Watch Lee Marvin in any war movie and he always observes proper firearms handling.
As far as hanguns, a revolver can be a double-action (one trigger-pull cocks and fires) or single-action (hammer has to be cocked, then the trigger has to be pulled to fire). I could be wrong but I believe that single-action revolvers are very rare in the modern age. Of course, if you are watching a show about the Old West, then single-action revolvers would have been much more commonplace.
Semi-automatic pistols require that first “cocking” to put a round into the chamber. Of course when seeing a movie or TV show, the person may have already done this and so it is ready to fire with just a trigger pull.
A double-action revolver can be fired without cocking the handle, but this affects accuracy because you have to pull the trigger with much greater force. Better to cock the hammer first, because then the required trigger-pull is much lighter and your shot will be better placed.
For an automatic handgun (and for that matter an automatic rifle or shotgun) the slide must be pulled first, giving you that impressive shu-SHUK! sound. This loads a round into the weapon’s chamber and pushes back the hammer. You are now one slight trigger-pull from unleashing mayhem. The most egregious misuse of movie firearms is when a guy keeps threatening his hostage by pulling the slide repeatedly. Sure, this chambers a round, but it also ejects any round already in the chamber, wasting it (on a conventional shotgun, it will be necessary to pull the slide after firing to eject the shell casing and chamber a fresh round; on an automatic pistol or rifle, this happens automatically when a round is fired).
Similarly, when the bank robbers walk in with shotguns and get everyone attention by loudly pulling their slides (careful! You’ll go blind!) it means one of two things:[list=#][li]They walked into the bank without rounds chambered, which means if a quick-thinking guard had started shooting, they’d have to waste precious seconds chambering before they can shoot back, or[/li][li]They had a round already chambered, which has now been ejected and lost.[/list][/li]
Incidentally, in movies where the good guy is about the blow away the bad guy, but relents after the good guy’s partner gives the “you’ll be just as bad as he is” speech, you often see the good guy lowering the hammer. This can be accomplished by putting your thumb on it and gently pulling the trigger, using your thumb to slowly let the hammer settle into the starting position. A double-action revolver could still be fired (albeit less accurately), but for the purposes of movie shorthand, at this point either the bad guy will go to prison (to later escape and menace the hero in the sequel) or lunge at the hero (who will duck) and then plunge over a railing to his death.
Kevin Costners “Open Range” , not so sure about guns being handled correctly, but the effect of a gunshot seemed real enough- BOOM loud enough to shake the poo out of you, and none of this old western; guy gets shot, clutches chest, drops to knees, dead nonsense, these guys are lifted off their feet when shot, a real sense of the impact a bullet has. Or, the impact i imagine one has.
I haven’t seen it, so I don’t know exactly how they did the gunshot effects, but that doesn’t actually sound realistic. Being shot doesn’t lift you off your feet. If it did, the person holding the gun would be lifted off his feet, too. For every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction, and all that.
Sorry, but the loud BOOM is not realistic. From even a short distance away, handgun fire can be mistaken for firecrackers. Think about that the next time you hear “firecrackers” late at night.
Indoors, a big handgun shot can deafen you, and the concussion from the shot can feel like a ‘whomp’ on your chest. But get outdoors, and a handgun explosion isn’t that loud. Even the most powerful handgun is wimpy compared to a high powered rifle or a big-bore black powder gun.
And as for being lifted off your feet by being hit… Sorry. That’s a myth. Think about it - there can be no more energy in the bullet hitting someone than there was when it left the gun, and people don’t get knocked off their feet when they shoot a handgun.
If you’ve ever seen real footage of someone being shot, they never get knocked off their feet backwards, unless they get hit by something huge. Usually, they just collapse like a sack of cement. You can see lots of footage of people being shot from archival WWI, WWII, and Vietnam footage. There’s a famous movie of some WWI soldiers jumping out of a trench to charge the enemy, and a number of them are killed instantly. They just collapse. One minute they’re people, the next they are rag dolls. And they’re getting hit by BIG rounds - probably .308 rifle rounds or something similar. There’s similar footage of soldiers being shot storming the beaches of Normandy, and they’re getting hit by machine gun fire from pill boxes - definitely not small rounds. Again, they don’t get blown off their feet - they just collapse.
There was some recent footage from the battle for Mazar-e-Sharif in Afghanistan, in which someone is shot while storming the prison. Same thing - he just collapses and rolls backwards down the embankment.
Single-action means that the hammer has to be cocked before the gun will fire; all the trigger does is release it. “Cowboy” revolvers and the 1911/Government Model .45 automatic are SA. That’s one thing they hardly ever get right – movies are always showing 1911s with the hammer down (probably because the hammers of the prop guns don’t move). Squeezing the trigger right now on this gun won’t do anything. This one’s ready to go. SA revolvers, you carry with the hammer down and thumb it back before firing; SA autos, you carry cocked with the safety on.
Double-action means that squeezing the trigger cocks the hammer as well. Most “modern” revolvers and semiauto pistols are DA. Those with external hammers can also be fired single-action, by pulling the hammer back first. SA requires about a third of the force on the trigger, and over a much shorter distance, that DA does. Most autos are DA on the first shot and SA afterward – the slide cocks the hammer.
