Guns are exciting. This is a fact. They’re powerful, loud, expensive, and they can kill people. They can give political and temporal power, legitimise movements, topple governments, and much else besides. They’re fun and difficult to master; the focus of sport and much entertainment, there is a gun-culture, and there is a gun-mythology, and these things are reflected in film which uses guns like it uses anything else that excites people to generate interest, suspense, and so on. That this is something is so and therefore in many ways there is little point wondering whether it is good or bad since it is unlikely to go anywhere, but while it probably cannot be stopped it could be changed. For many reasons (and I will list most of them in the article) I believe that the manner in which guns are depicted in popular culture is not the most effective manner in which they may be depicted not simply in regards to what is best for people, but in regards also to what entertains and excites. As stated they have about them a culture and a mythology and this means there is also fashion and like all things for which there is fashion at a certain point reason will be forgotten. For example a fashion may begin because it represents a certain quality with respect to functionality, but eventually it becomes a thing apart, fashion with respect to fashion, popular because it is popular like a person who is famous ‘for being famous,’ and reason is lost, and purpose suffers, but there is no reason why it should. This article will consist of discussion of the ways in which the qualities represented with respect to firearms in popular culture have become shorn of reason and exist now for their own sake with respect only to the fashions from which they arise.
I like action movies, not all of them, a fair number are at least entertaining and there’s a handful which I would say are actually quite decent films by any measure, but one very common factor in these films is the penchant they have for depicting gun battles in a most absurd fashion; for depicting many things with respect to guns absurdly. The biggest issue is what I call the full-auto-fallacy which is where any firearm which has automatic capability will be fired on full-auto all the time. I understand they do this because it looks impressive, lots of muzzle-flash, squibs going off everywhere, that machine-gun death rattle, yeah, I can appreciate that visually it is very appealing and since film is a visual medium well it makes sense to play to your strengths, but when a film’s plot hinges on gun battles this can really make things difficult. It is unrealistic for many reasons however such as ammunition, heat, wear, and most importantly the basic dynamics of a fire fight. Most automatic weapons have a very high cyclic rate of fire but very, very few of them are designed for sustained firing. The weapons which are generally fall into the SAW category (for small arms) and are often belt fed, fire with an open bolt, and even in many cases have barrels that can be quickly replaced to combat overheating. Most SMGs and Assault Rifles or Carbines lack any of these qualities and as a result overheat quickly and in any event carry too little ammunition to fire for any longer than a second or two at best. Yes you could simply carry a large amount of ammunition, and there are larger magazines or custom high-capacity magazines but the heat issue is quite simply insurmountable; a weapon fired on full-auto for too long becomes too hot to handle - literally - can strip its barrel, can lead to cook-off, there are many issues. SAWs exist to provide sustained fire for a reason; if an assault rifle could fill their role they would not exist.
Even a SAW however cannot manage the volume of fire which is commonly seen in films; nor would such a volume even be required or desirable in any way. A SAW needs to be mobile, therefore its operator, crew, cannot be carrying around thousands of rounds; the only weapons which could meet this level of firepower are more static weapons in well-supplied positions, even vehicle mounted weapons have ammunition which is too limited to enable a constant stream of full-auto. A bullet is not heavy but many bullets are and many a movie scene in which the various gun-fighters blaze away with Uzi’s or AK-47’s or what-have-you for seconds at a time would require them to enter the scene with a wheelbarrow full of 9mm or 7.62 rounds. Of course all of these reasons, heat and ammunition, can largely be dismissed; most people are not so familiar with firearms that these things present themselves as glaring issues to the average film-goer and even the more gun-savvy are quite capable of suspending their disbelief so as to enjoy a nice over-the-top gun battle. These matters are largely inconsequential. The most important reason and one which really cannot be overlooked however is that in a genuine fire fight full automatic fire is used generally for only one purpose and that is cover or suppression; to get peoples heads down. In a situation where someone has a clear shot there is no reason to fire on full-auto since the resulting barrel-rise and kick will only make it harder to score a hit, while two or three single shots squeezed off rapidly on semi-auto will offer a much more accurate and still very lethal alternative. One bullet can kill; we’re not talking about rocks after all, or bamboo-spears but slugs of metal projected often at supersonic