The Walking Dead's Rick (courtesy AMC)

“This week’s episode [of The Walking Dead] featured a Rick/Daryl motorcycle/jeep chase,” Paul Tassi writes at forbes.com writes. “It should have been one of the most badass action sequences the show has done to date, but instead it just felt stupidly goofy. As the two pursue the truck loaded with the heavy guns, one of the Saviors pops one out of its crate and starts opening fire on their vehicles . . .

This is not a peashooter. This is a .50 caliber machine gun that is designed to shred vehicles, and those in them.

The problem? The Walking Dead treated the gun like it was lobbing paintballs at Rick’s car.

We see these little spatters of CGI light on the metal and Rick swerves around like this is some kind of movie from the ‘50s, and it’s just so bizarre. This gun should be carving up Rick’s Jeep. If you want the engine to survive so the car can keep going, fine.

If you want Rick to survive because he’s a lucky SOB, fine. But at least pretend you know what a gun like this can do to a car like that. Show giant holes being blown in the metal, shatter the windshield, anything. Make it feel powerful. Instead, it barely felt like a threat at all, and it totally killed the scene for me.

A minor complaint, perhaps. Especially given the fact that in one episode Ezekiel’s captor pulled the slide back on a GLOCK to load another round — after having fired the gun. D’oh!

What’s the biggest Hollywood or TV firearms fail you’ve seen? Do gun mistakes ruin your enjoyment of TV shows and movies?

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221 COMMENTS

  1. I can’t tell you the number of times I’ve seen revolvers equipped with silencers. Or that wrapping a small dishtowel around a revolver will make it whisper quiet.

  2. It always makes me laugh when an actor puts a rifle scope directly up to their eye as if it was a telescope (no eye relief whatsoever).

  3. The Devil’s Rejects is the only movie I’ve ever turned off for being terrible. And it was mostly because of a scene in a motel where two bad guys are holding people at gunpoint, with 1911’s, with the hammers down. Both baddies could be put down with a knuckle sandwich, but no, it’s gotta be this wierd, perverted, drawn out thing.

    Turned on Frozen instead, which is a far better film.

      • The A-Team were ex-SF guys and had been involved in training indigenous troops. In their case it was Storm Troopers from the Stsr Wars Empire!

    • I counted 16 ro unds out of Kevin Costner’s Peacemaker in Open Range. And it’s one of the better western gunfight scenes out of Hollywood.

      • I have “Open Range” on DVD – love it because they got MOST of the little details right. But you’re right about when Costner’s character fans off something like a dozen rounds from his Colt SAA at his opponent in the opening of the climax gunfight. At least he admitted to it in the voiced-over “narrated” version on the DVD. Costner was pretty ill when the movie was made and he wasn’t directing, so I guess that’s how it goes in the movies sometimes. Another excellent western movie is “Appaloosa” with Ed Harris and Viggo Mortenson – they got it right in the details department, except that the 8-ga double shotgun is actually a 12-ga made to look like an 8-ga. If I was carrying an 8-ga around all day, I’d probably go bowlegged – wouldn’t need a horse.

        • Still, nothing beats Doc Holiday in the Tombstone gunfight at the O.K. corral firing a double-barrel shotgun three times. Its such a bad editing job.

  5. The one that bugs me the most is bullet-proof cars. The bad guy shoots at them and you see bullets ricocheting off of the sheet metal and the glass. You’d think the baddies could procure guns and ammunition of sufficient caliber that they could penetrate 20 ga. sheet metal.

    And the other one is how they have blazing gun battles with no hearing protection, yet no one’s hearing is affected, even if a gun goes off right next to their ear.

    • There’s a fan theory that extreme hearing damage is why the walkers are able to keep sneaking up on people.

    • While I loved John Wick 2, I have huge gripes with the catacombs fight scenes. He fires a short barreled rifle, pistols, and shotguns in confined spaces that would surely leave anyone deaf or very close to it. On top of that his “bulletproof” outfit with no real damage caused by all of the rounds he took.

      • I think we’re supposed to accept that a 3 mm thick lining is as effective as a Level III vest. This is a universe where assassins have their own subcultures, after all.

      • Easy enough to assume that anyone ‘working’ that night had active earbud hearing protection.

        The tailored body armor is another matter, but fairly easily dismissed.

        • John Wick 2 went too far into pure fantasy. They showed competency with firearms but the overt exploitation of their assassin underworld was just too far off the edge. It was well enough in the first one, almost Illuminati like, but the second one it was just too out there.

          The bullet-proof suit was pretty bad though. It was their excuse to not have to have him be more realistic in his tactics so he could just shirk off a bullet like he took a punch to the arm. Disappointingly lazy on the filmmaker’s part in my opinion. Otherwise an enjoyable film, cringey at times (Mr. Fishburne comes to mind), but a little TOO divorced from reality.

          The first film on the other hand plays along the edge but never goes overboard. I’ve watched it multiple times whereas I don’t care to see the second one again. Hopefully if and when they make a third installment they can dial it back just a tad at least.

        • Actually that is pretty much my exact experience in the Assassins Guild. We don’t use some generic gold coins though, the krugerrand is the actual coin, technically they’re 5 denominations, because not all services are an even 1 coin.

          It’s against the rules to share this info outside the Guild, that person has been disciplined.

  6. Bullets bouncing off sheetmetal and glass on every freakin car in the movie, the good guy running through a hail of full auto fire and taking out 8 heavily armed guys with a pistol, and my most hated the sound of a hammer being cocked when the gun in the shot is striker fired.

