Handgun Urban Legends/Myths/Rumors

Hi, Bart,

The folks who do executive protection are taught those techniques as well as shoving the web of the thumb under the hammer. That could be a real "ouch" with a hammer mounted firing pin but those guys understand that their job is to protect the VIP, not worry about injury to themselves. They will literally put themselves between the gun and the intended victim if necessary, so a burn from the barrel-cylinder gap of a revolver is not a big deal.

Jim
 
The web of my thumb under a revolver hammer sounds like perhaps one of the least painful things we could even dream up in any hand to hand combat situation, especially one where the adversary has a handgun.

Gimme the little pinch on my hand by a revolver hammer with or without firing pin and I'll choose it all day long over most anything else we can come up with. :p
 
For a wheel-gun that is not cocked, a tight grab on the cylinder will be a bang-stopper. Certainly a move of desperation however, since one must not let go!.
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I brought my revolver to our CCW class, and our instructor demonstrated this with me- it caught me off guard how well it worked. Even with a moderate grip on the cylinder, there's no way the cylinder hand can exert enough pressure to overcome his grip.

Like you said, however- if I was already in SA, he'd be toast :rolleyes:
 
I watched a friend hold his hand over the barrel/cylinder gap while shooting some hot .38 lead bullet reloads in a Smith 686. He didn't flinch or jump- he turned his hand up and looked at his- now grey- palm, and wiped it on his pants.
 
Why on earth would your friend ever get in to the habit of doing something of that nature?

As to the topic of handgun urban legends, myths and rumors...
Far too often we see claims of people suing the pants off everyone due to ammo. Sue the ammo companies, sue each other, sue the idiot brother in law that makes crappy handloads.

Where are the citations for the many metric tons of ammo and gun related lawsuits? Certainly, there have been a few high profile genuine lawsuits (Ruger, for example) but otherwise, sure seems like an irrational amount of flap with little or no substance.

"I'd never let another human being -EVER- shoot my handloads, if something goes wrong they'll sue my pants off and own my house, guns, dog and run off with my wife..."

I say that's an urban legend and internet myth. You can sue your shooting buddy because he's got body odor and wears the same ugly shirt all the time. (if you'd like to)
 
However, the manner in which Jet Li does it (in Lethal Weapon 4) certainly makes it look routine... but then, Jet Li can make a lot of things look routine.
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The way he makes it routine is by starting the scene with the disassembly lever in the disassemble position rather than trying to manipulate it during the action.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=adnXzutxWcQ

If you can manage to get the video frozen at about the 29 second mark on the closeup of the gun, you can clearly see the lever in the down position.

Here are some frame grabs from the video. The first one shows the gun before he grabs it. The lever is obviously in the down position.
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The second one is a little blurred due to the movement in the scene so it's hard to see the lever. But it is easy to see that his hand and fingers are not positioned on the gun in a manner that would allow him to manipulate the lever.
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So let's call this another handgun myth/urban legend busted...
 

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It is best to take anything about guns in the movies with a large grain of salt. In fact, today there are NO fireable guns on a movie set, and NO blanks used. The guns are dummies or guns made totally inoperable. After several incidents where insurance companies have had to shell out millions because some brainless "star" shot himself or someone else, any gun on a set will cause cancellation of the insurance and a shutdown of the project.

Fortunately for the makers of "action" movies, this policy coincided with the advent of digital cinematography, so it is easy to edit the digital master to add gun flashes and noise while the actor waves the gun around and (maybe) fakes recoil.

Jim
 
Well, on that note, if anyone is familiar with the death of Brandon Lee, I've got to say that the whole dang thing sounds like a wild urban legend or a made for TV movie, but it was neither. It was an almost unbelievable series of events...

But it wouldn't fit the concept of this thread.
 
Lee's death, film/tv production....

Yes, Lee's death was tragic. If you watch the death scene in The Crow, he gets shot by 50 guys at once! :eek:
Lee's injury was from a fragment fired from a prop gun that caused him to fall.
A few crew members on the set thought Lee was acting. He died in a ICU a few days later.