velocities many of which have from the ground-up been designed to ensure that they possess suitable aerodynamic and ballistic qualities to kill; if not humans (outside of military cartridges) than other game and the soft tissue of a man is no less vulnerable than that of a deer, or most other popular game. Even the most anaemic rounds like .22 LR, .25 ACP, and so on which many shooters would consider inadequate for self-defence purposes are eminently capable of killing all but instantly if fired at the heart, head, throat or other vital area and even if the target survives it is very unlikely they’ll be in a state to fight back. Again not so many people know so much about firearms that them being used on full-auto presents an error which is unforgivably jarring, but this is not what I am criticizing because I allow that seeing a character unload on full-auto at his enemies when he has a clear shot is not something that takes me out of a film even knowing what I know, in fact it can often be used as dramatic punctuation to good effect such as the slow motion full-auto sub-machine gunning in Cross Of Iron (a very cool scene indeed) but if that is not my problem you’re maybe wondering what I’m on about and I will explain as it is a very simple notion. When you do not restrict the use of full-auto to providing suppression and cover (outside of a few dramatic exceptions of artistic licence) you give your characters no means of providing suppression and cover. This is really very simple, see, if characters are always unloading on full-auto then it makes no difference if they’re firing to kill, firing to provide cover or firing to provide suppression which can be evidenced by the frequency with which the following occurs in a film: a group of characters are engaged in a fire fight and one must break cover for whatever reason so he or she turns to the others and says ’When I give the signal, cover me!’ and of course when he or she does they do so, but there is no clear difference between how they were shooting before and how they shoot after the order to provide cover has been given. The audience are left wondering. The gun battles in movies lack a clear visual representation of two of the most effective elements of small scale fire-fights therefore; next to cover itself (and its nature) covering fire and suppression are quite possibly the most important factor in a fire fight since they allow manoeuvring which is (not good marksmanship) generally how a fire fight is won; one group pins the other down with suppressing fire to cover another group that moves into a position from which it can flank the opponents, a position which - hopefully - allows them to bypass the enemies cover while still offering them cover or concealment. That there is no easy way to visually represent these manoeuvres outside of genre films (mostly those set before automatic weapons became common equipment) mostly war movies is a great handicap. Any movie which wishes to show exciting gun battles generally suffers, and must resort to other explanations for giving one group victory over the other and often such explanations are patently ridiculous, indeed, in many films nonexistent; the heroes win for no other reason than they are the heroes. Consider a film which meets the criteria outlaid above - war movies for the most part as mentioned - like Saving Private Ryan and how exciting the fire fights are in it; it offers much more compelling action than do most action movies with more generic shoot outs. Another good example set in a more modern time would be Black Hawk Down in which, for the most part, the US Rangers and others armed with rifles use their weapons on semi-automatic precisely squeezing off consecutive aimed shots rather than blazing away emptying mags, and even those equipped with SAWs and larger weapons use short, tightly conservative bursts so as not to waste ammunition or overheat their weapons. Only the titular Black Hawks and Little Birds equipped with miniguns really let-fly and we see clearly from the disgorged shell-casings how ammunition hungry these monstrous weapons are.
Essentially my position is that if fire fights were shown in films with a more consistently realism-based portrayal they would be more exciting to watch and the added believability would really be less jarring for the viewer so that they could more easily accept that they’re seeing as a truthful representation and not a pastiche of fantasy visuals so that its emotional and revelatory impact would be more substantial. All in all in the arena of firearms in films a less is more approach is something I advocate for the most part and that really is the crux of my position here which I expand to cover other tropes which, consistent with the full-auto-fallacy are almost universal in movies with fire fights or gunplay and one of which has an even more negative impact in so far as damaging a films credibility and eroding suspense is concerned. It fits in with the full-auto-fallacy because I believe these things are carried out for the same misguided end and that is to create a pleasing aesthetic (I will talk more on this later regarding realism as the best aesthetic) but because it is done by almost every movie of certain genres fitting certain criteria it is not particularly novel or fun to see; having become overused and so its primary remaining impact is the negative side-effect of its impact on suspense and suspension of disbelief.