  7. Oh good Lord, what was the name of that movie?
    Screw it, I don’t remember- but the scene was of rifle shots impacting the windshield of a downed helicopter as the heroes struggled to extricate a wounded comrade. Did the plexiglass shatter? Nope. The director called for the FX guy to shoot sparking/flashing things at it like it was transparent steel or something. 🤠

  8. The series “Lost”. There has got to be at least 10,000 live but ejected rounds littering that island.

    • While we’re here: who gets it right?

      Pretty much anything with Thell Reed as the armoror/advisor is good or best-in-class. The Way of the Gun. Cinemax’s Strikeback has some absurd shots made, but the gun-handling is solid.

      • I love both of those shows, I wish there wasn’t the sCinemax soft porn scenes, I just wanted to enjoy the story and escape.

        • Umm, hey Naycro Widda Weegro…

          You know what’s really immature? Spending an inordinate amount of your life trolling sites that you know are “echo chambers” that preach to the choir, and then being absurdly presumptuous, ignorantly generalizing, pompously condescending to a crowd that you know *does not give a crap what you think about them*.

          Ya know? Dude, never mind us and this site where we share firearms and POTG insights… do yourself a huge favor: get a life, really. Yes, you can post here, all day, blah blah blah. Yes, your opinions are “valid” (if also blindly self-absorbed). Mmkay? But do bear in mind– we just DGAF about that kind of childish shuck ‘n’ jive. Do you understand? You are not “reaching” anyone, with any sort of that condescending “someday you insane NRA loons are going to have an epiphany, because me me me.”

          Ain’t gonna happen. Go away.

          99.99% of the time, when I bother to comment, I hope I am contributing to the discourse. I hope so again. I don’t mean to be cruel… just honest, seriously.

          Be safe.

        • To Omer: that’s not a reply to you, I’m simply following up on the thread.
          —
          Why don’t you try this one instead?
          ++
          One thing I found missing from movies and TV is a realistic effect of gunshots on human body.
          We go from people thrown to the other room (Django Unchained), to people who merely get some ketchup on their shirts.
          It is understandable that producers don’t want to make it look too gruesome, but my concern is that they are erring on the other side, making it too clean.
          The spectators, especially young ones, won’t see (and feel) the actual suffering inflicted and, by loosing this empathetic factor, they will perceive guns as “cool” instead of important and useful, yet dangerous tools.
          ++
          Jut my 2c, but it can be the difference between trolling/preaching and actually trying to start a conversation.
          Assuming, of course, you are ever interested or even able to have an intelligent conversation.

        • Ladies and Gents, presenting AMP! the one other thoughtful adult echoing my concern about cartoonish depictions of what happens to both the shot and the shooter, in real life both are traumatic… if you had watched realistic depictions as children maybe you wouldnt still be children emotionally and intellectually fantasizing about shooting it out with some criminal and/or mentally ill guy

      • Mort – A! This is like an amalgam of going to the zoo and watching Jerry Springer, its fun and funny, AND Im interested in systems of indoctrination, the ideological content of language blah blah blah as you say, so it fascinates me to see how yall misdirect from evidence and logic to cling to your delusions…

        Mostly its ad hominem and psychologizing(those old am radio and OReily favorites)like yours, but occassionally folks send substantive responses to the myriad insightful issues I raise.

        So I dont stop and set a spell with yall to redeem yall, Im well aware that by our mid-20s our core values/views become crystallized, after that you either figured it our or you didnt…

        … I will tell you however that my Uncle who was a bad guy in countless ways ie racist, bully, braggart took me fishing and I hated it, I was repulsed by killing the jumbo shrimp bait and Im sure it showed though I pretended to enjoy myself… some years later visiting I asked him if he wanted to go fishing and he said he didnt do that anymore, that it made him feel bad, seeing the fish flopping around dying like that (!)… thinking about that now I got tears in my eyes, and I was blown away at the time, and he was embarrassed saying it, he still thought of himself as a badass and all. Anyway the point is once in a great while folks youve written off as irredeemable surprise you, and not that it makes much difference to me but its possible my remarks to the folks on this site who have their children posing with the corpses of the animals they had them kill will have an analogous epiphany : D

        • Do you even know where food comes from? Your uncle feels bad about seeing the fish flopping around dying and you are blown away by that? Where do you think seafood comes from? Do you not eat fish? How about a good steak? I read somewhere we had teeth for tearing, as in eating meat. We weren’t supposed to eat only salads. Were there any civilizations that were predominately vegan? Guns, knives, clubs, and such have been part of all recorded history. I bet you played war when you were a child if you are over 50. After that I think it fell out of favor with the people who wrote parenting books. Now we can’t even point a finger at someone and go bang. We have now evolved into a society where everyone tells you what you can’t do any leave few things we can do. Kids nowadays stay inside on computers and Ipads not getting any exercise or even see the sun! Oh right the sun is bad for you. Is it considered child abuse if your kid gets a sunburn? Heaven forbid they drink out of a garden hose much less play war of dodgeball.

        • I wasnt allowed to have a BB gun but we used to have running battles splattering each other with fallen fruit, and it was great fun but like all the sports I played it was also a training ground for war. Given the massive amount of violence I imbibed on TV, and the toy/model armies and war board games and the childish men in the family its a miracle I turned out to be such a lovely guy : D

          Seriously though the militarization of popular culture is appalling. Do you realize kids play essentially the same FPSs that the US military uses to train folks to be effective killers!? Some guys were playing catch the other day but not with a frisbee or a ball but with a toy missile that flew like a football AND made this high pitched whistle like a bomb was falling!!
          Guys have toy surveillance drones that feed images back to their computer just like the ones that make illegal war on Pakistan and Yemen and Niger and Iraq and on and on!! Countless TV and movies glorify military violence like “24” portraying torture as targetted and effecacious!!

