FR Gun Club: Stupid Gun Mistakes EVERY Writer Makes

web page ^ | Chuck Dixon

[Petruchio]

I made a partial list below (I'm sure Duane Thomas can add to it) of dumb things I see in novels and comics and movies in the area of firearms. A few of these (for dramatic license) I make myself. But they're still dumb.

THE SILENCED REVOLVER If you're dumb enough to put a silencer on a revolver then you'll discover that all the noise you hoped to suppress will escape from around the cylinder. See, an automatic is a sealed system allowing gas to vent only from the end of the barrel. So all your sound is coming from the barrel as well. A revolver is not sealed. There's a gap twixt the cylinder and the barrel where they meet. This gap allows the cylinder to turn. It also allows gas and noise to escape.

THE "EMPTY" AUTOMATIC We've all seen the scene where on adversary has the drop on another at the end of a gunfight. One guy holds out an automatic to the other guy's head, says a take away line ("This is where the rubber meets the road, scumbag.) and then…click. The gun's empty! Well, when an automatic has fired its last cartridge the slide atop the action locks back. They would both know the gun was empty. At the same time the firing mechanism locks back as well so no "click". If you need to have a scene like this make sure your character's armed with a revolver.

THE SUPER ACCURATE SNIPER SCOPE This one's common. I do it myself but only because most audiences don't understand how bullets track. It's the scene where we're looking through the sniper's scope and the crosshairs land on the intended quarry square on his or her head. There it is the president, the Queen mum, the guy who made it off of Survivor island and the posts are placed right on their kissers. This might work if the sniper was standing thirty yards away. But the problem is that bullets don't fire in a flat, straight line. The longer a bullet is in flight the slower it begins to travel and the more it loses altitude. This is called "the drop". A sniper must take into account the drop, the temperature, barometric pressure and wind direction and velocity when lining up a money shot. So, over a long distance you want to have your crosshairs above the target. If all is right under God's heavens then the bullet will then "drop" where you want it. I cover this one by having my shooters mention this aspect of long range sniping. And never aim for the head. You want a "center shot" or chest shot.

"THE CORDITE THICK AS FOG." Man, did I feel dumb about five years ago when Larry Hama went on a rant about this common gaffe. Everyone at one time or another mentions the "cordite stink" of gunsmoke in their stories. But it turns out that cordite was a chemical ingredient in gunpowder for only a very short time in the late 19th Century. So, unless you're writing about Highlanders fighting their way down the Khyber this one is a major boo-boo. I don't know who immortalized this error. Probaly a yellow journalist back then. It entered the lexicon of cliches next to "grieving loved ones" and "armed conflict" that are in every reporters bag o' cliches. I cringe now when I see even writers I admire refer to cordite.

KER-CHAK! We've all seen this one. The good or bad guy had been holding a shotgun on his opposite number for a while and, just for dramatic emphasis, racks back the pump to chamber a shell. Loud Ker-Chak! Then a take-away line. "Be sure to say 'hi' to your mama when you get to Hell!" This is very cool and dramatic and I do love that sound effect. But what this actually means is that the character has been threatening everyone with a gun that has no chambered round. If he pulled the trigger nothing would happen.

SHOOTING SIDEWAYS Your gangstas just have to be different. So they aim their handguns sideways and hunch over and kind of glare along their arm in lieu of actually aiming. In fact, when they do this their eyes aren't even looking at the site but at their victim. Intimidating your intended victims is all well and good. But it comes to naught if, when you finally start busting caps, you miss the other guy by six city blocks. There's a reason we hold guns vertically. It's a more natural pose considering that the barrel of a gun is going to leap up and back when each round goes off. It's a lot easier to lower that site back to it's original position than it is to go searching for them over a 180 degree radius. Ever see Davey Crockett hold his flintlock sideways? This way is just plain dumb.

THE STARSKY AND HUTCH WALL SLIDE This one's common. The cops are in a bunch with handguns held in both hands, barrels pointed skyward and arms tight to their chests as they sideways-slide along a wall down a hallway toward the lair of some badguys. The problem with this is, that when the shooting starts, plater walls do not a bunker make. Also, in a real life gunbattle, bullets bounce, tumble and tend to track along flat surfaces like walls and floors. In real life, cops blast off a few shots and hunt for substantial cover. From this cover they shout out dire threats of retribution until the bad guys give up, run away or are determined to have died in the first hail of gunfire. If you read enough police reports about firefights those hoods pumped to the double and triple digits with lead begin to make sense. The only way to even the odds in a gunfight is to take the other guy down in a hurry in the first few seconds of the fight.

"LOOKS LIKE A NINE OR A THIRTY EIGHT" The detective shows up at the homicide scene. Takes one glance at the bulletholes in the victim and pronounces the exact caliber of the murder weapon. Maybe, I say maybe, if the victim was a piece of plywood you could do this. But a bullethole in a person quickly fills with fluid and the area around it swells. All of this masks the true size of the bullethole. Even if you were good enough to tell the diameter of the various calibers of bullets at a glance (which would be difficult if you were looking at their exact diameters drawn on a piece of paper.) that talent would be useless on a fresh corpse.

[WOBBLY BOB]

or that you don’t need to aim a shotgun .

[agere_contra]

Only high-DEX policemen with the Ambidextrous feat should dual-wield.

[Ramius]

Anyone who has ever fired a gun knows that without adequate hearing protection, your ears will suffer severe damage, temporarily or even permanently. [...]

