Gun Mistakes in Fiction Writing: Handgun Edition

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.

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 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?

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.

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.

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.

One mistake in non-fiction blog posts: not including a label or title for the pictures.

Kinda like when the hacker character in movies does... just about anything

You know how to recognize an American movie ? There's a gun on the poster.

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!

(28th June 2021) .. and I didn't find a Mistakes: Long Gun Edition.

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.

The first complaint is "heard the snick of the revolvers safety."

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.

What if they're not mistakes at all, just creative choices?

Jesus. Is this what _we_ sound like when talking about IT?

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.

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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!