As mentioned generally in films when firearms are used an attitude that bigger is better prevails, that more is always better, that realism should take a back seat to a fantasy aesthetic and dynamic whose purpose is to create endearing and appealing imagery. A person will wield two pistols rather than one; blazing away with both as they nimbly vaunt about the screen taking out enemies with a mixture of gunshots and kung-fu, a weapon that can be fired full-auto is always fired on full-auto (resulting in the visual and audio effects being creatively altered) ammunition is only a finite quantity when the script requires it to be indeed a person only needs to change magazines (regardless of how many rounds it has vs. how many they’ve fired) when the script feels doing so will somehow enhance the action unless they have some nifty trick or stunt to do so with in which case it will be considered a plus, explosives of every shape and size appears to be filled with gasoline, body-armour is proof against any round at any range and even when the character is obviously wearing it nobody will simply shoot him or her in the leg, neck or head, the firearms used conform to their own specifications regarding what is good and bad based on superficial assumptions and in movies where guns could be used to dilute the tension or drama in a film designed to be tense or dramatic (horror for example) they are always rendered inoperable via mystical forces or turned against their owners and lastly (the biggest problem in my view) outside of the war genre there is never a good ratio of shots fired to hits scored. I will cover these issues one at a time.
Doubling Up
Using two guns simultaneously is going to reduce the effectiveness of each gun by roughly half. There is very little up-side. Most firearms designed to be held in one hand are not necessarily good to fire single-handed; submachine guns for example are only held in a pistol-grip when fired in semi-automatic mode and generally have a folding stock which should be used if one wishes to fire in automatic. Such weapons are simply uncontrollable in full-auto when not effectively braced though there are some examples and a skilled shooter could fire some automatic weapons single-handed such as a Glock 19c, but such weapons for the most part and even most larger pistols and revolvers need both hands to deal with their recoil and muzzle lift. Even if one could controllably use them one-handed a person can only aim and fire one gun at a time meaning that using two weapons would not allow acquisition of multiple targets. The only advantage in doubling up guns would be to increase ones volume of fire in certain rare circumstances and it would be very much a one-trick pony since a person requires a free hand to reload and so as soon as their weapons magazine is emptied all advantages would be gone unless the additional weapon were then simply discarded. To put it simply this isn’t something that movies should never do, but it should be handled with some consideration for the above facts. A character in a fire fight who - for example - picks up a second firearm from an opponent perhaps and then uses it briefly to increase their firepower for the purposes of providing cover or suppression before discarding it would be something I personally would not think jarring or completely unrealistic, and similarly I can envisage a character wielding two weapons simultaneously if using different rounds might have different uses in their situation; one non-lethal weapon for example and one lethal, or a machine pistol for providing suppression and a more accurate pistol with a longer barrel for aimed shots.
Creativity is the master-key here; unusual behaviour needs to be prompted by unusual demands or circumstances you can’t have someone normal doing something abnormal in a normal situation. For a character to enter a fire fight carrying two similar weapons they plan to use simultaneously for the same purpose is, I think, quite silly and should be avoided.
Full-Auto-Fallacy
As mentioned above this is when any weapon which can be fired on full-auto (regardless of whether automatic fire is needed, advisable, sustainable, etc) is, and is always, fired full-auto. For the reasons listed above this is a bad habit to get into but there are other problems also it leads to issues regarding the look and sound of gunshots and the ratio of shots fired to hits scored both of which negatively impact the dramatic effect firearms can bring to the table as a tool to increase tension and excitement. To begin with a real gun shot is a very loud sound; there is a reason people at shooting ranges wear earmuffs, why SWAT teams use sound suppressors for indoor firing when they are not in any other way trying to be stealthy. A gun shot is loud enough to inflict damage on the ear and many are over the pain threshold; get guns going off full-auto in an enclosed space and you won’t be able to hear anything else, it will be disorienting, even painful, it may do permanent damage. This could serve to emphasise the power of firearms: they’re not toys they are incredibly powerful tools that rapidly propel - often at supersonic speeds - projectiles via controlled explosions designed to kill. Now of course a movie shouldn’t make its soundtrack loud enough to hurt or damage the audience but when a gun goes off on-screen you should know about it, it should be very loud to punctuate the fact that a lethal weapon has just been fired possibly with intent to kill. It should be an event. You can only make it a high-impact occurrence though if it is used sparingly however since if everyone is firing all the time, constantly, on full-auto no amount of effort will make it seem like a big deal and the result will mean you must adjust the sound and visuals to be less impressive. If weapons were fired more sparingly and only very rarely automatically then they would and could be engineered to have more impact visually and audibly and that is aside from the advantages listed above one could employ regarding the ability to engineer realistic fire fights.
