Continuity where firearms are concerned.

[ulthar]

Bargle5 wrote:

> My favorite one is from "Eye of the Needle".


I think one of my all time favorite firearm problems in a movie comes from "Billy the Kid Meets Dracula."  Billy shot and shot and shot, and Dracula just stood there-didn't even FLINCH.  When we was out of bullets, Billy threw the gun at Dracula, and Dracula DUCKED. Bullets=okay, but whatever you do, Count, don't get hit by a thrown  handgun.

(Sorry, I posted this in an earlier thread, but it *IS* still funny....)

[JohnL]

I hate when a character fires ONE round and the slide locks open, meaning the gun is empty, then in the next shot, the slide is forward again. I've read that it's SOP to only load as many rounds as is required by the scene, but it looks pretty dumb when the cop pulls out their gun, fires one round and the gun is clearly empty.

It also bugs me when you can clearly see that the bad guy isn't actually aiming at the hero, but rather to the side of him. I know it's done for safety, especially in light of what happened to Brandon Lee, but it still looks stupid.

How about when a character just pops the magazine out of the gun, and lets it fall to the ground while they put in a new one. I guess heroes automatically get free replacement magazines. I want to see a scene where a character runs out of ammo, pops out the magazine to let it fall somewhere inaccessable and then comes across a box of ammo, but has no magazine to load it into.

Or where a character shoots someone and then pulls the spare magazines off the body without even checking to see if they'll fit their weapon, or if they're even the same caliber.

[Eirik]

"If you've ever trained for combat handgunning, you have probably been taught that SHOT PLACEMENT (hitting the dang target) is the most important thing. Speed and firepower come after accuracy with the weapon. That is kinda hard to do running, and point shooting with BOTH HANDS. Arrgh."

Well, very often when you shoot in combat, what you're trying to accomplish isn't so much killing the enemy but getting him to get his head down and stop shooting at you.  This kind of semi-aimed rapid fire can cover a retreat or an advance, and it can buy time to figure out what's going on.  Of course in movies when people shoot like you were saying, the enemy will often drop like flies as if each shot was right on the mark, so in fact you make a good point.

[odinn7]

I have a few peeves about the way guns are handled in movies (and TV for that matter). One of my more favorite things that I see is the lack of recoil in almost all firearms. People fire all kinds of heavy calibers and full autos and have no problem with muzzle climb and seem to be able to hold on target with little or no difficulty. A great example of this that comes to mind is from Charlies Angels Full Throttle. Demi Moore packs 2 Desert Eagles that look like they are chambered for .50 AE which is no light weight round by any stretch. She fires these things with almost no recoil right and left handed and she's an awesome shot too.
The other thing that I love to see is when there is shooting indoors, especially a basement or warehouse. The characters are then able to talk to each other or at least hear with no problems right after they are done. I've experienced shooting .22's indoors (at a range) without hearing protection when I was younger and hearing anything other than a steady ringing for a minute or so isn't likely. For that matter I have fired heavier calibers outdoors and it happens also but not quite as bad (ok, I learned my lesson and never shoot without hearing protection anymore).
Something else I have seen, but can't recall a specific movie at this time, is the way that some movies just interchange revolvers and autos. I have seen a character holding a revolver in one seen and then an auto in the next and then back to the revolver in the next scene.
Last but not least...the point that JohnL makes about the slide locking back when the gun is empty...that drives me nuts when I see it.

[ulthar]

And another thing while we are on the subject of semiautos and slides:

Who bothers to carry a gun does so without a round in the chamber?  Especially cops and soldiers.  Yet how many times have you seen them jack that slide (as if for emphasis - "I am serious now").  In reality, they would have just wasted a round.

Or worse, when they do it several times in 'one scene' due to a true continuity error in editing the film (I have seen this numerous times, but cannot recall specific film titles).

With revolvers, they always open that cylinder to check for ammo.  It is irritating.

I realize that they do that 'for the benefit of the audience,' so everyone knows the gun is really loaded.  But come on.  When the guy is a cop, and he is on-duty, I think it is safe to say we all expect his sidearm to be loaded.  He does not have to jack the slide or check the cylinder.

[ulthar]

That's an interesting point, but in all the training I have had, I have NEVER been taught to try that.  Ammo is too precious in a gunfight - you don't waste it on 'suppresive' fire (at least that is the doctrine under which I was trained - others may have been trained differently).

It helps in movies when you have fifteen magazines or unlimited ammo (at the director's whim), but on duty or as a civilian, I never carried more than three total mags (one in the gun and two spares).  If I was under fire that bad, I probably would be thinking three mags was too few to waste 'em.  ALL of my training on the range was premised on three mags - that's all we ever had to work with in our scenarios.

