Hollywierd is hollywierd, and they have never made a good movie with guns involved. Even if they do get a technical aspect or two right, the actors pointing weapons at each other, carless carry habits, and piss poor muzzle control, not to mention flinching, impossible shots, etc, drive a former range NCO nuts!

Apparently I'm not the only one who has noticed that single actions apparently hold 10-12 rounds, and most lever actions are apparently drum fed. Thanks, Dave, we're with ya!

My favorite part of Hollywood and guns is that EVERY actor has a flinch like a 5 year old. Mel Gibson is the worst, he closes his eyes and slightly turns away BEFORE he fires. Whenever a gun is involved in a movie, I (and probably most of you) perk up waiting for the funniest part of the movie!

Plan 9 From Outer Space, which is by most accounts the worst movie ever made (so bad, it's actually great to watch!) has a scene where a couple of cops are discussing what to do and one of them scratches his chin with the barrel of his pistol!!

I couldn't get through the scene without tearing hair out due to a vagrant disregard for gun sales rule numero UNO!
THE CUSTOMER DOES NOT HANDLE THE FIREARM AND THE ROUND(S) AT THE SAME TIME! If I can help it, and always can, I never ever have a gun and it's ammunition out of the case at one time. Granted, our shotshells are on the shelf where they're an easy grab, but I'd be fired for handing a customer both. Just my two cents worth.

CountryRoad, They are using blanks.

I always get a chuckle whenever someone in the movies goes fishing for crappies (pronouncing it crap-ees)- not one person on the set apparently knew how to pronounce it!!

@stick500-you're describing a dialectal difference in pronunciation. The OED lists it as /kræpi/, if you know IPA.

It isn't just the poor gunhandling in movies that drives you nuts; it's the unreal ballistics. Those of us who load Magsafes in our house guns to keep from penetrating house walls have to wonder how a guy can be safe from handgun bullets because he is using an overturned card table, or an open car door, as a shield (Transporter, and how many Westerns). In Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, every effort is made to show Butch and the Kid reloading in the last scene, yet we also see the Kid snap-hipshooting shooting men off rooftops from fifty yards, sometimes by fanning. And so it goes. If you can watch Star Wars, you can watch this stuff, I figure. Just hold your nose and enjoy it.

Stick500, of course they're Crappies (Crap-ees). Makes more sense to me then (Crawp-ees). Up here on the shores of Champlain we call em crap-ees. I think its a regional thing like breem as opposed to sunfish.

I think that it's sad that neither the tree-huggers in hollywood, nor the readers of this blog mentioned that it is the female mockingbird who will sing all night when she is sitting on her nest incubating her brood. Only a profoundly uninformed person (read as Director) would try to make a joke out of shooting a bird at such a critical period of life. The funny part is that they usually show their greatest ignorance as they attempt to make us look foolish.
As for the guns; After actor Brandon Lee killed himself with a gun loaded with blanks (while goofing around between takes) hollywood has been using guns modified to fire using compressed gases. The are electrically triggered, have no wadding discharged, and have the bonus of delivering an increased muzzle flash, while still working the actions, and spewing "spent shell casings from the receiver. Good for Hollywood, but bad for Lee. Yes, he put the gun to his own head, and pulled the trigger, grinning as he did so, not knowing that blanks can be lethal at point-blank range. Very sad.

All of us could go on and on regarding the antics of the morons in Hollywood. However, my very pet gun peeve of all time is actors being blown out windows, thrown against walls, and so on, by the impact of bullets or shot. Any hunter knows that this simply does not happen, and I am very surprised that it has not been mentioned by your readers. The velocity of the projectile(s) is so high that they zip through flesh before the bullet or shot can effect any "push" against the target. I have shot countless animals, birds, etc., and have never observed such a thing. A very close shotgun blast will occasionally blow a game bird a few inches away, but that's it. A very, very few directors seem to know this. I am thinking of a soldier shot by a sniper in "Full Metal Jacket", who simply collapsed in his tracks. That is the reality of a man or animal reacting to being shot, and not the total BS fed to the public by Hollywood directors, who would prefer us to remain ignorant so as to increase drama. That will never change because the public does not care about reality. Very irritating!

Tom

ever watch the pathetic movie called BAMBI???

Tom and Mike-

The "blown away" thing is nothing but fiction. The reason the deer and the javelina went flying is because they jumped when they were hit.

A shotgun blast or a bullet will not throw a man across the room, through the window, over the hood of a car, etc. It has nothing to do with how fast the bullet is or whether or not it completely penetrates (zips through, as you put it). The simpe fact is that a bullet or a load of shot does not have enought mass to throw a person back.

