I'm surprised that no-one has mentioned the "magic unlimited magazine" yet, especially with fully-automatic weapons. It's distracting to watch the hero shoot and shoot and shoot and never reload.
Big props to the John Wick franchise for making reloading* a first-class part of their gun-fu choreography.
* ...and badass one-handed press checks that no-one should ever do IRL.
I'm not a handgun expert at all but I've caught a few of these, like the guy who racked the slide on his revolver. The author who really impressed me, although not with his handgun knowledge, was Tom Clancy. I was in the anti-submarine warfare business in the 1970s and some of what he wrote in Red October I only knew from classified sources.
I mean, the way I imagine it is he chatted with one ore more guys and after a while he got bits here and there he was technically not supposed to have, not enough of its own, but with imagination enough to get the rough picture of how it worked and got very close. But I don't think conscious braking of classified information happened. More carelessness I guess.
There's a rumor that Reagan very seriously asked his admirals repeatedly if it was true. I know he "couldn't put it down."
Tangentaly related observation, but Reagan may have been the only president to really pay attention to movies and entertainment for inspiration of future events, and possibilities. It was said that he had a similar reaction to War Games, and took it very seriously
One thing I have noticed messed up in a lot of fiction (written/tv/movies/etc) is how loud guns actually are. Scenes of multiple people without any hearing protection emptying their guns that doesn't have any kind of supressors/silencer multiple times in a closed space (usually a single room) and then just casually chatting with each 5 seconds later.
In general the sounds of guns are very bad in most movies/tv shows (Heat from 1995 comes closest for me).
I wonder if part of this is also failing to consider the acoustic effect of loud sounds in enclosed spaces. Guns don’t sound nearly as loud if you only shoot outside.
I guess my pet peeve of "firing an arrow" is also a gun mistake of sorts. It can be found in many fantasy books. A bow is not a gun, there's no gunpowder involved. If a commander orders his archers to "fire" what should they do, set their bows on fire?
It is very tiring to hold back the shot in a position like that. In real life you just wouldn’t do that. And in general your archers know their range and will/should start shooting as soon as they have a target in range without any orders.
The volley fire thing is from black powder musket/rifle days. Basically volleys were used so you can actually seen what you are shooting at (aim) and manuever (hard to move while reloading. Easier if everyone reloads at the same time). Most armies still had small groups sharpshooters/snipers running around the field and taking shots freely.
> It is very tiring to hold back the shot in a position like that. In real life you just wouldn’t do that
That makes a lot of sense, and is kind of obvious when you think about it. They'd just be wasting energy.
I suppose the way we see it portrayed in film (for some reason it's always LoTR that comes to mind), is for dramatic effect, with scores of arrows flying through the sky at once. But I was always mildly irritated (though without knowing why) by the fact that despite so many arrows flying, the vast majority would miss any target.
If most archers start shooting as soon as targets enter the range, and if their individual ranges are clustered around the average, wouldn't that result in a relatively high density of shooting when the distance to a moving group of targets coincides with their average range?
Some movies actually provide a plausible-sounding explanation for the volley fire thing. A dude in charge commands everyone to wait until the unsuspecting enemy enters the kill zone. But even in that case, I guess the archers won't wait with their bows drawn.
The worst archery bollocks I've ever seen in a film is in Timeline (2003)
The French are defending their castle at night from an English siege. They simultaneously exchange volleys of arrows with their tips set on fire. Very cinematic.
Then the dastardly English commander calls for "night arrows". What are those? They're arrows whose tips aren't set on fire.
The French soldiers, knowing there's a pile of archers at their door, and knowing exactly where they are thanks to the attackers all carrying torches, stand waiting for the signal to loose their counter-volley, and are surprised by the "night arrows".
I was just watching Tom Scott's latest video, he mentioned firing a trebuchet and the guide pointed this out that you don't "fire" a trebuchet since it doesn't involve gunpowder, you launch it.
