Gun 'mistakes' in Books, TV, and Movies - feel free to post your own

[RogueUSMC]

And how does every person in movies know how to hotwire like any car? Okay, I better stop now.

And they do it by feeling around and never have to see anything...dang they are good!

[WTR]

And the whole venerated TV series, The Rifleman, was set circa the late 1870s. Only problem is that Lucas McCaine carried a custom Winchester Model 1892.

I also wonder why the rifle does not fire every time he twirls the rifle around to cock it. I thought it was designed to fire when the lever closed. I also like the .45-70 "ballast Steve Mc Queen wears in his gun belt.

This is supposed to be a true replica of the rifle. Look at the lever and a screw has been added to push the trigger when the lever closes. So yeah, I don't know how it could be loaded without firing it. Now on the cap gun one I had there was a piece you could flip up to fire or down out of the way.

Yes, there is an adjustable set screw with a locking nut. You would have to be constantly adjusting the depth of the set screw......something he does not do.

[SewTexas]

wow! Alton Brown is pro-gun AND has 2 corgis.....I may just have to marry the man...oh wait...I'm already....but Alton has money...hmmmm

Corgis do it for you, OK. My wife favors our corgi ( or at best mostly corgi ) over our other 2 dogs too. Darn thing is just too big to be a lap dog but he doesn't know that. Makes a great watchdog and seems to have a better sense of hearing than any dog I have ever seen. SHEDS like the dickens.

I have 2 corgis. One is real petite, real short haired, the other is more typical corgi sized. They can hear anything. One sheds like crazy, the shorter hair one, when she starts shedding, it's like snow They are both my protectors, the little one honestly thinks she's a monster, lol. I think she thinks she's a shepherd. If I let someone in to the house that she doesn't like, I have to lock her up, she'll take them on....I'll also make sure the worker just happens to see my gun and at least one of my young adults, I'm not so stupid I won't won't listen to my dog

[RogueUSMC]

One tonight. Watching Gotham and the guy uses ".45 caliber 200gr wadcutters"...which (to the expert police investigatirs) is 'high end ammo'...

[treadlightly]

In End of Watch, Stephen King talks about the cylinder of a .38 hanging up on a bad guy's belt, small-of-the-back.

Then in at least two places a character "rolls the barrel" to check the gun.

[goose]

Skyfall just had a bolt action rifle so semi-auto. Skyscraper "sniper" scene and the fist fight after the shot.

[TxRVer]

I just watched a Sherlock Holmes movie where a Mauser C96 was fed from the bottom with an external magazine, instead of from the top with a stripper clip. Supposedly this happened 5 years before the Mauser went into production.

[Abraham]

Sadly, Stephen King and his excellent author son Joe Hill, are anti-gun liberals.

In one of Joe Hills most recent novels, he continually made snide anti-gun/anti-Republican remarks.

I'll no longer be reading his books as they cause me indigestion...

[Skiprr]

Recently read a book titled Tier One by Brian Andrews and Jeffrey Wilson; to be released September 1, the first in a series. I wouldn't be so critical if the book description wasn't, "In a world violated by terror, the old lines have blurred. Meet the next generation of covert ops... Can a Tier One Navy SEAL adapt and become the world's most lethal spy?"

The book is readable, overall; a couple of dropped articles/prepositions, inappropriate pluralizations, and concurrent misuse of objective/subjective pronouns, plus some annoying use of repetitive phrasings (everything that someone tosses to someone else is always "caught in midair," as if there were some other way catch it). But I don't expect much more nowadays (Hemingway be spinnin' in his grave).

But if your whole core premise is that you start with elite operators--the best of the best SEALs and Delta--you'd better know more than just the right acronyms. Even then, I would expect the authors to know that the manufacturer's name is SIG SAUER, and that "SIG" is never written "Sig"...which they do throughout.

The gafs are minor and overlooked by most readers; the book has 493 reviews on Amazon, with a 4.5-star rating, 58% of the reviewers giving a perfect 5 stars. But my teeth were grinding. Examples:

First boots-on-ground op of this new clandestine task force, the protagonist (a SEAL with 20 years on the teams) is handed a SIG516 and three charged magazines, and a P229 plus three 15-rounders. This is done at INFIL, not at prep or in transit. The AR is already loaded, and he does a press-check to confirm, then stows the magazines in his vest. He can obviously see the rounds topping the magazines, but he simply takes it at face value that the firearms and ammo he's handed are all hunky-dory; he didn't load the magazines himself, didn't run a function check of the weapons, and has no idea whether the EOTech on the AR is correctly sighted in. Yeah; right.

His team of four splits into two, and he has a number of yards of open ground to run across before engagement is anticipated to begin, when he will use C4 to breach a warehouse door. So what's the very next thing he does? Why, he flicks the safety off of his AR before positioning the sling over his head, of course. Any experienced operator would certainly prefer to run across 25-30 yards of uneven terrain with a 556 chambered and the safety off. How else are you supposed to do it?