LOL... you've nailed one of my favorites. Especially if you've ever fired a gun *indoors* in a small space or worse yet-- in a car. It is insanely loud. Without hearing protection the only thing anybody is going to be saying is "What??"

"WHAT??"

[WaterBoard]

There are silenced revolvers like the Russian Nagant. The author of this piece doesn’t know firearms history very well or is ignorant of how the mechanism of how certain revolvers work.

Silenced 7.62 mm Nagant Revolver
http://guns.connect.fi/gow/nagant.html

Silenced Nagant Video:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vvF4yurWSc0

[thefactor]

if you're in a gunfight, chances are you under duress and your adrenaline is thru the roof. so aiming is much different than it is at the range.

so you want to aim for the largest part of your foe in order to maximize your chances of hitting him. that means center mass. heads are small.

[Tijeras_Slim]

or worse yet-- in a car

I always think "righttttt..." when in the Movie "Heat", DeNiro is blazing away through the windshield with that AR. I made the mistake of shooting a rat in a galvinzed trash can with a .22 short, my ears rang for a day or two.

[Ramius]

or that you don’t need to aim a shotgun .

That's another good one. Many movies wildly overestimate the spread of shot, especially at close range. They show somebody getting hit across the room only 8 feet away and the shot peppering their entire torso. Not quite.

At hallway sorts of distances even with a riot-length barrel the shot will barely even have a chance to leave the wadding and will pretty much make one big hole.

[thefactor]

i HATE when cops, criminals, soldiers, whatever in a movie/show will rack the slide just before the gun battle. so you're telling me there has been no round in the chamber the entire time?!

that and the sounds the guns make simply when someone picks one up or points it. if you're gun makes a sound when you do that, it's broken and you're screwed.

[ClearCase_guy]

1) The most cliche’d firearm abuse in movies and tv — the 20-shot revolver - which has morphed into the 200-shot UZI...

There's a hilarious clip on Youtube which spoofs this. Chuck Connors of "The Rifleman" TV show walks down the center of town with his modified Winchester 1892 model rifle and begins firing. The creator of the clip has then spliced in virtually every shooting that ever occurred on the show. We hear the rifle fire maybe 105 times, each "bang" accompanied by a film clip of some evil-doer hitting the dirt. After killing 105 people with 105 very rapid shots, we cut back to Chuck Connors, who calmly takes some bullets from his shirt pocket, glowers at the camera, and starts to reload.

[CodeToad]

“KER-CHAK!”

This one is my favorite. I’ve seen 1911s with the hammer down and the bad guy quaking in his boots with the gun to his head. lol.

[Hazwaste]

I recall a Russian revolver for which a suppressor might actually work. The cylinder eased forward and created a seal before the hammer fell.

Yep, the Nagant revolver. You can still find them on line, and purchase them out of state using a C&R FFL if you don't want to pay the transfer fee.

[Ransomed]

That’s a good one. If you ever check out “Lost”, anytime anyone makes the slightest movement with a gun there is a dull metallic clicking sorta like the sound of a transformer changing shape.

How about a 100 pound chick blasting away with a shotgun or big pistol without the slightest attempt at portraying recoil.

Freegards

[Uri’el-2012]

Wonder if it will work on a Mateba?

LOL

[smokingfrog]

My pet peeve - when some “good guy” armed only with a revolver or pistol is fighting off a group of “bad guys” armed with automatic rifles. He manages to kill one or more of them but never bothers to pick up the dead guys rifle to even-up the odds. I've seen this on ‘24’ and in ‘Lethal Weapon.‘

[chaosagent]

There are silenced revolvers like the Russian Nagant. The author of this piece doesn’t know firearms history very well or is ignorant of how the mechanism of how certain revolvers work.
__________________________________________________________

I think the author is talking about a typical movie with some goomba in NJ or a brother in the ‘hood’ dropping a cap on some drug dealer in the Bronx, not a calvary charge during the Boer War.

[BlueDragon]

As an alternative to expensive MilDot scopes;

Burris Ballistic Plex

I kinda' like this version. It's cheaper, and has good overall clarity. The only feature I don't care for is that the entire reticule end of the scope turns, when adjusting magnification (on the variable power models). This results in interfering with my love affair with Butler Creek flip-ups. ALL my other scoped rifles have them.

On-line ballistic calculator software (as pictured) is pretty handy, too, though not limited to applying solely to Burris scopes, of course.

If one knows the muzzle velocity , the bullet weight and the ballistic coefficient of said projectile, then there are a few "calculators" available which can be made to apply to just about any set-up.

[HuntsvilleTxVeteran]

http://www.horstheld.com/0-132271.htm

From my favorite handgun porn site.
A 20 shot revolver.

Lefaucheux revolver, serial # 132271, 20-shot in one cylinder in two rows, caliber 7mm pin-fire, 4¾” double barrel inscribed with

August Francotte à Liège

who finished the revolver in his famous factory, right blue, the hammer polished, crisp checkered grips, lanyard ring. Mandatory ELG proof stamp. A high quality specimen and as 20-shooter quite rare. Fine condition. $6,000.

[smokingfrog]

Mel Gibson has no problem with that.

[ought-six]

“if you’re in a gunfight, chances are you under duress and your adrenaline is thru the roof. so aiming is much different than it is at the range. So you want to aim for the largest part of your foe in order to maximize your chances of hitting him. that means center mass. heads are small.”

Exactly.

[Petruchio]

I am getting a kick out of reading the comments. Keep ‘em coming!

I had stumbled across the web page and it did nail some of the stupid things Hollywierd does.