          Does any of this disturb you? Seem innappropriate to be indoctrinating kids with?

          Im guessing no since you probably taught your kids to sneak up and kill animals with a weapon and then pose smiling holding the corpse : (

          Anyway thanks for raising many interesting topics : D

          PS It might be fun for you to eat vegetarian for a month or something, as an experiment just to see how it feels… when I first learned the extent of global poverty and how many people lilve essentially on a little rice and get their protein from whatever little bugs they accidentally ingest, I lived on only rice for three days, valuable experience, gave me a visceral appreciation for how spoiled and fortunate even poor folks like me are in America : )

  9. In the same vein, “RED” with Bruce Willis / Helen Mirren etc. had an absurd scene where she opens up on a parked car with an M2HB, to no visible effect. I just laughed.

  10. My personal favorites are the old black and white mexican films where the hero never under any circumstances has to reload his revolver. Best believe he gives the bad guys the business on his caballo blanco.

  11. Demi Moore duel welding desert eagles in Charlie’s angels. Yes there are bs with suppressers but this has always been the that made me yell at the screen “she just broke both her wrist’s!”.

  12. “Question of the Day: What’s The Biggest Firearm Fail You’ve Seen on TV or Film?”

    Oh there are so many to choose from…Consistency between scenes being the biggest faux pas…

  13. The Walking Dead is one of the worst with this. I was yelling at the TV during that scene. The show has constantly annoyed me with this since the very first episode, where Rick tells Shane to make sure his safety is off. On his Glock. And Shane presses the slide release. Like the comment is one thing, but then they went out of their way to film him doing something completely incorrect. Then there’s the everyone has full auto rifles, suppressors work interchangeably with every gun, a sawed off baseball bat makes a good suppressor, everyone is John Wick with the one handed head shots, Glocks and ARs going click click click when they are empty, slides never locking back, it goes on and on. The show is filmed in GA, you would think it would not be hard to find someone that knows something about guns down here.

    • “sawed off baseball bat makes a good suppressor”

      Your other points are great but this is actually true… a hollow metal tube filled with steel wool would be an *extremely* effective silencer. It wouldn’t last more than a few shots, but would be easy to refresh.

        • In Max Payne 3 (a video game), he tapes a two liter bottle full of steel wool onto the end of his Beretta 92 (or PT92). I doubt it would be effective for about 15 shots like it is in the game, but I bet it would have some effect on at least one.

          • Steven Seagal taped a pop bottle onto a gun in one movie, also. I think it was the one where they were drilling in Alaska.

    • Well, Walking Dead is SciFi so we can expect some editorial license. I mean they live in an environment that, years after the collapse, gas is still good, salvaged car batteries still work, and there’s an abundance of all kinds of guns and ammo just laying around waiting to be picked up. The series is also woefully ignorant of American demographics. In this latest episode, the “attack” has all the organization of mob. This in a country imagined or not,were, thanks to our lengthy wars, we have the largest population of people with military skills in recent history. You’d think someone in Rick’s zombified world would have a reasonable understanding of small unit tactics.

    • Everytime I watch this show I spend the whole time pointing out firearm faux pas. This episode for instance had:

      An M1A that was also full auto and despite being equipped with a standard 20 round mag, fired well over 36 rounds in one scene.

      Bullet proof cars

      Glocks you must cock (giggity)

      A complete lack of reciprocating bolts/bolt carriers in ANY rifle

      Bottomless mags

      Exit wounds where entry wounds would be

      People dying from gunshots and becoming walkers, without ever having been shot and showing NO wounds from 12.7x99mm bullets…

      So yeah, there are just a few issues -___-

      • The “exit” wounds really got to me. I thought all those people had already been chewed on by walkers. It took me several minutes to realize they hadn’t. One body had what looked literally its entire intestinal tract laying on the ground next to it. An M2 Browning .50 is powerful, but come on…

      • Aaron Im not looking to win anyone over, Im interested in how your “minds” work ie systems of indoctrination, ideological content of language etc However…

        … I will tell you that my Uncle who was a bad guy in countless ways ie racist, bully, braggart took me fishing and I hated it, I was repulsed by stabbing the jumbo shrimp bait and Im sure it showed though I pretended to enjoy myself… some years later visiting I asked him if he wanted to go fishing and he said he didnt do that anymore, that it made him feel bad, seeing the fish flopping around dying like that!

        … thinking about that now I got tears in my eyes, and I was blown away at the time, and he was embarrassed saying it, he still thought of himself as a badass and all. Anyway the point is once in a great while folks youve written off as irredeemable surprise you, and not that it makes much difference to me but its possible my remarks to the folks on this site who for example have their children posing with the corpses of the animals they had them kill will have an analogous epiphany : D

    • I can’t stand Walking Dead from an action scene standpoint. These novices are 100% head shots with the zombies, but not one of them can hit Negan.

      The full auto firing is silly. No controlled bursts, no aiming, no consideration for making every shot count. I’m only guessing here, but suppose conserving ammo isn’t an issue when no shell casings are ever ejected from their rifles…

  14. Almost every film, or series with guns.
    Books too. I’m reading a David Baldacci series and he is clearly an idiot.
    He claims a bullets kinetic energy increases the farther it travels.
    Face palm.

