The Hollywood Gun
When you start learning more about a subject you start asking better questions… and asking better questions tends to “ruin” things… Today we woke up feeling like the Mythbusters and all set to ruin the “Hollywood Gun”!
The Hollywood Gun makes bad guys bad and good guys badder. It makes you invincible, undetectable, and, if you’re the hero, you’ll “make the shot” every time!
The reality is anything but. Here are our favourite Hollywood Gun myths.
Silencers make guns perfectly quiet
Silencers (which are prohibited in Canada) seem to make the gun almost completely silent in many films. John Wick and James Bond both have numerous scenes like this.
In reality, the sound would be more like a thump or a loud clap of about 120-130 decibels. Their main use being protecting your ears from hearing damage, not to make a gun undetectable. Moreover, when the parts of the gun move with each other they produce sounds too.
We shot a silenced pistol in the U.S. – it sounds different than you’d expect. It’s like a “clink” sound. It does help with accuracy though, because it extends the barrel.
1972 Walther PP
Guns work in any condition
The AK-47 is famously able to shoot in almost any condition… but many guns aren’t so robust.
In Novocaine, main character puts his hand into a running deep fryer (maybe we should be focusing on something else here), pulls out a gun, and tries to fire it. Surprisingly, the gun still fires!
The high temperatures of the oil somehow didn’t ignite the primer or warp the non-metal components of the gun. The gun might even have exploded.
Maybe he was just lucky… Was it a cool scene? Yes.
TacticalGuy, CC BY-SA 4.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0>, via Wikimedia Commons
In The Walking Dead (S04E01), Rick Grimes finds a Colt MK IV pistol buried in the prison garden. Although, very lucky, in reality a gun would need a lot of maintenance after being stored outdoors in dirt. There’s a high chance that gun is rusted or worse.
Colt MK IV Series 70
Bullets spark every time they hit something
In the movies, bullets seem to spark every time they hit any metal. Really bullets only spark when they hit metal at a certain angle and cause friction. Specifically, it needs to be a low angle of 5-20 degrees.
Only steel-core bullets cause sparks, lead-core bullets don’t spark at all! But we get that it looks cool so we'll give it a pass.
Ominae, CC BY-SA 4.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0>, via Wikimedia Commons
Guns Akimbo
In Eraser (1996), Arnie, dual wields an EM-1 railgun and fires perfectly. Okay, that’s a fictional gun this time, but Arnie is notorious for dual wielding guns that mere mortals could not dual wield. If we recall, Commando (1985) has akimbo shotguns at some point.
In Equilibrium (2002) Christian Bale dual wields Beretta 92FS. There’s just no way to hit anything like that.
No training we’re aware of ever teaches dual-wielding. If it’s out there, it’s either a dangerous scam or super secret black ops stuff.
That said, if you’re Christian Bale and you’re a Gun Fu expert - it’s a cool action scene!
Picanox, CC BY-SA 4.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0>, via Wikimedia Commons
Gangster Grip
In countless movies characters hold guns sideways. They look cool and intimidating, but it’s actually an extremely inconvenient grip.
The sideways hold makes it hard to withstand the recoil, makes follow-up shots erratic, makes it hard to aim because of altered trajectory and the hot gun-casings are likely to hit the shooter in the face.
It could work if you’re shooting close-range and accuracy is not your goal. But this grip is never actually used by trained shooters because it doesn’t offer any practical advantage.
Ken Lunde, http://lundestudio.com, CC BY-SA 3.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0>, via Wikimedia Commons
Overall, movies are supposed to be fun, and accuracy isn’t always critical. Some of these scenes are just ridiculous but they’re also perfectly ridiculous! Plenty movies play fast and loose with how much ammunition can be shot before reloading. Plot armor gives characters extra rounds while falling multiple stories off buildings only to get back up and limp away (ahem, John Wick).
Some other movies are more accurate, like Heat (1995), Saving Private Ryan (1998), Lone Survivor (2013) are fairly accurate in their portrayal of weapons and firearms.
Check them out. Let us know what other Hollywood Gun mistakes you notice!