Tom's commentary later was that he disagreed with that sentiment. "I disagree with those potential comments. Words change their meaning overtime. In modern English, you can fire an arrow, you can fire a torpedo, we were gonna fire that trebuchet"
There's a decent argument for using today's words even for settings that are no the current world. But for fantasy specifically I find it breaks immersion quite a bit. I'm not convinced by the "language changes over time" line of argument. If you take it to a bit more of an extreme it would also be fine to have characters say "cool" or even use some gen-z-ism etc, because hey words change meaning over time after all.
However, I'm also aware that I'm kind of a hypocrite because I'm totally fine with current world grammar and punctuation for example.
In the US Navy at least, you don't "fire" a torpedo, you "shoot" it. The lore is that "fire" has a very specific, very urgent meaning on a warship and you don't use that word unless there actually is a fire.
This is a good example of movies using inaccurate depictions that audiences will easily understand instead of accurate depictions that may confuse them.
I wonder what would happen if someone would make a serie or movie with realistic historical fighting? It might just break all previous works. For example armour that actually works and spears being better than swords.
One of the things about fiction is that it gets almost everything wrong. It isn’t just guns. It’s professions like spies and snipers, cars, boats, planes, programming/hacking, radios, technology, etc. And those are just the areas that I personally know they get wrong, because I know more than the average person in those areas.
Some people judge fiction way too harshly for inconsequential but inaccurate details which only serve for narrative structure. There are actually tons of authors who get all of these details right, but you almost never read their books because if they can get them published at all, nobody reads them, because they absolutely suck. An author that gets these details right and is actually a good storyteller is extremely rare. It’s basically a list consisting of Tom Clancy and John Le Carre.
It’s just a pet peeve. At some point you have to let it go, or you’ll end up wasting your time writing blog posts begging authors (who largely don’t care) to talk to you so they won’t get inconsequential details wrong.
A modern author who's fairly good in this regard is Andy Weir; the main thing is you have to do a ton of research while writing and have trusted sources (I think Clancy had many) to rely on when mulling over the details.
The tough thing is, once you get "above average" in terms of accuracy, those of us who like to be a little more pedantic will grade on a curve!
Somehow this almost inspired me to write some fiction just for the sole purpose of including some real howlers of this kind, that the average reader wouldn't notice. I wonder how many you could squeeze into one scene.
Honestly maybe my favourite part of being an author is being able to get briefly and deeply obsessed with any topic I choose - it's a rare privilege.
Beginning and then almost immediately dropping niche hobbies (eg flight simulators, poker, guns in the linked post) is transformed from something a spouse or partner might see as an undesirable and potentially annoying personality trait, into: "this is research, darling, it's my job", which is probably significantly more annoying.
It is easy to make mistakes with a verb one might not think to question like "cocked". Of course, ideally, you'd question every word used, so that the % of readers who understand its full associated meaning don't have their immersion in a story suddenly & painfully torn away.
To be less glib, I find that when speaking about a topic from a character's perspective - in dialogue or narration - a relatively important part of empathising with their point-of-view is understanding the physical and linguistic structure of their world. Sometimes I find there's no way to do this without putting hundreds of hours into understanding the tools they would use or the way they would live. Write what you know!
Generally, all long guns that are not auto/semi-auto must be cycled after every shot in order to chamber another round. This includes pump-action, bolt-action, and lever-action rifles/shotguns. There are exceptions, such as revolver rifles.
There are also instances when semi-auto pistols might need to be cycled after every round.
Surprisingly, Coriolis at extreme ranges (like 5000 feet) can be relevant enough to be corrected for, but how much and in what direction depends which way you're shooting and where on the planet you are. There's a fun calculator here: https://codingace.net/physics/coriolis_effect_shooting.html
Geoffrey Boothroyd wrote some letters to Ian Fleming about James Bond's armoury, which Fleming took on board. Fleming incorporated a Boothroyd character into the books who was later merged with Q.
