POLL: What’s your “favorite” book and movie firearms goof?

While back I was reading a crime novel. Lots of guns in it. But it began to itch at the back of my brain that every, single gun mentioned was a revolver. Cops had revolvers. Crooks had revolvers. Private eyes had revolvers. Little old ladies had revolvers. No calibers or makers or models mentioned. Just generic revolvers.

Very unusual in this day and age, thought I. I quickly began to wonder how much this author knew about firearms — and therefore about anything else he was writing about.

Finally, a character wandered into the story with a Glock. Yes, a Glock. A non-revolver. Whoopee.

The character prepared for action. He drew his Glock. He “flipped the safety lever.”

I closed the book.

Alas, we all know that gun goofs are all too common in both books and movies. Sometimes it’s just a small, forgivable goof. (I’ve written books myself, and if readers held every goof I ever made against me, I’d be a total disgrace.) Too often, unfortunately, goofs about guns result from a complete lack of research or caring by the creators of the works.

Sometimes we just wince and go on. Sometimes the dumbness is so dumb it ruins the whole work for us.

Which takes us to this week’s poll: What’s your “favorite” firearms goof from novels or movies?

And … if you care to elaborate, leave a comment telling about novels or movies with particularly awful gun handling or gun “facts.” Tell us which were the worst — and maybe even which were the best — when it came to guns.

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22 thoughts on “POLL: What’s your “favorite” book and movie firearms goof?”

  1. Any movie in which somebody levels a semiauto pistol at the hero’s head and presses the trigger…

    *CLICK*

    …on a gun you know locks open on an empty magazine.

    Except “The Abyss”, where the medic set that up on purpose.

  2. I voted for “never runs out of ammo”.
    It some of the eighties movies and shows, especially Van Damme and the A Team, bullets seem to explode or cause things to blow up on impact a lot. It’s like a shootout with fireworks, funny.

    (Yes, I have repented from watching that stuff and don’t even have a TV now.)

  3. There’s another thing that bugs me, but not the firearms themselves.

    Comments about so-and-so’s gun being registered or not registered, instates that don’t freaking HAVE regis-damned-stration. If I recall correctly, only DC and 11 states have registration in any form, and at least two of those are actually purchase databases which wouldn’t include lawfully owned firearms when the person moved in.

    I’ve seen that in movies, allegedly factual TV, fiction TV, and so-called “news” reports.

    Then the omnipresent “TEC-9 submachineguns,” autoloading “service revolvers,” semi-auto assault rifles… It’s like the CPGV/Brady/LCGV are writing the scripts.

    1. +1 on the “registered” guns. That’s a good one. And “we ran a check on the firearm, it’s illegal.” What does that even mean?

      1. It means lazy scriptwriter. It’s like the safety on a revolver. Unless you’re guy is using a Webley-Fosbery, and I think that list is limited to Sean Connery in “Zardoz” and Brigid O’Shaughnessy in “The Maltese Falcon”.

  4. Running a reverse “name” search thru the ATF to see if a certain person has a gun “registered” to his name–without even having a particular gun and s/n to start the search with:
    “ATF reports back that subject owns a Beretta .380 s/n #12345”. AFAIK ATF cannot run such a reverse search on a supplied name! DMD

  5. Recent Schwarzenneger movie (I don’t remember the title, but he played a sheriff in Arizona) where he demanded to see a permit for a monster revolver (in Arizona?) and Glocks went click click click when empty. (Even if the slide had failed to lock back for some reason…Glocks are what I call three-halves-action where the trigger cocks the gun (like in a double action) but they need a leeeeetle bit of help with a manual half cock by racking the slide partially. I include this note on the off chance someone reading this, say either a hoplophobe, or an historian in the year 2116, never dealt with a Glock.)

  6. I don’t watch TV or movies, but have been reading mystery stories the last year or so. The ignorance they display about guns is breathtaking, and the anti-gun crap from the characters, even the cops, is disgusting most of the time. Even when the lead character is some gutsy lady cop or PI, ready to shoot when necessary, the party line for “registration” and “licenses,” etc. is usually heavy. And somehow, they so often don’t even have their gun on their body when they actually need it… so the hero (usually male) has to ride to the rescue. Such nonsense.

    The gun “goofs” are truly annoying, but not actually the worst of it. The prevailing attitude of the characters in so much fiction reflects the irrational fears and misinformation of the Bloomberg and Demanding Mommies, etc.

    There is little or no evidence that these writers make any effort at all to research the subject or learn how guns work and are used properly, even when there is no overt gun grabber rhetoric. And just forget about mysteries set in the UK or most other parts of Europe. Those stories are freaking fairy tales, seriously.