    • Books… anything written by Lee Childs (Jack Reacher series). The guy’s a Brit pretending to know something about guns and shooting. Really, ‘One Shot’ has the sniper concerned with Coriolis effect for a hundred yard shot.

    • Authors are often famously bad. To some degree they get a bad rap because bad weapons handling in TV or movies is ephemeral, on the screen and then gone, while words on a page exist forever.

      That said, David Baldacci is one of the worst of any I’ve ever read when it comes to guns. He’s followed closely by Dean Koontz.

  15. “Ezekiel’s captor pulled the slide back on a GLOCK to load another round — after having fired the gun”

    I’m not up on the current season, but I believe they’re actually using Eugene’s home brewed bullets at this point. If they’re lower pressure rounds maybe they can’t cycle the action, making this a win.

    I admit it’s not likely though. The show clearly arranges the gun use to fit the desired framing rather than accuracy (Rick’s awkward Python aiming, the burned face dude with his middle finger on the trigger, etc.)

    • Interesting point but I would be surprised by a show that gets so much wrong about firearms suddenly drilling down into such a particular detail – under loaded rounds that require manual operation of a gun

      Funny thing is, Ive harbored a theory for a while that Eugene was going to make double and triple charged rounds for Negans men and at a decisive confrontation with Rick, the Saviors’ guns would get explodey and take a lot of them out of the fight

      • The scene where whatshername shoots Negan’s bat (right after he beats the annoying Alexandrian to death during a game of pool), it’s with Eugene’s homemade bullet. Obviously Negan lives, but the camera then focuses on the piece of brass on the ground…
        Eugene, who apparently can’t manage to find a single piece of brass belonging to a modern cartridge despite the literally 50,000 rounds fired in/around Alexandria since Rick’s group got there, finds… A straight-walled piece of brass that is marked Starline .30 Mauser.
        Seems legit.

        Beyond that, my biggest problem with TWD is how there are episodes where literally every character in Rick’s group magically become top-tier operators. Then the very next episode tying their own shoes is an accomplishment. The universe doesn’t have to be realistic, but it should be consistent.

    • When Jack Ruby shot Oswald, he used his middle finger to pull the trigger. In the movie Sniper, Berenger’s character got his trigger finger cut off so he used his middle finger to shoot his 1911.

  16. It doesn’t matter what TV show, but any and every time someone points a striker fired handgun, they put a cocking sound in there for the stupid people to think the person holding the gun is cocking it.

    • Criminal Minds was constantly guilty of that, cocking of Glocks that don’t have hammers, and even the one guy with a 1911 (Joe Montegna, who is a real gun guy and knows better) going into an active scene with his hammer down so that he has to cock it.

  17. Disney’s animated Tarzan. English chap’s firearm keeps morphing between the CIRRAK of a rifle (leaving tiny, bullet sized holes) and the BOOM of a shotgun (leaving big ole holes). 2nd place is Bad Ass 2 (maybe it was 3) – Danny Glover’s Glock shoots 36 rounds before reload, another 24 rounds after a mag change.

  19. Ant man, the scene where a bunch of ants stop the hammer from falling and gun from firing… on a Glock.

    True lies where the mac10 bounces down the stairs killing every bad guy.

    Any action movie where they rack the shotgun multiple times while talking to add emphasis.

    Exploding cars where if you shoot in the general direction of a car it goes boom!

    Never having to reload every, whether it is a M16 or a SAA.

    Finally, the absolutely silent suppressor where you can shoot a bad guy from 2 feet away with a silenced pistol and his buddy right behind him has no clue.

    • “Ant man, the scene where a bunch of ants stop the hammer from falling and gun from firing… on a Glock.”

      And they went to the trouble of adding a CGI hammer to the Glock. Bad CGI at that.

      • Right. Couldn’t the armorer have suggested a Beretta instead?

        And then there’s all those times someone draws a Glock and you hear the sound of the gunman thumbing back the hammer.

    • Just rewatched Ant-Man tonight with my son and I noticed the Glock hammer thing.

      Probably slightly less ridiculous than smashing out of the building in a tank and falling three stories to land on the ground below . . . with out any apparent ill effects. I would think if you were in side the tank when it did that you’d be in real bad shape.

      Still a fun movie.

      • Dont forget the circular saw blade thrown into the guys forehead. Hmmm I wonder how often he practiced that at the range. Stuck in ther pretty good too.

  21. James Coburn wielding a Browning Hi-Power in Duck, You Sucker. Set in the 1910’s and he’s using a M1935. SMH.

  22. Soooooo many BS scenes. Every gun(except a few shotguns) has no recoil. Scarlett Johannson shooting 2glocks and no movement. Chimpanzees shooting 200 rounds out of an AR without reloading. One handed(pawed?!?) too. Oddly enough realistic when Stevie Seagal shot 2 handed. The list is endless…

  23. The Walking Dead’s executive producers got rid of most of the real guns and Theatrical Armorers to save money along with the great director that they had for the first season. Now they use CGI and airsoft guns for the most part. It went from a serious adult-level show to a laughable joke that would only entertain 12-year olds.

    • “Should have been bad-ass but instead was just stupid” describes most of what’s happened in The Walking Dead since about Season 3. I loved it in the beginning (even while noticing its flaws), but when they got to Alexandria I’d had enough. The plot, the characters, everything…just stupid. It’s sad how they ruined it.

  24. Started watching a depression era drama called Desperation. They went to great pains to have the characters dressed correctly, period sets and vehicles and then the bad guy kills a guy with a 1911 with Novak style sights. Ruined the show for me. They had plenty of other revolvers and shotguns that were from the right timeframe and then overlook this, irritating.

