To what extent was I breaking the rules by doing the following:

Two Dogs were arguing with an npc about whether she was allowed to commit suicide and whether they would help her, she wanted them to help, they wanted her to forgive herself and allow herself to live. I was the npc. After a fair amount of dice had been burned by both sides she was pretty much spent and had been narrated to a position where she was on her knees, arms round the waste of the female Dog and pleading desperately. She managed to See but was then effectively out of dice, perhaps just with a 1 left or something lame and would have to do something substancial or Give.

Because of where she was described as being, I had her draw the Dog's gun out of its holster and wave it about hysterically, threatening the Dogs and herself, and I took the dice for the Dog's gun for her to Raise with.

With this and the things that happened as a result (like the other Dog deliberately taking a bullet) it was, I think, the most memorable contest of the evening.
But I was and remain unsure whether I was outside the rules in taking dice for someone elses Belonging without their explicit consent.
(I decided to do it anyway because the contest seemed to deserve being pushed further and the players all looked engaged).

Are Belongings sacracanct and available as dice only with the consent of the person whose sheet they are on?

Hm.

All's well that ends well, I say.

Hi King,

I'm not clear why anyone would need any kind of permission to grab for a gun, just because the gun belongs to a PC.  It's not like the pistol is tack-welded to anyone's thigh.  Sounds to me like you escalated the conflict in a rather imaginative and eye-opening way.

Also, you might have had the NPC take away the PC's gun, but you didn't take away the player's ability to escalate with or gain dice from the gun. Just because the NPC grabbed the gun doesn't mean the Dog couldn't have just grabbed it right back and escalated. Or she could have struggled with the NPC for it (think the final fight scene in Equillibrium -- guns getting grabbed, knocked away, and going off inches away from the fighter's faces). At least, that's how I would have seen it if I were the GM or a player.

I'm for it.

-Vincent

Since it went so badly for the Dogs, it sounds like you did the right thing.