Marksmanship
This is in part largely a result of the full-auto-fallacy, and another issue viz diluting the potential tension gun battles bring to the screen. In most movies when someone is shooting at someone else, marksmanship does not figure into the calculations and your best method of working whether the character will be hit is by subjecting him or her to some scrutiny based on what you know - is the character female? (Less likely) is he or she black? (More likely) romancing the main character? (Less likely, or more likely depending on genre and rating) etc. I assume most people here are familiar with the appellation ‘character shield,’ which is a plot-device that extends to important characters or the protagonist a superhuman ability to avoid being injured. It is this more so than any other factor that needs to be considered in extant film styles when a character is being shot at as no other factor is so important than trying to divine by what you know of them their importance to the plot when attempting to discern whether they will be killed or not when in a dangerous situation and when you consider such things you’re not absorbed into the story, you’re seeing the film as a film, as fiction, there is no real suspense or drama. Almost never would you think to yourself ‘This character is being shot at, and since I know the shooter is a really good marksman he or she is very likely to be hit,’ it simply doesn’t work that way, but it should.
If it did and the person was a good shot every shot fired should put you closer to the edge of your seat; assuming each round is likely to score a hit. You could manage this by establishing that the person firing is a good shot, and you do that by showing us they are. If the character has fired say fifteen times so far in the film and killed fifteen people then you will be very tense should they be taking shots at a character you like. Now of course this sort of tension becomes impossible to maintain when you insist on having every character unload hundreds of rounds (because you can’t have them shoot hundreds of people) so when the full-auto-fallacy is in play everyone’s ratio of shots fired to hits takes a fantastic dive and so does the films ability to cause tension through suspense. Movie after movie does this; the main character or another important figure is fleeing, in a car chase, shoot-out, etc., being targeted by a villain who is pouring hundreds of rounds of full-auto fire after them and they manage to hit just about everything except the thing they’re aiming for. Less than half a second of such silliness and all tension automatically dissolves; far better to have the pursuer - established as a crack shot previously - fire one or two shots (carefully aimed and timed) which are too close for comfort. The movie ’No Country For Old Men,’ does this very well with the character Anton Chigurgh who almost every time he pulls the trigger kills someone or something so at one point in the movie during which he is after the main character and taking shots at him there is a great deal of suspense generated as rather than wondering whether he’ll be able to hit we are in fact wondering how it can be possible for him to miss and hoping he does. If along with marksmanship and a high-ratio of shots fired to hits inflicted (as above) shooting was also reinforced in tension through sound by giving gunshots the tremendous auditory force they should have such scenes would be imbued with even more potency.
Ammunition & Action
As I have mentioned it is very rare in a film for the consumption of ammunition or cyclic rate of fire most weapons possess to be accurately portrayed. People blaze away for minutes at a time with SMGs from a single mag, pistols with fifteen round capacities fire twenty shots before being reloaded, and so on. The small rotary canons employed in a number of action films are perhaps one of the worst examples of this issue; in Predator, Terminator 2 and Predators, for example, weapons are employed which would consume over half a ton of ammunition in one minute of firing.
