I have been watching too many old movies and TV shows and noticed that it is fairly rare for anyone to use 2 guns simultaneously
In a gun battle, is there any advantage to using 2 guns simultaneously as opposed a single gun.
This is not the best example, the robots in this movie (Black Hole 1979) each have 2 guns and lose the battle.
Of course being a Disney movie, the good guys win this battle.
Another example is the end of Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid (1969)
However, the film ends with their guns blazing and it's implied that they lose badly.
Pretty well every military documentary I have seen only has the troops carrying a single gun each as generally the limitation is with the amount of ammunition that can be carried.
Also, it would be easier to aim with a single gun as opposed to trying to aim 2 guns simultaneously.
Even in the semi-famous Hollywood shootout, the criminals do have 2 guns (AK-47 and a handgun) but are only using one at a time. If you watch the very end of this clip, the police also are carrying 2 guns in this training exercise but the second gun is only a backup.
Two guns will get more lead down range which could keep your opponent behind cover longer allowing your buddies to flank them. But other than that, it just looks cool.
If you are trying to shoot two guns at the same time, you’re not shooting either one well. And a person shooting one gun well will generally beat a person shooting two guns poorly.
The only exception would be if you were shooting really old or poorly made weapons. In a case like that, accuracy might be impossible and it becomes valuable to be able to shoot as many bullets as possible to increase the odds of one of them randomly hitting your target.
If you are Louis “Two Gun” Alterie, having that second gun will ensure that no one will interrupt you during the battle to ask, “Hey, where’s your other gun?”
It looks WAY cool would be the primary advantage. Then of course switching guns might be faster than reloading if you had to get a bunch of rounds out real fast.
I agree although two or more pistols, not necessarily trying to shoot them at once, was the standard for pistols for a few 100 yrs of single shot muzzle loaders, and still arguably made sense with slow loading cap and ball* or single loading gate revolvers in the 19th century. With modern handguns it’s more questionable for rate of fire, as opposed to carrying two or more for redundancy.
Carrying as opposed to ‘having around’ multiple long guns generally isn’t that practical.
*substituting cylinders was possible but doesn’t seem to have been actually that common.