    • Damnation is the name. I was really hoping for some period correctness based on the clothing and cars in the promos. But the same thing pissed me right off. Like they couldn’t get a GI style 1911 from one of the 5,000 companies that make that version. Hell Rock Island Armory 1911 GIs go for what now $350 to $400? It makes it hard to watch.

      My favorite screw up is the Punisher with Dolph Lundgren- pistol grip 5 shot pump that spews something like 18 shots without reloading!

  25. “The Walking Dead” is damn near the stupidest show on TV. And that’s saying something, with brain-dead dreck like “Keeping Up With The Kardashians” and everything that CNN broadcasts in the competition.

    My biggest pet peeve with any movie or TV show is when someone points a gun at another person, it ALWAYS has to make a dozen clicky-clacky noises, like there’s a tiny steampunk machine inside it. Guns don’t make that “pulling the hammer back” sound just because you pointed it at a person. And most guns don’t make that sound at all, anyway.

    I haven’t seen the movie (and definitely won’t watch it), but the commercial for “The Dark Tower” shows some really idiotic gun stuff, like the dude reloading his revolver by throwing a loaded cylinder in the air and catching it in the gun. I’m sure I could think of something stupider than that, but it would take me a while.

    • Watch season 1 episode 1 of the walking dead, Rick tells the deputy next to him to “make sure the safety is off” to which the deputy swipes his thumb over the slide stop of his glock and it makes a revolver hammer cocking sound… if I hear one more clicking sound from a gun being drawn or pointed at someone I will loose it! Sometimes it’s the full on pump action 12 gauge sound for a pistol being pointed at the hero. Or when the baddie racks a round into the chamber to be dramatic… They even threw a few of those clicking sounds into the most recent 24 season, that used to be one of the better shows.

    • Actually the gun stuff in Dark Tower, while YES TOTALLY IDIOTIC AND IMPOSSIBLE TO PULL OFF WITH A REAL SAA OR ANY OTHER WESTERN TYPE REVOLVER, is actually accurate and faithful to the character from the books. I think Stephen King wrote those parts to make Roland of Gilead seem like a very experienced, almost other worldly, professional gunslinger and badass of the first order. Also note that when reading any Stephen King book with gun play involved you WILL be let down as the man is a complete idiot with all things mechanical anyway and guns in particular. He doesn’t own any and has never fired one. He is also virulently anti gun.

  27. Multiple times I’ve seen movies or TV shows (mostly TV shows), where somebody points a striker-fired pistol at somebody in a dramatic fashion and then you hear the cocking of a hammer for effect.

    Presumably this added in editing where the armorer isn’t present, because otherwise I’m sure he’d tell them, “no, no, no, no. . . . “

  28. In Anaconda – climactic finale – closeup shot – point blank …

    … multiple semi-auto shots into a giant snake with a bolt-action rifle.

  29. I always laughed at a scene in some Chuck Norris movie, where he blows himself a doorway through the wall of a hotel-hallway with a 40mm grenade….from like 30 feet away. There was also his point-blank execution of a terrorist, with a LAW rocket – hip-fired, no less.

    • Or the scenes where a LAW is used and the bad guy stands right behind his partner to watch the effect of the round…

  31. One off the top of my head:

    First one comes from the great HBO crime drama show The Wire. Omar comes up on a rival drug crew racking his shotgun. Racking his break-top, double-barreled shotgun. o_O

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DSH94nzoeU0&t=167s

    The second comes from The Sopranos, in the episode where Vito shoots Jackie from behind. It’s clearly a prop gun, as evidenced by the fact the slide doesn’t move, and there’s no brass ejected.

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fc5QWxQ_leI

    • Wow, that scene from The Wire is amazing. I still haven’t gotten around to watching it (though I’ve been told that it’s an amazing show for years) but that’s something that you’d expect out of a stupid parody video.

    • Not funny. Certain liberal Democrats in Congress had a hissy fit and actually passed a law banning that gun. Once it is actually invented. In the future.

    • Especially as the real Glock 7 is a lamp for the Austran military. Glock’s 17th product was his first foray into miltary handguns which beat the favoured Steyr GB pistol (itself an updated Volkspistol from the end of WW2).

  34. Lots of things are bullet proof in TWD. You have to love the corrugated sheet metal armor on the cars this season. Even a .22 LR can penetrate thin steel.

  35. Last night.

    Karl Urban fired about 600 rounds from 2 – 30 round magazines in the new Thor movie.

    Still a fun movie……

  36. An episode of “Community” where Annie’s S&W Chief’s Special falls to the floor and discharges. I actually submitted that as a goof on IMDB.com and it was added.

    And last night, watching “Baby Driver” when Kevin Spacey fires 8 rounds from a stake-out-sized shotgun.

      • Thanks Tyler for revealing you too are too dumb/dishonest to distinguish between “young boys” and teens

        • Spacey was much older, over twice the age of these 14 year olds. And Spacey thought one was 12. He was surprised to find out he was 14.

  37. Saw a movie “Free Fire” recently, the plot seemed like a bet to see who could make a movie that was comprised of one long fire fight, but they mostly reloaded, and lots of non lethal shots and ricochets.

  38. My biggest issue with Walking Dead was the constant lack of sights on rifles. The last episode of last season Darryl came in with a full auto AR mowing people down, with nothing but a picatinny rail on top. And his crossbow hasn’t had any sort of sight on it for the duration of the show. At least with the crossbow one could argue that with the closer range and Darryl’s familiarity with it, he just became good enough not to need one, but I see rifles in the show all the time without so much as irons.