There is no discipline and nobody seeks to conserve ammunition and ammunition is simply never an issue unless the script demands it to be; this really takes out allot of tension from what could be one very good feature of such scenes. Imagine if prior to and during every fire fight we had to worry if the hero or heroes have enough ammunition, if they were themselves concerned with whether they have enough, if they stopped fighting to reload or ran out at inconvenient times, if guns jammed, overheated or did any one of the many things which in reality they often do. As I said for the most part in films cocking and reloading is seen as a kind of superfluous flurry; comparable to a fencer twirling his sword-blade something which is done only for visual display when in reality a gun, like any tool, does not generally possess superfluous features. Cocking a weapon readies a round, if a round is already readied cocking it will eject the current prepped cartridge and prep a new one, yet how often in films do we see the odious pump-action shotgun cocked for no other reason than to emphasize the fact that it is being held or ready to fire?
Firearm Fashion
Following on from the erroneous actions and easy-come-easy-go approach to ammunition mentioned above is the issue of Firearm Fashion which is to say in the world of film firearms conform more to a superficial judge of quality and purpose than their genuine accepted applications; there is an aesthetic logic and cause-effect relationship between features firearms have, the way they look and what in film they are capable of or how they are used. For example guns which can visibly be cocked are a favourite such as the generic pump-action because of the menacing and unmistakable quality of its action. Guns that look good perform well. For example in the film Terminator 2 there is a chase scene in which the T1000 is shooting at Sarah Conner from a Helicopter with a submachine gun while she answers with an assault rifle; by any objective measure her firing position (in an armoured car) in the situation and weapon are superior; the 5.56 cartridge in her rifle has less drop, more penetration, better accuracy and more power than the 9mm round the cyborg is firing yet he clearly gets the better of the fire fight. Of course much of this may be due to his relative immunity to small arms fire, but this could be countered in that her position with excellent cover confers on her much the same advantage meaning they were both essentially targeting the others vehicle and 9mm pistol rounds would do far less to an armoured car (designed to resist small arms) than 5.56 rifle rounds would do to a Helicopter. There are many such examples; in that one series alone for example from the second film on 40mm grenades are often used to good effect against the various cyborgs when in reality the 40mm round is a low-velocity, low-energy anti-personnel round designed to injure by scattering shell-casings and is in no way an anti-armour round yet by ’Hollywood Logic,’ it is big and explosive, therefore it is powerful and destructive therefore anything powerful and destructive must also be big and explosive; for example RPGs in films cause big explosions as though they were filled with gasoline when in reality such warheads use the HEAT principle designed to punch a hole through tough targets, causing only a small explosion that projects a superheated jet through armour. This simplistic ‘like is like,’ logic can be seen most evidently in Hollywood’s depiction of Nuclear explosions i.e. Nuclear Explosions create mushroom clouds because they are nuclear explosions when in reality a mushroom cloud is simply a natural result of any sufficiently large explosion weather nuclear or otherwise. In Hollywood though any nuclear weapon will regardless of its size create a mushroom cloud and conventional explosives regardless of their size do not.
Gun Owning Rednecks Eat Puppies
The final big cliché when it comes to guns in films that I have observed and perhaps the single most irritating is that which owes its prevalence to those genres where firearms are not an integral component. Consider the horror genre for example; the majority of films in this genre are - like the majority of all films - set in the USA, a country that is rather fond of its firearms and has no shortage of them in circulation. I’m not saying there’s a gun in every home in the US but statistically speaking it would not be unreasonable to assume that at least a number of families or individuals in any given area do own guns weather for hunting, self-defence, plinking, participation in domestic terrorism, keeping Queen Elizabeth from entering the country, etc, all fairly sane reasons to pack heat. In the world of horror movies however all of these proud gun-owning Americans are simply nonexistent, they’re nowhere to be seen and should anyone actually own a gun (a rare thing indeed) it follows almost automatically that they’ll be absolutely useless with it, unable to hit the broad side of a barn, prone to leaving it in some tediously poor location where it can easily be found by the local serial killer and turned against them, etc. I really think that given the known liberal bias in Hollywood this is one part laziness and one part propaganda. Writers either can’t be bothered trying to figure out a story whereby an intelligent gun-owner with some idea how to defend him or herself is victimized regardless or they’re out to try and prove that a gun only ever makes a violent situation worse. In most of these movies whenever a gun is present (and its rare enough for them to be present at all) they will always be used on an innocent, found by the kids, turned against the owner, etc. This is really just a nauseatingly lazy cliché; I’m not saying that you need to act like guns always save the day because that would be equally facetious, but you should at least acknowledge the possibility that they can, even if you ensure they don’t because to not do so is simply lazy. The worst part of this cliché is that it acknowledges or posits that guns are nothing but nefarious compounders of misery in the hands of private citizens however responsible or intelligent but that they are life-saving tools of righteousness in the hands of state authority which is to say a private citizen with a gun is always a blundering redneck shooting wild, making a bad situation worse (and probably a racist male chauvinist to boot) who’s going to splatter your kids brain on the wall while fumbling about with his Freudian cock-extension but a detective or officer is always the noble beacon of the sanctity of the rule of law righteously fighting for all that is good and liberal and secular and decent. Consider that the two are the same species, using the same means to achieve the same ends and the utterly unthinking stupidity of the assumption is made apparent.