Bond using a “top secret compact rifle” that I recognized as an AR-7 was greatly disappointing to me, especially I had just finished discovering how crappy a gun that thing is.
I'm sure it exists, but we need this for movies. Of all the things I wish the movie industry would do, removing the sound of racking a slide or pulling back a hammer...on an automatic.. is top of my list of things that need to absolutely go.
IT mistakes are frequently glaring plot-holes that render entire sections of the story impossible. Gun mistakes are generally a choreography problem, a weapon that's possible but just hasn't been manufactured, or someone learning information about the gun's state via the wrong channel (where such an information channel does exist).
Sure, sometimes a bullet impact throwing someone off a cliff is plot-relevant, but I couldn't name a single example. On the other hand, I can think of several examples where (supposedly) state-of-the-art encryption is cracked digit by digit, or where a radio receiver is tracked from a distance where the receiving pattern would be orders of magnitude below the noise floor (most often from orbital satellites), or where a device is remotely "hacked" that is not even plausibly connected to a network (less common, now that everything is IoT, although it's really prevalent in works set in the late 90s / early 00s).
Go to any rural community in any country in the world and you’ll probably find at least one rifle of some kind.
I’m very in favor of strict gun laws, especially for handguns, but rifles have very legitimate and important uses for people who live away from dense urban environments.
There are many guns in Australia (the country that, according to the US NRA, "banned" guns) where they are tools with an application that require a licence to use (just like explosives, dangerous chemicals, lasers above a certain oomph level, cars, giant trucks, etc)
There are plenty of countries aside the US where citizens can and do own guns.
E.g. gun control is strict in most of Europe compared to the US, but it's entirely attainable to most people without a criminal record to own firearms.
Also amusing is I see way more rifles especially in Europe than I ever do in the USA; Paris and other metros really seem to like having soldiers walking around armed.
Here we just have cops with sidearms and one or two cowboys open carrying.
It's important to make a distinction between ownership and carry permits. Ownership permits allow you to own and store firearms in your home in a secure place, and take them (unloaded) to a shooting range.
Carry permits allow you to carry loaded firearms in public.
Carry permits tend to be heavily restricted, but I believe handguns are not. The UK is an exception in that gun control is significantly more onerous than any other European country and more or less bans civilian handgun ownership completely.
E.g. in Switzerland, it's trivial to get a handgun. Not any more difficult than buying a double barrelled shotgun or an AR-15 style rifle. On the other hand it's very difficult to get a license that allows you to carry loaded firearms. The regular firearm permit allows you to transport unloaded guns from your home to the shooting range and back.
There are a lot of shooting clubs in former eastern bloc countries as well, and both long guns and handguns are popular for sport shooting.
Biggest handgun myth is about dogs and self defense.
Loose aggressive dog is not a human. It is dangerous vermin that can kill you! You are absolutely allowed to play it safe, defend yourself, and shoot it (the same way you would kill mosquito).
"It just wants to play" is not an argument, you are not a "toy" for some strange dog. It was "reactive" is also not an argument, you have no obligation to suffer its "reaction" to the full end.
Dog owners will say they have a right to mangle child, for petting their dog (it was self defense). They will also insist dogs are safe around the children, two sentences latter. Do not listen to them!
Dogs kill about 30-50 people in the U.S. every year.
Intimate partner gun violence alone leads to about 700 women being killed every year.
So by your logic, if you’re a woman and your partner has a gun, and is walking towards you and you can’t clearly tell that they don’t have a gun on them, “they just want to give you a kiss before leaving home” isn’t an argument. They’re vermin that can kill you and you’re absolutely allowed to play it safe, defend yourself and shoot them.
I am a dog owner, and I agree that a loose and aggressive dog is a liability to humanity and you are making everyone a favor if you kill it even if you could have escaped (e.g. you manage to get into your car in time). If it was attacking you, it could be a child (or another dog, too) next time. I would say that even a loose, non aggressive dog of a breed that is very statistically likely to mangle people (e.g. Bully XL) should be taken away from their owners that same day.