    • Well you need to get yourself a ‘trade gun’… big caliber (mine is a 58), smooth bore, no sights.. after a lot of lead, flint, and powder, you develop what is called a ‘sight picture’ that is just as accurate as primitive iron sights.

  39. Chuck Norris firing two rounds without reloading out of an M203 to take out two thugs hiding behind a wall on either side of a door in Invasion USA.

  40. Yes on the .50 though, it’ll go through the vehicle (penetrate / pass through glass sheet metal seat backs), the target, and (if without hitting too much of the former) the person behind the target, the stop sign, the person behind the stop sign . . .

  41. probably that time when shore leave from venture bros racks the slide of a pistol by moving it forward on the frame.

  42. i am reminded of “miller’s crossing” and the endless thompson drum during the bedroom scene… it wouldn’t surprise me if a thousand rounds were heard.

  45. Plastic bottle in front of the muzzle that completely silences the gun.

    A lot of movies and TV shows have done that.

  46. I cant remember the movie but a scene at a range where the actor is firing a smith and wesson revolver and after every shot you hear a casing dropping to the floor.

    Sometimes I think the director must be doing this intentionally as some sort of inside joke on the audience, because clearly they know how a camera operates, which is 1000x more complex than most firearms, so they cant be completely retarded.

    • That Rick can disregard department policy (and good sense) and carry that hog leg instead of a Glock like everybody else.

      • There actually are some police departments that let their officers carry revolvers if they choose to do so.

        • Yeah, I have seen local Sherrif’s deputies carry everything from a Smith 686 to and Ed Brown 1911.

      • That and I believe the walking dead started as a comic in the 90s, back then there were still a lot of cops that carried .357s, even pythons.

        • Nope, the Walking Dead comics were first published in 2003. Also in the Comics, Rick’s service pistol was not a revolver.

  49. Last night on Major Crimes the FBI arrested a guy for having a “flash hider” on an AR. It was a silencer.

    • saw or heard that one two–not once but twice did the team ‘expert’ say ‘flash suppressor’

      and the show is about LAPD’s best unit and FBI????

  50. Brad Pitt in “Killing Them Softly”. They had slow motion brass hitting the ground, but you can see from the crimps that they were blank rounds. Obviously they need to use blanks for some shots, but don’t do a slow-mo zoom on crimped brass for your artistic shots.

    • There is a movie out on Netflix just recently called Savage Beast (or something). Foreign film set in post-colonial Vietnam. Lot’s of action, etc etc, but the killer for me was all of the belt fed machine guns with obviously crimped blanks. And yeah, there are guns that don’t seem to run out of ammo as fast as they really would, even if they have 30 round mags.

  51. Big Bang Theory. Penny racks/closes the slide on an empty pistol. Then inserts a magazine with rounds. Then Sheldon immediately shoots his foot without a round in the chamber.

  52. 1. Stephen King in several books talks about a character snapping the safety off, on his 45 revolver. Yeah I know, there is exactly one revolver in history with a safety. One.
    2. On a recent episode of TWD, Ezekiel is saved from the 50 cal fire when some of his troop protect him with their bodies in single file. They all got multiple torso hits, but he only received a flesh wound to the leg. Um, no.
    3. In the last few episodes of TWD, they have expended thousands of rounds of ammo from multiple calibers of firearms, many in full auto. Previously they were low on ammo. Nobody has found ammo or components, and nobody is reloading, other than Eugene’s homemade trials.

    • With all the data available in books and magazines, which just about every firearm owner will have, what is so difficult? Unless they were trying to make all components from scratch. Or it is a significant plot point. I gave up on TWD after season 1.

    • Ya mean the Steven King of Dark Towers fame would actually make a mistake about a gun? Oh, spare me the shame! I know for a fact he wouldn’t mislead his readers.

      (sarc off)

    • Well, revolvers with safeties (double action, etc..).. s&w, webley, iver johnson come to mind first.. then there were lots of police issue of I don’t know brands from the late 1800’s and early 1900’s..
      nothing current, true..
      there are always exceptions..

  53. Here’s one nobody caught: there was an episode of the Big Bang Theory where Penny and Leonard were at a gun range. She loaded her pistol by racking the slide and THEN inserting the magazine.

  55. The ever present 346 round capacity revolver……gotta get one of those. I’m such a dork I start counting when they start shooting. Always amazes me how they screw that up constantly.

  56. Drives me crazy every time I see someone get shot in the movies and they have to ‘remove the slug’, which by the way, is perfectly intact. [grinds teeth]

    • Or the worst ever scene, in NCIS, when Ducky pulls the bullet from a victim, then tells Gibbs, ‘I got the distinct smell of deer scent on the bullet; so you’re looking for a deer hunter.’

      And Gibs/et al solve the crime by finding a deer hunter who weep his way to an infamous confession.

      • Speaking of ballistics, in “The Lincoln Lawyer,” the police ID’d a .22 bullet as “fired from a Colt Woodsman.” My wife didn’t appreciate me yelling at the TV.

  57. I just hate it that every bad guy on every show uses a full auto weapon. Like they are as common as Ford F150’s. Not to mention that they can’t hit the broad side of a barn and never run out of ammo. The other thing that use to bug me was on the 70’s cop shows, when ever a car would go off a cliff it would explode before it landed or touched anything. It was like if all four wheels ever left the ground your car would go boom!