Culture & Mythology
There can be no doubt that the way firearms are represented in films effects the way in which people regard them; I’m not going to say that their negative depiction fuels the desire for gun control or that their positive depiction fuels gun violence because such an assumption cheapens the valid reasons why people desire gun control and restriction (most of which are sensible whether one agrees or not) in so far as that firearms are dangerous and they should be regulated, but to go the other way would be equally foolish as gun violence is simply violence using a particular tool and violence is a universal compulsion to which some are prone; take away the guns and the violence will continue with some other device, or with no device at all, people will always hurt and kill one another if only because they are able to kick and punch, but certainly there is an uninformed ‘gun culture,’ who’s foolishness I lay almost exclusively at the feet of the entertainment industry. If someone shoots someone else, I blame the shooter, and not the gun, and acknowledge that someone with a desire to kill would likely kill whether by way of a firearm or a kitchen knife, but when I see that a firearm can enjoy a renaissance of popularity due to appearance in a popular film I cannot but worry about the media’s ability to influence peoples choices regarding such a powerful and potentially dangerous tool; nobody should own a gun because it was in a movie, or because it looks cool, but only because they have legitimately ascertained that it is the most effective and safe weapon to use for the purpose they intend whether that be hunting, self-defence, target shooting, plinking or whatever. There are frivolities of life where fashion does no harm; in clothing and food and so on, but there are places where it should have no business and to encourage the emergence of fashion in such areas is simply irresponsible.
I’m going to finish this post up by simply saying that if film-makers researched firearms and the tactics of small-scale fire-fights more completely before including such things in their films and if action movies had the same attention to detail we generally expect from serious war movies the genre as a whole would be enriched. A more realistic style could be employed when visually showing fire-fights which would be more exciting and fun in which people could really appreciate the strategies and tactics used by whichever side comes out on top rather than simply relying on narrative conceits and character-shields to give victory to the heroes there could be logical and sound explanations for their overcoming of great odds or ability to survive prolonged fire fights. By realistically showing the effect, sound and power of weapons they would bring more excitement to the films in which they appear and it would make events where they are used a thing worth looking foreword too, it would create more tension and excitement, draw people more fully into the film and make them less conscious of the fact that they’re consuming a fiction. The best aesthetic is reality, the ‘coolest,’ looking things are things that work; rather than trying to artificially manufacture a cool image one can instead simply show an effective image which people will see as cool when they come to appreciate the logic behind its effectiveness and finally instead of trying actively to demonise guns on one hand while building up a gun-mythology on the other it would be more effective on all counts to simply serve realism. Guns are dangerous nobody would contest this, they are powerful and can inflict terrible injuries and they need to be respected for their power and potential to damage, when on one hand you show guns as a malevolent force based on illogical conceits (that they are always owned by fools, that they always end up being used against their owners) and on the other hand show them as glamorous fashion accessories subject to an aesthetic-based illogical system of operation and effectiveness you send a mixed signal that weakens both sides so that they become at once less threatening and less exciting.
