6 Stupid Gun Myths Everyone Believes (Thanks to Movies)

Cracked.com ^ | April 16, 2012 | Robert Evans

[Slings and Arrows]

Hollywood wants you dead. We said it. We don't know why. We don't know what they could possibly gain from it, but it's true all the same. Hollywood has been teaching you lessons about guns for decades and decades. Hollywood wants you to build your entire understanding of guns based on the gun tropes they parade in all of their movies. Hollywood wants these gun rules ingrained so deeply in you that you apply these lessons in real life. Even though doing so will kill you.

That's right. All of the lessons Hollywood has taught you about guns are wrong.

Dead wrong.

[Darren McCarty]

So no matter what you do, that double-barreled shotgun is only hitting one dude at a time. Or, like, three bees, maybe.

Double Barreled shotguns are great....for the sporting clay range.

At close range, give me a 12 ga, .00 buck on full choke.

[2nd Bn, 11th Mar]

Here’s another one: being able to hear anything after multiple shots (without ear protection) in a room.

[Pollster1]

"I tried this one time at the range and I can honestly say that I have no idea where the bullet went. It didn't even hit the paper. "

It does look a whole lot more like a gangsta movie move, and that's what counts in a gun fight, isn't it?

[Slings and Arrows]

Me too, but we seem to be in the minority.

[piroque]

you don’t have to drop it, just press the lever on the left side. bang

[Slings and Arrows]

Probably cover those in the sequel.

[TheOldLady]

No, me too. And I loved the clips as well.

[al_c]

6. Bullets knock people down

Not only that, they can knock people back through the air 10-20 ft ... through a window, even. According to Hollywood, anyway.

[GonzoGOP]

-Shooting off a lock on a door (possible, I guess, but probably not as easy as Hollywood makes it look)

That was probably the only "Gun Myth" that the Mythbusters confirmed. One round from a .357 and a deadbolt lock was sufficiently damaged that a kick popped it right out of the door. Shotguns worked even better for door breaching.

Note that it wasn't the lock that gave way, it was the wood where the lock was attached. Hitting the lock with a good sized hammer would probably have a similar effect.

[556x45]

LOL!!! Who in their right mind would believe anything they see in a movie?! Its fiction! In some circles its even considered entertainment. Perhaps this is more a case of gullible movie goers.

[Stat-boy]

Thanks for listing!

Another one: when a handgun is moved or pointed somewhere or at someone, it always makes a “click,” even if it was already loaded; especially if the moment is tense, then the handgun will mysteriously make a very loud click.

[300winmag]

I like how pistols make a cocking sound when pulled from their holsters...

Or the sequence of clicking sounds as every safety is taken off. The situation isn't serious until you hear those sounds.

This replaces the mandatory manual cocking of a double-action revolver from the early days, when only DA revolvers were used. You could have the muzzle stuck in your ear, but only when you saw and heard it being cocked did you have to start worrying.

And nobody replicates the loud, distinctive sound the of "AK clack", the sound of an AK47 safety being deactivated. Assuming the shooter realizes in the first place that an AK47 even has a safety.

[Abathar]

I remember seeing a spoof of the old commercial where they shoot a lock with a high powered rifle and then showed it still staying locked afterword.

The commercial started out the same, guy loading the gun, crosshairs on the lock, but when he fired the lock just disintegrated all over the place. The screen then showed “Sorry boys, this time it was a Weatherby” and the guy was holding a nice Mark V magnum with a smile.

I figured out how they did it, they hung the lock on a steel plate target instead of wood like the original commercial, the bullet splash is what tore the hell out of the lock.

[EveningStar]

ping

[Teacher317]

They missed the easiest one, which is also a part of the Four Rules for Firearm Safety... and the one tiny way that Hollywood has been HELPFUL to Firearm Safety:

"Treat every gun as if it is loaded". According to Hollywood, every gun is always loaded, every gun fires between 23 and 700 bullets before needing to be re-loaded (if it is ever re-loaded at all).

[driftless2]

"Hollywood"

That myth about baddies getting thrown back twenty feet by a bullet might have originated with the Dirty Harry movies. Everyone remembers the final scene where Clint shoots Andy Robinson, and Robinson is knocked back twenty feet into a creek. Also in some John Wayne movies like El Dorado (?) from the sixties, George Plimpton was knocked back twenty feet by a blast from a shotgun. But ff you watch most cop tv shows and movies from before the seventies, most baddies when hit by a bullet simply drop where they are.

[Slings and Arrows]

We few, we happy few, we band of brothers...

[Outlaw Woman]

#1
Guns NEVER RUN OUT OF BULLETS

[Clemenza]

They copied that from the “Amish” in American gangbanger films. Until recently, most Latino thugs knew how to hold their firearms straight.

[CharacterCounts]

Before the seventies they dropped, but the never bled.

Today, they bleed a couple gallons.