying as possible?

Getting a car tricked out like that will cost you 50 large.