So when somebody’s got a gun to a guy’s head, thumbing back the hammer means it now takes less effort to shoot, and gives it that extra little bit of “I really mean it.”
I’d like to submit Heat as well, mainly for the sound effects. Now, could someone tell me the likelyhood of the LAPD owning M-16s? I have always been a little indredilous about that. Sure, I can see snipers with rifles, and shotguns, and pistols, but I’ve never heard about M-16s. But then again, it is the LAPD.
But kudos with the gunfight sounds. They are quite nervewracking at times, just from the sound, which is what gunfire does to you. It doesn’t have this pleasant sort of boom sound. It is a cracking sound that is earsplitting. I think they did a great job with the sound.
But in the end, I think its pretty much impossible for any movie to have the correct recoil of firing a real bullet. Look at the people firing guns on any movie and they hardly recoil at all, because there is nothing for the expanding gas to push against. As we all remember from highschool physics, the gun exerts just as much force on the gun as it does on the bullet. But since it is more massive, the acceleration is slower and more manageable by the shooter. Take away the bullet and it is only pusing against the air.
Another vote for Unforgiven: I really like the scene where Gene Hackman’s sheriff is explaining fallacies about handguns to the pulp novelist - effective range and accuracy, and why accuracy is more important than speed.
And, of course, for containing the line “Hell of a thing killing a man. You take away all he’s got, and all he’s ever going to have.” Refreshingly accurate, if uncomfortable to contemplate.
Open Range is a Western set in the second half of the 1800s. They WERE using black powder guns, which DO make a pretty good boom. Even the handguns, I have one, I know. Mine is a .54 caliber, which is a bit bigger than their .45s, but theirs nevertheless used more powder than mine, and if you don’t have ear protection on a shot from my pistol will hurt your ears a little even if you’re not the one firing it. I think that counts as a boom.
Anyway, black powder makes a lower, boomier BOOM than modern smokeless, which makes more of a sharp CRACK. A cowboy’s gun would go boom compared to an LA cop’s.
CaseSensitive
Perhaps in my original posting, I should have mentioned Lee Marvin’s service in the Marines. I’ve always been a Lee Marvin fan and so I thought that everybody knew that he was a Marine.
On the other side of the coin, I’ve heard John Wayne’s (no military service) firearms ineptitude is sometimes downright embarasssing. I’ve heard that it is very noticeable in “The Green Berets”. (Not being much of a John Wayne fan, I rely on other people’s word for the Duke’s lack of firearm expertise).
And going completely off topic, Bob Keeshan (Captain Kangaroo) was also a Marine. Granted, he hosted a long-running kids show but I have it on good authority that all instances of his firearm usage on that show displayed proficient knowledge and the utmost respect for safety.
(Just making a tribute to the “Captain” who passed away earlier this year.)
I have seen footage of men shot where they fell in the direction the bullet came from.
A good move in this regard (though it does have some inaccuracies in others) is of course “Saving Private Ryan,” in which men who are shot just fall down, as in fact they would. (BTW, those pill boxes you saw would have been shooting 7.92mm rounds, that being the calibre of an MG42. Very big indeed.)
I often wonder if it isn’t because of movies with people flying backwards from gunshots as if they were hit by trucks that the Kennedy assassination conspiracies have such life to them, because of the “back and to the left” bit. I’ve never understood why anyone would assume that Kennedy’s head would snap in the direction the bullet was travelling in. The bullet was through Kennedy’s head before his brain knew it was dead; there was probably as much force exerted on his body as a whole by the spray of blood and bone coming out the front as there was from the bullet entering on the other side. It’s perfectly logical to think Kennedy’s head could move in almost any direction after part of it exploded upwards.
The Green Berets is famous for lots of lousy things. Never mind that all the soldiers fail to carry anything that would have extra ammo clips: At one point, Wayne smashes an ‘M-16’ against a tree and it shatters. Why? Becuase they couldn’t get many real M-16s and had to use a Mattel toy. You can even see the speaker on the ‘clip’. This one is a famous gun ‘faux pas’.
Oh, and Vietnam was a big car chase? I never knew!
IIRC, they got them during the shootout: i. e. the cops went into a gun store and said, “These guys are kicking our ass, can you help us out?” If it wasn’t that one, it was a similar one (of course, my source for this is Fox’s World’s Wildest Police Videos XXIII Which You Have to Watch Because There’s Nothing Else On And You’re Too Broke to Go Out! so that might be entirely wrong)
One of the worst examples of inaccurate firearms portrayal was in the softcore exploitation classic Mandingo. In it Ken Norton plays a slave who winds up banging his master’s wife (at her request). His master isn’t pleased and after poisoning her he forces Norton into a cauldron of boiling water by repeatedly shooting him (three times) with a single-shot muzzle-loading musket!
Then, another slave picks up the musket and uses it again to shoot the master’s father!
That stunt with the phasor in Star Trek 6 was a horrible use of a phasor. If Starfleet was the US Navy, I bet the Lt. would have spent the rest of the trip in the brig(but since she was the traitor, that would have worked out well).
