Hollywood handgun portrayal BS

In a lot of the shows I like to watch, especially Burn Notice, someone pulls a pistol and you hear the sounds of the hammer being cocked, and then you look at the gun closely, and the hammer is still down, in one episode, a bank robber has a MAC-10 with the bolt forward, which would render it useless if he needed to use it.

Remember Die Hard 2? Not only did they have guns with blanks and real bullets in them, they said that a Glock 17 was invisible to the metal detector. That is almost as annoying as people who say "clip" instead of "magazine".
 
I'm watching some old WWII footage on PBS right now and apparently, the sound that distant bombs make travels at the speed of light. You hear the explosion the instant you see the explosion.
 
I remember that 'Rifleman' episode from when I was a kid. There's one even better--Lucas was taken prisoner and of course, had his rifle taken away. Somehow he comes across some ammo (pistol cartridges, IIRC). Knowing the BGs would be coming back, he took a plank and whittled a hole for a cartridge. When the BG showed up to finish him off, he smacked the round against a nail, firing it and killing the BG.
The next sillier plot (that I remember) was the 'Star Trek' episode where Kirk was chased by the lizard man and he found the ingredients to gunpowder, blended it, packed the power w/rocks for bullets into a hollow log. He then set a strip of his shirt on fire with come convenient flint and fired the crude gun, mortally wounding Lizard Man, whom he then spares to show Humanity's humanity...:rolleyes:
Observe:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7p4xMQevkpI&feature=fvwrel
 
I saw that tactic in a Jackie Chan movie once. (Keep in mind that his movies were action/comedies, with emphasis on comedy).

The thing is that the gun in question was a Beretta (or the Taurus clone). I have a Taurus and can testify that it would work. If you are as quick as Chan is (in all his moves), it is easy to grab the slide, flip the takedown lever down and take the slide off the frame.

An extreme move, but no more extreme than many of Chan's martial-arts moves that entertain so well.

Lost Sheep
 
In the interest of science, I just tried it with my PT-92. Without a mag, the slide comes right off, slick as you please. WITH the mag in, the slide goes forward about 1/4 inch and that's all.
 
The times we played with it in training, the mags probably were out. Hmmm... Well, guess to make it work with a loaded weapon, one might have to hit the mag release first.

Of course, simple tends to be better under stress, so this isn't a technique I'd train to do (except maybe for show).
 
Well, the trick of pulling the slide off a Beretta 92 only works if they can get a hand on the gun. Why wait? How about shooting earlier?

When the target gets a hand on the gun, it is just not going well at all.
 
OK, so it's been proven without a doubt that the slide can be removed from a Beretta 92 by an assailant. It's also been proven that people have been struck by lightening. I think in the real world the latter is much more likely!

But in the movie world it doesn't really matter. Everybody knows that guns are always carried without a round in the chamber so they can scare you by racking the slide...Several times quite often.:eek:
 
i love how in hollywood movies they actors always
rack the slides multiple times before going into a battle
or how 5 shot revolvers have unlimited ammo in them
 
Oh, I say "clip" all the time when I'm at home and nobody can hear me.

Back when people said ".45 auto" instead of "1911" and everyone understood what you were talking about, you rarely saw one being fired in a movie, although one frequently does these days. I do recall one, however, in which the person using one de-cocked the pistol, lowering the hammer. That was an acceptable practice at one time, just the way you have to do it on some CZ models. By the way, the person armed with that .45 auto carried it in his hip pocket, which I have seen in WWII photos. That was not exactly acceptable but it apparently people had their own ideas, which of course is no longer allowed.
 
I get mildly, pointlessly, irritated by the incessent racking of slides on guns that were shot moments earlier.

Entering a new room? Creeping up on a new bunch o bad guys?
Gotta rack that slide!!! Rack, RACK, RACK!!!
 
Oh, I say "clip" all the time when I'm at home and nobody can hear me.

Back when people said ".45 auto" instead of "1911" and everyone understood what you were talking about, you rarely saw one being fired in a movie, although one frequently does these days. I do recall one, however, in which the person using one de-cocked the pistol, lowering the hammer. That was an acceptable practice at one time, just the way you have to do it on some CZ models. By the way, the person armed with that .45 auto carried it in his hip pocket, which I have seen in WWII photos. That was not exactly acceptable but it apparently people had their own ideas, which of course is no longer allowed.
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'Clip' is a term that was used by GIs in WWII to describe detachable magazines, en blocks, and stripper clips. Nothing 'wrong' there really

I feel it's useful to differentiate, only because there's plenty of firearms that use internal non-detachable magazines, and online it's already hard enough to produce clarity half the time
 
Originally posted by Pond, James Pond: I get mildly, pointlessly, irritated by the incessent racking of slides on guns that were shot moments earlier.
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I cringed every time the guys on NCIS pulled their guns out of the drawer to go to a crime scene. They always put their guns in the drawer when they first sat down (which seemed a little strange to me, but I guess that might happen) and then racked the slide every time they pulled it out even when they recently came from a crime scene.

Also I was watching the movie "WAR" with Jet Li and Jason Stratham this weekend. Jet Li was using a P99 but they kept showing him loading his ammo (5.7x28).

I end up checking out lots of the guns & what they used (and often stories behind them) on the internet movie firearms database (imfdb.org). Just like the internet movie database, but with bullets!
 
i've seen that in movies/tv a number of times too. i've always called b/s on it. there's no way a gun comes apart that easily..
 
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