  58. All these Hollywood actors that make terrible films using guns and then are anti 2nd ammendment. Terrible actors.

  60. Every bad guy, good guy, and slightly miffed groundhog carting around a full auto like they are just givin em away down at the local gas n go with every fill up.

  61. I think it was the new Westworld series, but maybe not. Anyway, guy with a lever action rifle fires into some other guy on the ground, and empty brass ejects out of the thing like a semi-auto. No lever action required, apparently, on the lever actions of the future…

  62. Last week’s episode of ‘Damnation’ where a Colt 1911 had a Novak sight not developed until many years AFTER the time period of the show…?

  63. In the Samuel Jackson version of the movie Shaft, He is running across a road and a bad guy is firing a semi-auto at him. The gun has recoil and flash and everything. Including a slide that is locked back the entire time.

    It was just the guy holding a locked back gun and flipping it up and down.

  64. One other subtle fail is that blanks apparently cause no muzzle flip at all. Every Hollywood weapon has the recoil of a .22LR.

  65. Not sure if these are necessarily firearms fails but:

    -people being launched into the air after being shot
    -instataneous death from 1 round to the torso
    -lack of any hearing damage despite firing in an enclosed space with no protection
    -people shooting .001 MOA with a handgun at long distances

    • this one isn’t necessarily a fail but every time i see someone discard an empty mag and just leave it, i’m like “MAN THAT’S LIKE 30 BUCKS JUST GONE” 😀

      • But it’s just $30, so who cares? I’ve always wondered why the bad guys are robbing banks when they can find the money to buy expensive weapons, shiny new cars, stay in posh hotels or have homes with manicured lawns and clean swimming pools.

        Boggles the mind.

  67. Any TV show or movies scene with any type of armor against any type of weapon. Somebody shot with soft armor is almost always knocked out and looks dead for a while. Rifles that do not penetrate soft armor. If the bad guys have armor it won’t even stop a fencing foil slash.
    I hate TWD with intensity of a thousand white hot suns too. It is dumber than the Wonder Twins.

  69. This conversation stops and starts with any Quentin Tarantino movie.

    In almost everyone of his movies, when someone gets shot it causes people to fly backwards and slam into walls. The shooting scenes are so unrealistic. Like when they get shot they actually get picked up, off the ground and tossed across the room.

    Its dumb. I get that its the movies. But even a high powered rifle isnt going to cause someone to get picked up and tossed by being shot.

    • Or Vincent fires a gun inside a car and then continues conversing with Jules like they both could still hear.

  70. Well, not the biggest… But I was watching Jurassic World last night and the dude was somehow shooting his lever action rifle like a semi-auto. You’d think they could get something as basic as that right.

    • That, and the 45-70 seemed to have no impact on the dinosaur. I’d bet enough 45-70s would easily kill a dino, as a careful shot with a 44 mag has taken out a bull African elephant.

      or in the first Jurassic park where the raptors were taking out “bad guys” with guns.

      Heck, humans used to kill Blue Whales and Sperm Whales with harpoons, and they are bigger than any dinosaur ever was. No creature of flesh and blood is going to last long getting pumped full of large rifle bullets.

  71. Any TV show or movie that bullets bounce right off (with sparks!) a car that isn’t even armored, muzzle flash but no brass in the air from a semi-auto handgun or rifle, semi-auto fire from a bolt action rifle.

    And let us not forget, using a gasoline fire ball for a missile/rocket/C4 explosion. Girrrrrrrr….

  72. Multiple movies where the shooter repeatedly tries to fire his empty semi-auto and gets click, click, click…like a revolver might make.

    • There was recoil. He just death-gripped the gun so hard it didn’t move. Cause he’s the Rock. .454 Casull to the Rock is like .22lr to you and me.

  75. In Red, the assassins sent to kill Bruce Willis’ character virtually demolish his house with a couple of M4s that, apparently, have 10,000 round magazines.

  76. In one show, there’s a major firefight with AR-15s and two or more guns have nothing on their Picatinny rails. In a different show, the guy is firing an AR-15 with a flip-up BUIS rear site, except the site is flipped exactly half-way up.

    For some reason, the one thing that really irks me is when a character says “Hand me the rifle,” and we see a 12 gage shotgun. Of course, I learned only recently, that rifled shotgun barrels do exist. But I’m guessing owners still call them shotguns?

  77. It’s been a while since I’ve seen it, but I remember being particularly annoyed by Grosse Point Blank. Mainly, it recall folly goofs, like Glocks that have run out of ammo and subsequently go “click click click” like a double action as they try to keep shooting. I found it more annoying than the common one of spinning a swing out cylinder and it has the whirring of the hand ratcheting.

  78. Heat
    Ronin, with bonus of great car chases
    Saving Private Ryan for the most part.

    Lee Ermey and Dale Dye try to get it right when they advise folks

  79. Any car chase scene involving an rifle. If you are being chased, the guys behind you have a semiautomatic rifle, and the distance is only a few car lengths…. even random shots are going to tear the car apart and penetrate the passenger compartment. Anyone with a small bit of training and several magazines of FMJ is going to rip a passenger car to shreds. Driving faster is not going to allow you to outrun bullets.

    A few controlled bursts from an M4 or AK should end a car chase scene. It may not be immediate, but I would expect the car to be spewing fluids and limping to the side of the road.

  80. Sniper, with Tom Berenger. So much tactics fail, and the reticle pics are just wrong.
    As others have said, rifle rounds sparking off vehicles and 1911s or BHPs with their hammers down being pointed at people.
    Pistols in one frame shot to slide lock and back in battery the next frame and shooting again without any manipulation by the shooter.
    My fav tends to be rounds not penetrating sofas or turned over tables

  81. The walking dead is a serial offender. In the first episode Rick tells his deputies to take the safeties off their guns. The deputies have Glocks.