It comes down to Newton's Third Law of Motion: For every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction. If the bullet or load of shot were able to send flying the person who was hit, the person who fired the gun would have to be thrown back just as far in the opposite direction. In fact, if you were to watch an extreme slow-motion video of a person/animal being shot, you would see the person/animal being "thrown" roughly the same distance the gun travels during recoil.

I tell you guys, There's one here at my home that starts about 3 or 4 in the morning and doesent let up till noon.. I've threatened to shoot it several times.

I'm with Hollywood portrays guns as if toys; jump behind a couch and you're "safe". I cringe and am force to inform everyone in the room that people shooting hundreds of rounds down city streets and crowded highways will hurt a lot of people- just ask my wife- on second thought you don't really want to do that. I do constantly inform my kids and now grandkids that all that gun play is not real and would not play out as portrayed on the screen. Also, it's not "crap ee" or "craw pee" it's speckled bass.. Ha Ha.

Sounds like another good movie to save 7 bucks on.
You'd think after the death (on the set) of Brandon Lee (Bruce Lee's son) in the movie "The Raven" that movie makers would be more careful with prop guns, but human memories are short and self editing.
I also have been known to express umbrage over egregious firearm faux-pas in the media. They do it a lot. It has become a sort of personal trivia contest for me (kind of like the game "spot the loonie").

A-team was the worst, they had enough lead flying around the highways to clear any rush hour.

bonedoc is right, if you are shot, the most force you will feel is the same as the recoil to the shooter. A grouse will go flying purely because it weighs a fraction of a person. Many animals do jump or lunge when shot, people may get knocked down but blown away from a rifle or handgun? Never.

Well I've actually used the plastic bottle to suppress a handgun. But what gets to me is how in all the westerns that are set in the time period just after the war between the states everyone is armed with a 1870 colt and a 1892 winchester. And how about in the modern dramas where the fired bullets cause sparks to fly off the car bodies without any penetration. Then there are the war movies where men are hit with .50 BMG and they pause, clutch their chest, and fall. The only one that came close there was the latest in the never ending sequels of Rambo.

Mike, Tom, and Bonedoc33: And it doesn't matter how far the butt of the gun is from the shoulder on how much it kicks or hurt, right. That being said it kind of makes you appreciate how much energy the muscles and bone absorb so a person does not always get knocked off their feet. I too have knocked a whitetail off its feet with a 12ga 1oz slug as it ran pass me at about 15 feet; you could see air under it's hoofs as it was knocked over in the direction of slug travel. Could be it just straightened its legs at the shock, would have a had the same effect.

I can understand the frustration with the mockingbird, but you've never really been kept awake and annoyed until you've spent a night trying to sleep in a cabin in Wisconsin next to a lake with a couple of pair of loons. My God! Their calls are beautiful, but c'mon guys, it's annoying as hell at three a.m.

Great clip

And the only being shot by a normal hunting round is not going to flip you. There is just not enough mass to a bullet to do that. Plus if a bullet goes straight through an animal like on your javelina it is not going to have any chance of flipping it because all the energy passed through the animal.

"The reason the deer and the javelina went flying is because they jumped when they were hit."

That may be. At least it sounds plausible. Of course, if animals can reflexively react to an impact, I suppose people might as well.

I am nto saying you didn't see it. I am most confident you did see it. However, my physics class and mythbusters has also proven this false. Not only could they not knock a pig down they cant shoot the hat off a persons head. You will move when a bullet hits you, but you wont go flying.

Nolan Osborne--

I know they're using blanks. I was talking about portraying realism---nobody's gun seems to kick when they shoot it. As in, you jump off a building, you fall and when you shoot a gun, it kicks(?).

Pity da fool that gives Bella paaaain! ;)

Hollywood: Who in the hunting world with real-live Amo hunting guns is gonna fall for the crap on TV. Some of the Western Movies came close, but not real. I saw the last interview of John Wayne with Barbara Walters and what a thrill it was. He passed away soon afterwoods. He stated that in all his movies he reid his best to make his role as real as posible. He stated that many movies he made he would forget his lines, but he knew how the Movie was to go and end, so he add-libbed what he thought wold fit into the lines he forgot,etc. Now All we get on TV is a lot of real make-belief, nothing real or close. To bad the actos of today only want the $$$ and could care less how the show goes on.Not been a good movie made in many years that I thought was suitable for watching. Most movies now are geared towards the l9-34 age group, nt us elder citizens who love a good Western and a good story behind it.

DEP, I must correct you on something. It is not Terry Bradshaw and his 'naked room' that should keep you from watching this movie, or the typical firearm inaccuracies of hollywood. Anything and everything with Sarah Jessica Parker or Matthew McConaughey must be avoided like the plague.

Chick flick? SJP? MM? Strike three.