As a fellow dog owner I feel obligated to point out that not all barking is aggressive.
People not used to dogs often seem to think it is, and I'd hate for people to start shooting dogs just because they bark. Dogs bark, it's what they do.
I think there should be mandatory courses the owner needs to take to own these breeds (and pass the exam with satisfactory marks), loose or not if one slip of a leash can lead to a kid getting mangled then it's not safe for the owner to walk even a leashed untrained dog.
Big props to the John Wick franchise for making reloading* a first-class part of their gun-fu choreography.
* ...and badass one-handed press checks that no-one should ever do IRL.
Tangentaly related observation, but Reagan may have been the only president to really pay attention to movies and entertainment for inspiration of future events, and possibilities. It was said that he had a similar reaction to War Games, and took it very seriously
In general the sounds of guns are very bad in most movies/tv shows (Heat from 1995 comes closest for me).
I know nothing about arrows except to identify the pointy end.
The volley fire thing is from black powder musket/rifle days. Basically volleys were used so you can actually seen what you are shooting at (aim) and manuever (hard to move while reloading. Easier if everyone reloads at the same time). Most armies still had small groups sharpshooters/snipers running around the field and taking shots freely.
That makes a lot of sense, and is kind of obvious when you think about it. They'd just be wasting energy.
I suppose the way we see it portrayed in film (for some reason it's always LoTR that comes to mind), is for dramatic effect, with scores of arrows flying through the sky at once. But I was always mildly irritated (though without knowing why) by the fact that despite so many arrows flying, the vast majority would miss any target.
Some movies actually provide a plausible-sounding explanation for the volley fire thing. A dude in charge commands everyone to wait until the unsuspecting enemy enters the kill zone. But even in that case, I guess the archers won't wait with their bows drawn.
https://acoup.blog/2025/05/02/collections-why-archers-didnt-...
The French are defending their castle at night from an English siege. They simultaneously exchange volleys of arrows with their tips set on fire. Very cinematic.
Then the dastardly English commander calls for "night arrows". What are those? They're arrows whose tips aren't set on fire.
The French soldiers, knowing there's a pile of archers at their door, and knowing exactly where they are thanks to the attackers all carrying torches, stand waiting for the signal to loose their counter-volley, and are surprised by the "night arrows".
Such nonsense.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hcUVOlbNb30
Tom's commentary later was that he disagreed with that sentiment. "I disagree with those potential comments. Words change their meaning overtime. In modern English, you can fire an arrow, you can fire a torpedo, we were gonna fire that trebuchet"
However, I'm also aware that I'm kind of a hypocrite because I'm totally fine with current world grammar and punctuation for example.
Just think of it as a translation.
Some people judge fiction way too harshly for inconsequential but inaccurate details which only serve for narrative structure. There are actually tons of authors who get all of these details right, but you almost never read their books because if they can get them published at all, nobody reads them, because they absolutely suck. An author that gets these details right and is actually a good storyteller is extremely rare. It’s basically a list consisting of Tom Clancy and John Le Carre.
It’s just a pet peeve. At some point you have to let it go, or you’ll end up wasting your time writing blog posts begging authors (who largely don’t care) to talk to you so they won’t get inconsequential details wrong.
The tough thing is, once you get "above average" in terms of accuracy, those of us who like to be a little more pedantic will grade on a curve!
Beginning and then almost immediately dropping niche hobbies (eg flight simulators, poker, guns in the linked post) is transformed from something a spouse or partner might see as an undesirable and potentially annoying personality trait, into: "this is research, darling, it's my job", which is probably significantly more annoying.
It is easy to make mistakes with a verb one might not think to question like "cocked". Of course, ideally, you'd question every word used, so that the % of readers who understand its full associated meaning don't have their immersion in a story suddenly & painfully torn away.