    • And Rick shows Carl how to use an M16 by pulling back on the “operating rod.”

      Hey, it’s okay. IN RL, Rick’s a Limey. They don’t know shit about guns, and they think that “manhood” involves Man United fans getting drunk at soccer games and beating up Arsenal fans.

  82. I don’t know about in film, but I remember clearly the worst I’ve seen in print:

    “The rifle’s carbine whirred.”

      • Hell if I know. Maybe he thought “carbine” was related to “turbine” and meant a little motor that operates the weapon like on high end electric airsoft guns.

  83. I remember seeing “Hickey and Boggs” in 1972, bad guys in a helicopter with an M60 with a belt of blanks and a blank firing adapter on the muzzle.

  85. I’m so glad someone brought this up because I was going nuts during that scene.

    My favorite is always when an actor cocks back the hammer on a GLOCK.

  86. The Walking Dead is the most gun-moronic show in the history of TV. Here’s my list from just last week’s episode:

    1. .50 Caliber machine gun sparking on the hood of a Jeep 30ft away.
    2. AK-47 round sparking on a filing cabinet with NO MARKS left.
    3. Full-auto fire from an Springfield M1A with no action cycling and no ejected rounds.
    4. Full-auto firing on a truck with no bullet holes and no marks.
    5. Not a single gun in The Walking Dead universe has recoil.

    • besides all this full auto propaganda, endless ammo, food/drinking water and always summer in Alexandria!!! if we will convert this to the more real story they should be extrimely hungry, skiny, mainly naked and with the sticks only by this time. all they should do is looking for food and water.

  87. As a general rule, movie guns are either unrealistically lethal – as in guys fly 20 feet after being shot or always die with just one shot when the director wants them to die, or unrealistically harmless – as in, guys fire hundreds of rounds and nobody gets hit or the bullets just bounce off of cars.

  88. I smiled when in one of the Jason Bourne movies you could hear the hammer being cocked on a Glock 19. I guess you don’t mean business if you can’t hear the gun cocked.

  89. About 20 minutes into “The Devils Brigade” with James Garner the US troops are shown boarding LST’s with slung Enfield Rifles.

  90. Under Siege 2, Dark Territory 1995,
    Most of the mercenaries carry Glock 19s as their sidearms. After killing the mercenary “Herb”, Casey Ryback takes a Glock 19 off him and gives it to Bobby Zachs (Morris Chestnut) to use as a sidearm. However, he incorrectly tells Zachs that (A.) the weapon is a .45, and (B.) to take the safety off before firing. The Glock 19 is a 9mm pistol, and it has no external safety to remove before firing.

  91. John Wayne Son’s of Katie Elder. Near end of the movie John shoots his six shooter 28 or more times without reloading. Best gun blooper ever!

  92. Just an echo to other posters, but anytime one character threatens another by pointing a semi auto handgun at him, then emphasizes “he’s serious” by racking the slide. I just can’t let it go. Dude, you’ve either just wasted a round or you were threatening him with what was essentially an empty weapon! (That last sentence usually said aloud. In a loud voice)

  93. This one is a constant repeat offender. A big pet peeve of mine. Out of all the westerns and other movies I have seen, I have only seen this correctly portrayed in TWO (2) movies. (And I am 58, so the western list is looonng))

    Whenever a SAA (think Colt Single Action Army) comes into play and the scene takes multiple shots from the gun…. EVERY SAA has six bullets in it even when the person is caught unawares when the gunfire starts.

    Who cares that having the hammer rest on a live round and galloping on horse back can kill you or the horse. Or even jumping around on boulders in the canyon for that matter. I have seen this repeat offender even in movies that try to keep the shots of the SAA to six before reloading. Granted this is a small issue when considering the “oversights” listed by others. But WHY in over 50 years of watching movies have I only seen the hammer sitting on an empty chamber or an empty shell casing TWICE?

    It may be a “minor” issue, but this oversight alone would probably have a bigger death count than both “Kill Bill” movies, if added up over the years. And most of the dead and “dying in a horrendous way” would be the heroes and vigilantes in the movies. So what if you “gut shot” your horse or put a bullet through the femoral artery in your leg….. in the middle of the desert or the dreaded “Injun Territory”?

  94. Agree this show (walking dead) getting into crap in this season, always summer, endless ammo and food/water/gas, extrimely powerful walkers who could stop tiger, man’s kissing each other for 20 min in small episode, talks about wining and not much of about real charachter of this show – Nigan! 50cal will stop this jeep in one shot into engine!

    • Yeah it pisses me off too that writers feel the need to insert sodomy into each and every modern TV show, game, or movie. Some of us prefer not to be slapped in the face with gay shit-covered dicks and told that it’s “natural” and “healthy” and that we’re evil bigots for believing otherwise.

      Storywise, it isn’t bad enough that you’ve got zombies running around eating people, violent groups of survivors trying to enslave or kill you, no one can figure out how to switch the guns to semi auto so you don’t use up all your ammo, and starvation a constant threat, but then you also have sodomites spreading AIDS and consuming food while not contributing to the dwindling gene pool.

  95. Movies are entertainment, not reality. Too many details would spoil the fun. If I had been in any action like those movie “heroes”, I would have had a short life, maybe five minutes. If a movie was like real life, it would be a short movie, maybe five minutes.

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