Posted on 11/22/2017 5:57:01 AM PST by w1n1
Who doesn’t love a good action movie? From John Woo to the Wachowskis, Hollywood has delivered some of the best gun action the world has ever seen. But gun inaccuracies in movies are actually super common and it drives gun owners crazy. So, what are all the ways movies get guns wrong?
There are numerous problems with gunfights across hundreds of movies, but most of folks don’t really think about them because they don’t know how guns work in real life.
Well, get ready to be educated. Every trope and cliché that action movies use is based on common misunderstandings of gun buzzwords regarding proper gun usage. Let’s explore everything from what a bullet does to you at the point of impact to the proper way to hold a gun. Sit down and get to know just how wrong your favorite movie characters have been treating guns.
Guns Don’t Just Go Off When You Drop Them
Bet you’ve heard this one before: a gun gets deliberately drop and it goes off, taking out a bad guy and giving our hero the distraction to escape.
The thing is, that would never happen, Unless its a Sig P230, oh I forgot they go that fixed. Guns over the past few decades, with the exception of some longer rifles, are built well enough to safety standards that dropping them doesn’t make them go off.
Getting Shot In The Shoulder Isn’t Something You Can Shrug Off
Often in movies, in order to artificially increase the stakes, we’ll see the main character take a bullet. The filmmakers, smart as they are, usually keep it to the shoulder, so the character is injured but still able to function, because its the hero (or heroine).
Well, the problem with that is that getting shot in the shoulder would be completely debilitating.
A Gunshot Cannot Knock You Back
You see this trope in practically every action movie that comes out. There’s a big gunfight, someone gets hit, and they go flying backwards through the air. That, of course, is not true. More than likely most high velocity caliber will pass through you. If its a .45acp from a pistol, it can momentarily give you an shocking impact as the bullet hits you.
Guns Can Run Out Of Ammo
You’ve probably seen this one, most heroes tend to fire guns that never need to be reloaded. (Rambo) It’s gotten to the point where it’s surprising to see a film where the hero runs out of ammo. If they do, it’s usually a plot point.
There are some movies that have put in the intricacy of reloading to good dramatic effect. John Wick, for example, would often showcase some rather stylish reloading mixed in with its hand-to-hand combat. Another good example was the first Jack Reacher film.
You Will Never Dual Wield Pistols
It may be one of the coolest things you can see in a movie: when the hero breaks out double pistols, you know it’s on. The unfortunate truth is that all those awesome scenes you’ve seen in John Woo movies aren’t physically possible for most.
There are a few like Jerry Miculek that have wielded two pistols and can rain serious lead down range with accuracies. But that’s Jerry, most of us Joe average can’t do that. See the rest of this Hollywood gun theatricals thats wrong list here. What other things have you seen thats not our list?
“Getting Shot In The Shoulder Isn’t Something You Can Shrug Off”
That’s the only thing I really do not like about “Beverly Hills Cop”, in which near the end that happens to Axel Foley (at Victor Maitland’s house near the end). In real life, particularly at that close range, the bullet probably would have gone close to or right through the heart (like what happened to Reagan in 1981). And to see Foley casually talking and joking with Rosewood, Taggart, and Bogomil afterwards (when Maitland is shot by both Foley and Bogomil) is ridiculous given the aforementioned.
The thing that always irritates me is that every time an actor picks up a semiautomatic pistol they rack the slide, never considering that they just racked it a few minutes ago and there is already a round in the chamber that they would be ejecting in real life.
I saw an old chinese movie in which the good guy, after firing about 85 rounds from his .45 wheel gun, hold the pistol up close to his face, sights in and shoots a bad guy off his horse at about 300 yards.
“The thing that always irritates me is that every time an actor picks up a semiautomatic pistol they rack the slide, never considering that they just racked it a few minutes ago and there is already a round in the chamber that they would be ejecting in real life.”
That is the pump shotgun effect. The sound means you mean business. Plus, it looks so cool!
Actually, I tend to check the chamber every time I pick one up, even if I put it down minutes before. It is usually just a peek and not a full rack.
Watched Magnum Force last night. I had forgotten about the scene with the bad guy firing a Colt Python with silencer (whisper quiet shots LOL).
“I saw an old chinese movie in which the good guy, after firing about 85 rounds from his .45 wheel gun, hold the pistol up close to his face, sights in and shoots a bad guy off his horse at about 300 yards.”
Gun Fu
Hollywood needs sound effects, so TV cops wait until the last, most dramatic minute before kicking in a door, to loudly click off a safety or decocker when that would have been done during the drawstroke.
If a pistol is already needed, then it needs to be ready to use. Ditto with racking a shotgun for effect.
Always accompanied by the phrase "Let's roll!"
Beverly Hills Cop taught me that all you gotta do to hide cocaine from drug sniffing dogs is to pack it in coffee beans.
Oh, and the banana in the muffler thing...
It was the funniest thing when my 15 year old nephew came to visit us on the farm last spring, from California.
We were discussing the things we had to do during the time he had with us including, of course , some shooting.
He said he wanted to try "Dual Wielding" which is a term I had not heard of and when he explained I just laughed.
So the day came on the range and he still wanted to try it.
I loaded up two 5" .45 1911s and put him on the line at 25 feet from a set of falling plates and said, "Have at it".
The results were so spectacularly funny I could barely contain myself, standing directly behind in a safety position. He couldn't hit a damn thing firing those pistols at the same time!
He finally figured out his brain could not process a different sight picture in both eyes at the same time, and he started to aim and fire each hand individually and then started getting hits (but not with his left hand).
His recoil management (or lack thereof) of two .45s going off one-handed was a sight to behold. THIS IS NOT A MOVIE OR A COMPUTER GAME THIS IS THE REAL THING!
I am not as sure about the single shot kill.
In Iraq and in Afghanistan, there were lots of single shot kills.
Although the author might be talking about pistols, because somebody gets hit with the M-4 or other rifles in battle, they go down. I have not seen too many, if any, get back up and start firing. They may not be dead, but they are not fighting anymore.
Only Americans seems to want to keep fighting after being shot. Just read all of the Medal of Honor citations.
How about all those hi-cap revolvers from the movies?
Only Americans seems to want to keep fighting after being shot. Just read all of the Medal of Honor citations.
Still remember the video of the guy firing his rifle from his litter around Baghdad, I think.
***Guns Don’t Just Go Off When You Drop Them***
As in YOU ONLY LIVE TWICE when a revolver is fired, then is dropped and fires again.
Then there is the revolver that won’t fire because the shooter forgot to “take the safety off”.
A Gunshot Cannot Knock You Back.
Say what you will but the scene in SHANE shocked theater goers, when Jack Wilson shot the farmer.
Scene that still irritates me the most is when Two people draw their pistols on each other, then stop as if saying...”My trigger finger can beat your trigger finger!”
Someone pulls a gun on you it means he is going to kill you!
I would extend this to Hollywood's depiction of suppressors in general. In the movies a suppressed firearm just makes this quiet Pfhtttt sound. In reality it's still louder than a firecracker.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.