More Machete mishegas. After Lindsay Lohan’s habitual barrel-licking promo poster, the film’s marketing mavens have released this shot of Robert DeNiro as corrupt Senator McLaughlin. Person or person unknown hire Sr. Machete to assassinate Bobby. I wonder how that one turns out. Ping me as and when—if you can be bothered.
It is unfortunate that this is so common. In the movies and TV shows I watch, if a gun is being held there will be a finger on a trigger far more often than not.
I wonder how many lives could be saved by following Cooper’s 4 rules in movies and TV?
As I understand it, ever since the tragic deaths of Jon-Erik Hexum and Brandon Lee (both killed by "blank" firing guns) movie and TV studios have hired professional "gun wranglers" to handle firearms. The job of these people (probably called technicians or something) is to ensure that guns are not loaded – even with blanks – when handed to actors, and/or to ensure that the actors only handle the guns for the portion of the film that they need to. The wrangler then immediately takes the gun back and secures it.
The unfortunate side effect of this is that actors seem to adopt a careless attitude towards firearms – after all, every firearm they handle is made "safe" by someone else, meaning there's nothing they have to do. Combined with the fact that they normally only handle firearms when shooting them, they naturally reach for the trigger when picking up a gun. It's hard to imagine, for example, Clint Eastwood or James Garner (both of whom were in the military) handling weapons this way, but if the only time an actor handles a gun is in a movie, why not reach for the trigger?
Now while that's just unfortunate, you have to wonder how many tragic accidents happen because most of the exposure people (especially kids) have to guns is via popular culture: Movies, television, cartoons, comic books, video games, etc. If those characters normally put their finger on the trigger, you can bet little Johnny will do the same thing when he picks up a gun, unless he's been trained otherwise. The rub here is that gun training typically starts at grade school age or later – by which time the tots have already been exposed to years of (improper) gun-handling heroes and villains in the aforementioned movies, TV and video games.
***Just noticed something****
The guns appear to be 1911's. As the 1911 is a single-action semi-auto, it cannot fire unless the hammer is cocked. Note that the hammers on both pistols are in the down, or uncocked, position, meaning that even if the chambers are loaded, the guns cannot fire from a trigger pull. The hammer has to be cocked back first.
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