[Ash]

Ulthar, you stated that you've had training with firearms.

Were you in the military or perhaps a cop?

What types of training did you have?

[ulthar]

I was a cop for a few years....did mostly Crime Scene Investigations and Forensics.  Also, I have been training with firearms since a little kid (my Dad was a cop and a Firearms Instructor).

[Flangepart]

Ya know, they could show a bad guy aiming directly at a man, if they used a mirror. The camera sees the image, from behind the sights, and the reflection compleats the view, while the "Target" is safely out of line with the gun fireing. That might work.
Oh, yeah. Hearing protection! I first shot a handgun, and it was mom's cousin's .45 colt combat commander. Three mags worth. My ears rang for two days! Never agine! You'd think suppressors would be common on the battlefield. Easier to hear orders, harder for the bad guys to locate ya....
Gun control IS useing both hands! Nuff said.
And finaly, will someone please count the rounds! Eastwood did it in "Magnum force." Take a hint from clint! It can make for good suspence, if you make the audience see the importance. Its worked with john McClaine in "Die hard!"

[ulthar]

Flangepart wrote:

>You'd think suppressors
> would be common on the battlefield. Easier to hear orders,
> harder for the bad guys to locate ya....

Major John Paster (Ret.), author of "The Ultimate Sniper," talked about this a little bit.  He claimed that he was on a mission in Viet Nam and he had the only suppressed weapon in his team.  They were under fire while boarding the extraction helicopter, and he was returning fire.  The enemy paid no attention to his return fire (he says) because there was no muzzle blast.  They did not know he was shooting back.  He argued that while a suppressed weapon has a place, the reduced psychological effect *CAN* make the suppressor a hindrance.

Take it with a grain of salt...I just wanted to throw it in there.

Oh yeah, suppression only works (effectively) on subsonic rounds...this makes it only useful for very short range, and not at all feasible for high powered rounds like .308 Win, .300 Win Mag, .50 Browning, etc.

[JohnL]

I've never had any formal firearms training, but I've been told that one of the points they stress is to *NEVER* hand a loaded gun to someone else. You're supposed to unload it and make sure it's empty first. The story I was told was that a guy was being tested for a permit and when the officer administering the test asked to see the gun and the guy handed it over fully loaded, the cop flunked him. Characters in movies do this all the time.

[Eirik]

"That's an interesting point, but in all the training I have had, I have NEVER been taught to try that. Ammo is too precious in a gunfight - you don't waste it on 'suppresive' fire (at least that is the doctrine under which I was trained - others may have been trained differently)."

The emphasis in the American military training definitely stresses accuracy - one of the reasons they phased out full auto for the M-16.  Of course in practice, this measure ticked off a lot of commanders who know that in some tactical situations (ambushes for instance) there's a lot to be said for the ability to empty your magazine in the enemy's direction while you grab cover and set up your defense.  It can quickly regain you the initiative.  Covering fire is also still used in today's military.  Observe Tom Hanks with the Thompson in Saving Private Ryan.  He blares away at the enemy machinegun nest to give his guys time to run past it.  Then of course there is the imfamous "reconnaisance by fire," which is now discouraged.  That one goes something like this: Do you think there's enemy in that hut?  I dunno, let's shoot it up and see.

[Eirik]

Yes - a cop would NEVER learn covering fire (except maybe SWAT).  They also don't learn headshots.  Accuracy (and the path of the bullet in the event of a miss) is definitely the most important thing.

Here's another pet peeve from movies:

I can't stand it when characters are aiming a shotgun at someone and then pump it, apparently to emphasize the fact that they mean business.  Pumping it like that would eject the shell in the chamber... but this never happens.  So that means the dumbass is aiming a shotgun with nothing in the chamber at the beginning of the scene.

[ulthar]

>Eirik wrote about military training...

My specific training was in civilian law enforcement, which is a completely different animal than military.  I have done some reading on military training doctrine, and imho, it went to the dogs with the "Trainfire" concept.  I think it is coming back around toward accuracy, though.

[JohnL]

Two more;

A character is aiming a semi-auto at someone and when the person doesn't do what they're told, the guy holding the gun cocks it. Unless I'm mistaken, the majority of semi-auto handguns need to be cocked before they can be fired. So they were threatening someone with a gun that couldn't currently be fired.

Good guys can hit the bad guys while on the move and at a disadvantage, but the bad guys can't hit the good guys, even when they have time to aim. Right now there's a movie on SciFi called Deathlands. The good guys drive their armored truck into the bad guy's compound, guards pop up on top of all the walls and start shooting at it. The good guys throw open the back door, jump out and start dropping the bad guys. In reality, the bad guys should have been able to pick them off as soon as they stepped out into the open.