Okay, small spoiler alert; I lied. C4 breach of the warehouse door, flash-bangs deployed, then automatic gunfire from both sides...only to find out--after two tangoes, a potential innocent, and one team member are down--that the whole thing was a staged drill, and that all "ammunition" in use was of a mysterious, special "low velocity" type that wouldn't cause injury even at close range. None of the "combatants" involved wore headgear, but maybe the folks running the simulation didn't care much about putting out an eye or creasing a skull.

I may be way behind the curve in my dotage, but I'm familiar with no 556 training rounds that look exactly like regular M855 or M193 cartridges (remember, our hero at least got a close look at them as he stowed the spare magazines). Things like the Winchester Q3290 SRTA are certainly not less-than-lethal rounds: they just aren't intended to reach out past a couple hundred meters, and they require changeout of the BCG to a blowback, M2-type training bolt. Simunitions would come closer, but an uninformed five-year-old can spot the difference between their proprietary BCG and ammo and the regular stuff.

Seems like all the carbines in the book are equipped with EOTechs, which are interchangeably described as red-dot sights. And I'm perfectly fine with that. No weapon-mounted lasers are ever described (only infrared NV illuminators) yet, late in the book, out of nowhere the "red dot sights" are now painting actual red dots on the targets at point-of-impact...aka, a laser, not a red-dot sight. No explanation or clarification.

Other oddities and discrepancies I won't go into. Maybe I'll write an Amazon review just so the authors know that they have places they can improve, and that people are aware of it. Sigh. I'd so like to find great escapist authors who can combine realistic small arms and hand-to-hand combatives; believable espionage and political intrigue; solid, setting-specific use of tech; and a deft fictive voice with masterful prose. Perhaps it's simply too much to ask. Ludlum to Thor to Clancy to Eisler to Harris to Cumming to Silva to Child to Hunter to Sanford to Follett...nobody's done it yet.

[loscar141]

I watched The Bodyguard, with Kevin Costner and Whitney Houston, and in one scene they are in a room talking when they hear something in another part of the house. Keven pulls out his gun, racks the slide on his 1911 and points it right in her face and tells her "don't move". I had to rewind it, and see it again. I could not believe it. at least he had his finger off the tigger sorry

[Jusme]

I watched The Bodyguard, with Kevin Costner and Whitney Houston, and in one scene they are in a room talking when they hear something in another part of the house. Keven pulls out his gun, racks the slide on his 1911 and points it right in her face and tells her "don't move". I had to rewind it, and see it again. I could not believe it. at least he had his finger off the tigger sorry

Wasn't he former secret service? Maybe that's how they talk to Columbian ladies of the evening, and old habits are hard to break.

[surprise_i'm_armed]

In the 1991 movie "Thelma and Louise", they are pulled over for going 110 MPH
in their 1966 T-bird. The trooper is from the New Mexico State Police, per
the badge on his cruiser's driver's door. But his collar tabs are "NSP". It seems
like they should have said "NMSP".

He is wearing a Sam Brown belt with 12 cowboy style individual bullet loops, yet
his pistol is a 1911A1. 12 cartridges would be just enough for 2 reloads of a
6 round revolver. Where's the pistol mags? Notice that the 1911 appears to have
a set of aftermarket white grips. Other than the 12 bullets of unknown caliber on
his Sam Brown, he has 1 set of handcuffs. No pistol mags.

After Susan Sarandon takes the 1911 and his belt, she says "Extra ammo." Not for the 1911 she doesn't,
unless for some reason the LEO carried 12 rounds of .45 ACP in cowboy style individual belt loops.

If it's extra ammo for the Colt Detective Special, NIckel, 3rd generation,
why did the cop have .38's in his belt? The Colt was used earlier in the film
to kill Harlan, the attempted rapist. Then it was used to shoot the tanker truck.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c1XX6YDDCbA

SIA

[TxRVer]

If it's extra ammo for the Colt Detective Special, NIckel, 3rd generation,
why did the cop have .38's in his belt? The Colt was used earlier in the film
to kill Harlan, the attempted rapist. Then it was used to shoot the tanker truck.

SIA

For his backup gun?

[ELB]

I power-watched a bunch of old CSI episodes on Amazon Prime Video recently, and they repeatedly dub in all kinds of hammer-cocking sounds when the agents draw their Glocks. Also occasional slide-racking, and massively poor tactical use of flashlights.

Now in the series Grimm, there is someone on the show staff that knows a little about guns and gun history, they've had some interesting dialogue and plot points involving arcane gun knowledge. IIRC there was one episode around which one of the clues was knowledge of what "parabellum" actually means, and that it was the motto for Deutsche Waffen- und Munitionsfabriken. But the show still does goofy things with the cocking sounds and slide racking nonsense sometimes.

[mr1337]

Ant Man

Using his special ant powers to stop a hammer on a Glock 17