The town of Big Whisky is full of normal people trying to lead quiet lives. Cowboys try to make a living. Sheriff ‘Little Bill’ tries to build a house and keep a heavy-handed order. The town whores just try to get by.Then a couple of cowboys cut up a whore. Unsatisfied with Bill’s justice, the prostitutes put a bounty on the cowboys. The bounty attracts a young gun billing himself as ‘The Schofield Kid’, and aging killer William Munny. Munny reformed for his young wife, and has been raising crops and two children in peace. But his wife is gone. Farm life is hard. And Munny is no good at it. So he calls his old partner Ned, saddles his ornery nag, and rides off to kill one more time, blurring the lines between heroism and villainy, man and myth.

Liberty Wallace, who lives in Los Angeles, isn’t at all uncomfortable about her links to the weapons business. Liberty is a key player for McCloud Industries, one of the largest gun manufacturers in the United States. She’s the Vice President of Marketing, she’s the daughter of the company’s founder, and her husband is the company’s ruthless CEO, America’s premier arms merchant, Victor Wallace. While former war hero Victor is busy trafficking in international armaments, Liberty uses her business breaks to conduct an affair with actor Russell Williams. The balance of their marriage shifts when a sniper named Joe trains his rifle on Liberty as she walks through a busy Los Angeles park on her way to meet with Russell. Joe calls Liberty on her cell phone, and orders Liberty to handcuff herself to a nearby hot dog vendor’s cart — the cuffs are already there. Liberty has no intention of submitting to Joe’s wishes — until Joe begins firing shots. Quickly convinced, Liberty locks herself to the stand, only to learn that it is loaded with enough explosives to take out a city block. If she calls for help, hangs up the phone, mutes the phone, or fails to cooperate, the bomb will go off. Joe has also attached a bomb to Russell, who’s now trapped in his dressing room at a local theater. Liberty realizes she can’t buy her way out of this situation, and she is forced to consider Joe’s demand for an anti-gun forum. The reason why Joe is doing this is because his daughter was fatally shot by a school classmate who used a gun that was manufactured by McCloud Industries. The death of a child can break a parent’s mental balance. Now, Joe is demonstrating to Liberty what it’s like to be on the other end of the weapon, and show Liberty the horrors of what she has had a blind hand in for years. Victor has apparently bartered illegal deals without Liberty’s knowledge, ones that have resulted in easier access to weapons for street dealers — the ones who sold the weapon that killed Joe’s daughter. As a result of his daughter’s death, Joe wants Liberty to use her political connections and this incident to spark a public debate on the Second Amendment. Despite his past as a CIA agent, Joe no longer supports the unequivocal right to bear arms. Joe lets Liberty know that she’s going to die, but that she can die a hero if she exposes the company’s shady business dealings and political connections before she’s killed. As Joe monitors and records her every move, Liberty reveals secrets about her own past, and her business dealings. When Victor, who is also having an affair, finds out that Liberty has been taken hostage, he’s torn between following company protocol — protecting himself and allowing Liberty to be killed — and trying to help her.

Late at night, in an unnamed U.S. city, a solitary man sits at a bus stop. A pregnant woman runs by, pursued by a man with a gun. With reluctance, the man at the bus stop rescues her and assists with the baby’s delivery, while additional pursuers fire at them, including the gang’s particularly nasty leader, an intuitive man named Hertz. Our hero, known only as Smith, determines to save the child and find out why Hertz wants the baby dead. At a local bordello, he tries to employ a lactating hooker to watch the child, but things quickly escalate, and this makeshift family is soon on the run. Heavy metal music calms the baby. Why? A laboratory, a gun factory, and a presidential campaign all figure in Smith’s search for the child’s ultimate safety.

Tobacco industry lobbyist Nick Naylor has a seemingly impossible task: promoting cigarette smoking in a time when the health hazards of the activity have become too plain to ignore. Nick, however, revels in his job, using argument and twisted logic to place, as often as not, his clients in the positions of either altruistic do-gooders or victims. Nick’s son Joey needs to understand and respect his dad’s philosophy, and Nick works hard to respond to that need without compromising his lack of values. When a beautiful news reporter betrays Nick’s sexually-achieved trust, his world seems in danger of collapsing. But there’s always one more coffin nail in Nick’s pack.

Mays Gilliam, a Washington D.C. neighborhood Alderman, is about to be red-lined out of his job. But after the untimely death of the party frontrunner, Gilliam is plucked from obscurity, and thrust into the limelight as his party’s nominee—for President of the United States. The players in Gilliam’s life include: Mitch Gilliam, his unsophisticated older brother who becomes his running mate; Kim, his ex-girlfriend who had once dumped him, but who now has a sudden change of heart as she sees a chance at becoming First Lady; Martin Geller, his campaign manager; Lisa Clark, the woman who truly believes in Gilliam; and Debra Lassiter, the woman who doesn’t have faith in his candidacy, and is serving as his reluctant advisor.