    Interestingly enough, a lot of this nonsense is evident in fairly old fiction, even a lot of “westerns.” I used to think this anti-gun stuff was more recent, but even old favorites like Zane Gray are filled with subtle hints of it. Historical fiction is too, much of it very subtle, and quite believable unless you really think about it.

    Have to read something different. So much otherwise entertaining literature has been pretty well ruined for me now. Well, except the ones I’m writing. 🙂

    Maybe more of us need to write fiction!!!

  7. In The Executioner novels from way back, Mack Bolan chose a Marlin lever action in 444 Marlin for long-range use. I quit reading those books over 40 years ago after reading several. Now I find that there are new ones being published and there are around 600 (the original author sold the rights).

    How about silencers on revolvers?

    Dirty Harry chose a 458 Winchester magnum rifle for a stakeout.

  8. On an episode of Firefly where the crew goes into battle to recover the kidnapped and tortured captain Mal, Jayne carries Vera into action. But since Vera’s a (ridiculously pimped-out) prop rifle that can’t actually do anything, he fights the whole battle with the rifle slung, shooting a pistol (that never runs out of ammo) left-handed.

    Also, every gun that ever appears in any Stephen King novel. He’s so aggressively wrong about every gun that appears in any of his stories, I long since decided he was doing it deliberately to bug me.

    1. Vera’s only there for when he REALLY needs her. After all, Vera would kill the entire ‘verse with one burst. (Wow that almost rhymes.)

    2. Mal’s gun makes an electronic warming up sound (sometimes) before he shoots.

      Mal to the brothel owner; “Lady, you’re my kinda stupid”.

  9. Disappearing bullets: Gunman shoots someone sitting beside him in a car, in the head. The window behind the dead guy is splattered with blood, but the bullet doesn’t hit it. And the shooter isn’t deaf.
    Shell game: Gun-savvy hero has just exchanged shots in total darkness. He takes the time to pick up an empty shell casing, but isn’t sure whether it’s a 9mm or .38 SPL.
    Backblast: Firing a LAW (Light Antitank Weapon) or RPG from a small room, or even from inside the cabin of a Huey helicopter without getting concussed.

    Conclusion: Somewhere in Hollywood there has to be a School of Bad Gunhandling.

    1. RE: Backblast: I actually appreciated The Walking Dead for this one. In an early episode Rick takes cover from the zombies in an abandoned tank, and one of the “dead” soldiers attacks him. Rick shoots him with his Colt Python … and spends a while getting his bearings and clearing the ringing in his ears after having fired a magnum round in close, closed quarters.

      I believe if anyone really tried this, they’d blast out their eardrums and have a full-on concussion, but at least the producers acknowledged that the blast and report themselves are nothing to be trifled with.

  10. Episode of CSI. The tech comes to the conclusion that a barrel on a Glock does not belong be cause a scratch on the slide stops at the chamber. Simply checking the serial number on the frame, slide and barrel would have proved this.

  11. Two recent things I have seen: a WW2 movie shows the soldiers firing their M1s until the en bloc “pings”, THEN charge the enemy…. err, without reloading…
    AND, seems like EVERY time someone unholsters their semi-auto pistol, they rack the slide! Let me add a related “oops”…. in some show I recently saw, racking the slide of a pistol was overdubbed with the sound of something like a Remington 870 being racked… How do I get my Walther PPK to sound like a Rem870?????

    1. You could exchange some of the parts for Rem870 parts.

      Actually, you’ll probably need to exchange ALL of the parts for Rem870 parts.

    2. The “dramatic (gratuitous) gun cock” is actually a trope, because it happens so often, and so often with striker-fired guns (like Glocks) that CANNOT be manually cocked without racking the slide.

  12. “Teflon-coated” armor-piercing bullets, a.k.a. “cop-killer” bullets. Featured in Lethal Weapon 3.

    Runner-up, from LW1: the “hollow-point” bullet Riggs keeps in his pocket to commit suicide with, when shown to the camera, is a standard FMJ round (I even caught that one as a kid, before I knew anything about guns).

    Or LW4, when Jet Li disassembles Riggs’ pistol (pulls the slide and barrel off) with a fancy grab. Riggs’ pistol would require a trigger-pull to disassemble, which if loaded would fire a round, and Jet Li was directly in front of the muzzle.

    Come to think of it, the whole LW series is chock full of gun gaffes.

    1. Runner-up, from LW1: the “hollow-point” bullet Riggs keeps in his pocket to commit suicide with, when shown to the camera, is a standard FMJ round (I even caught that one as a kid, before I knew anything about guns).

      Oddly enough, I found that one understandable. “Hollowpoint” to me suggested (before I learned better) that the bullet was hollow (i.e., there was an empty place inside the bullet), not that it had an open cavity at its nose. Were I making up the terminology it’d be an “open point” bullet.

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