To be less glib, I find that when speaking about a topic from a character's perspective - in dialogue or narration - a relatively important part of empathising with their point-of-view is understanding the physical and linguistic structure of their world. Sometimes I find there's no way to do this without putting hundreds of hours into understanding the tools they would use or the way they would live. Write what you know!
* People pumping shotguns after every round, or unnecessarily cycling the bolt after every round
* Wrong action type for the gun
* Wrong shotgun ammo for the context
* Wrong safety type for the gun (most long guns have safeties, but they are operated in a variety of ways)
* Magazine vs clip vs chamber vs tube
* Shotgun impacts launching people across rooms, or unrealistic recoil (both too high and too low) for the weapon type
There are also instances when semi-auto pistols might need to be cycled after every round.
Have you seen that in a film? Is it actually a thing, can you ignore it?
The minuscule effect is overwhelmingly dominated by everything else. Heavier, longer range shells from naval guns, yes - rifles, no.
* Opinion of a ULR shooter: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KP7IKshdiiY
* Range Proof: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7owwTz7Z0OE
I assume a lot of writers get their misinformation from Hollywood sound effects and the countless other gun related liberties.
Like the terminator asking for a phased plasma rifle in a 40W range. Everyone knows those weren't available until 1997.
But I think sometimes we're more justified than the gun nuts. Take for example the movie series favorite "we'll track him through his GPS".
Sure, sometimes a bullet impact throwing someone off a cliff is plot-relevant, but I couldn't name a single example. On the other hand, I can think of several examples where (supposedly) state-of-the-art encryption is cracked digit by digit, or where a radio receiver is tracked from a distance where the receiving pattern would be orders of magnitude below the noise floor (most often from orbital satellites), or where a device is remotely "hacked" that is not even plausibly connected to a network (less common, now that everything is IoT, although it's really prevalent in works set in the late 90s / early 00s).
I’m very in favor of strict gun laws, especially for handguns, but rifles have very legitimate and important uses for people who live away from dense urban environments.
Steps you need to take to legally obtain a handgun (in Australia) - https://www.ssaa.org.au/?ss_news=handgun-ownership-facts-in-...
E.g. gun control is strict in most of Europe compared to the US, but it's entirely attainable to most people without a criminal record to own firearms.
Here we just have cops with sidearms and one or two cowboys open carrying.
Carry permits allow you to carry loaded firearms in public.
Carry permits tend to be heavily restricted, but I believe handguns are not. The UK is an exception in that gun control is significantly more onerous than any other European country and more or less bans civilian handgun ownership completely.
E.g. in Switzerland, it's trivial to get a handgun. Not any more difficult than buying a double barrelled shotgun or an AR-15 style rifle. On the other hand it's very difficult to get a license that allows you to carry loaded firearms. The regular firearm permit allows you to transport unloaded guns from your home to the shooting range and back.
There are a lot of shooting clubs in former eastern bloc countries as well, and both long guns and handguns are popular for sport shooting.
Perhaps the commenter shouldn't have said: only gun nuts care.
Loose aggressive dog is not a human. It is dangerous vermin that can kill you! You are absolutely allowed to play it safe, defend yourself, and shoot it (the same way you would kill mosquito).
"It just wants to play" is not an argument, you are not a "toy" for some strange dog. It was "reactive" is also not an argument, you have no obligation to suffer its "reaction" to the full end.
Dog owners will say they have a right to mangle child, for petting their dog (it was self defense). They will also insist dogs are safe around the children, two sentences latter. Do not listen to them!
Intimate partner gun violence alone leads to about 700 women being killed every year.
So by your logic, if you’re a woman and your partner has a gun, and is walking towards you and you can’t clearly tell that they don’t have a gun on them, “they just want to give you a kiss before leaving home” isn’t an argument. They’re vermin that can kill you and you’re absolutely allowed to play it safe, defend yourself and shoot them.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/.50_Beowulf
People not used to dogs often seem to think it is, and I'd hate for people to start shooting dogs just because they bark. Dogs bark, it's what they do.