Blank firing guns can be dangerous. CGI & digital FX are more common today for safety reasons. Some look cheap & fake but a few look and sound real.
 
The scene where Lee got his fatal injury wasn't the scene where he gets shot by all those bad guys in the board room, it was the flashback scene where his apartment was broken into and he and his fiancé were killed.

From Snopes.com:

"The scene was the death of Lee's character, Eric Draven, at the hands of street thugs, and was a pivotal plot element to the movie. Lee was to walk in through a door carrying a bag of groceries. Actor Michael Massee, who played Funboy, fired a revolver loaded with blanks at Lee. To complete the illusion, a small explosive charge was to go off in the grocery bag. Unfortunately, a fragment of a dummy bullet, used earlier in close-up shots, was lodged in the barrel, and the blank charge propelled the fragment into Lee's side, fatally wounding him."
 
On removing the slide from a Beretta in a gun takeaway...

There was a trustee at my LE academy who could do it. He did it to me. From hands up bad guy, gun pointing good guy, instructor yelled "GO" and trustee disarmed me (and a dozen others) then removed the slide. Best time ever was less than 1.0 seconds. Typical time was always under 2.0 seconds from the time the instructor yelled "GO" till the trustee was holding the gun in the air in two parts.

Convicts train all day, all night long and have the most experienced teachers in the world. When released they come home and teach their non-con buddies. The idea that "an ordinary street thug" is somehow a sloth like idiot is a major fallacy. No cops train in CQB anywhere near as much as the bad guys do.


Sgt Lumpy
 
so it is easy to edit the digital master to add gun flashes and noise
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In a recent episode of Longmire, they added the muzzle flash so it came out of the recoil spring plug and not the barrel of his 1911. That was good for a loud laughing groan. Or was it a groaning laugh? I don't know and I was there!

And nothing looks worse than a firing semi-auto where the slide stays frozen on the frame. Unless, of course, one of Lumpy's ex-cons is around :D

Bart Noir
 
On removing the slide from a Beretta in a gun takeaway...

There was a trustee at my LE academy who could do it. He did it to me. From hands up bad guy, gun pointing good guy, instructor yelled "GO" and trustee disarmed me (and a dozen others) then removed the slide. Best time ever was less than 1.0 seconds. Typical time was always under 2.0 seconds from the time the instructor yelled "GO" till the trustee was holding the gun in the air in two parts.
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Of course, once he's disarmed you there's no need for him to take the gun apart.

It is certainly true that a skilled person can disarm a person who is not trained in weapon retention and who allows the attacker to close the distance. That is definitely something that anyone who uses a handgun for self-defense should be aware of.

The point is that if a person is close enough to disarm you, you're trusting your survival to their incompetence. The fact that they can take the gun apart after they've taken it away from you (or taken control of it) might be impressive but the damage was done before the gun was apart.
 
The point is that if a person is close enough to disarm you, you're trusting your survival to their incompetence.
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Actually, the point was that it IS possible for someone to take away and dismantle a Beretta. I was making no other conclusions or extrapolations.


Sgt Lumpy
 
Yeah, if you are holding the entire Beretta, then it is entirely feasible to take the slide off. In fact, you'd have to be a klutz to not be able to take the slide off.

What is the controversy on that?

Now, to reach out and pull the slide off the Beretta that is aimed at you, that is the "Hollywood trick". And it can be done, if the potential shooter is standing there half asleep. Or he falls for the old "look! - squirrel" trick and swivels his head about 85 degrees away.

Bart Noir
 
In movies someone holds a gun up against a pillow and pushes'em together against someone's body for a silenced execution.

Couldn't you just press the muzzle of the barrel against the body, and the body itself would act as a silencer?

It wouldn't be as quiet as the movie silencers(LOL!) but shouldn't it muffle the sound quite a bit? Sorry so morbid...
 
One that I've noticed from movies, is that you need to manually pull the hammer back on an automatic or it won't fire.
Also some "mall ninja" kids in my class were discussing a class mate who accidently shot themselves in the leg with a .22. The general consensus among them was that it wasn't a big deal because "a .22 can't even break past skin!". I didnt even try to argue with them.
 
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