Artistic License Gun Safety: Difference between revisions

May also be the writer hinting that a character isn't as professional as he should be.

 

 

 

* ''[[Gunslinger Girl]]'': played with, as the girls themselves are weapons and grabbing Henrietta's handler isn't exactly proper safety protocol. There are also multiple scenes where characters yell at other characters for playing this trope straight, including Henrietta looking down the barrel of her jammed pistol and Raballo chewing out Guiseppe for not training her properly.

* ''[[Appleseed]]'' averts this and invokes physics: when (cyborg) Briareos leaps building to building. In-story, Deunan (whom he carried) is temporarily blind from the G-forces. In his notes he calls attention to Briareos carrying his enormous gun with his finger outside the trigger guard while leaping (proper procedure). [[Shirow Masamune]] averts this trope frequently.

* ''[[D.Gray-man]]'' has Devit and Jasdero who are constantly pointing guns at each other. {{spoiler|Though, they are toy guns and it is how they combine to form Jasdevi, so this might be subverted.}}

* In the "Go for It! Pass it!" episode of [[Upotte!!]], the girls are participating in a live fire exercise. The targets? ''Balloons floating just above their heads.'' Granted, the girls are anthropomorphized guns and aren't all that affected by gunshots beyond minor bruising, but it's still jarring, considering all the other ways in which guns are depicted accurately.

 

* ''[[Star Wars Expanded Universe|Tag & Bink: Revenge of the Clone Menace]]'' Parodied: [http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Image:Revenge_of_the_Clone_Menace.jpg on the cover], where one of the titular characters is scratching his head. ''With a deactivated [[Laser Sword|lightsaber]].''

* ''[[The Boys]]'': Butcher is confronted by a couple of street hoods. One lifts his shirt to show off the gun in his pants waistband. Butcher just reaches out and pull the gun out before either hood can react, then crushes the gun. This is rather tame for a Garth Ennis comic, frankly. Butcher could have just as easily grab the gun, then pull the trigger, blowing off this guy's nuts. And demonstrating how stupid it is to walk around with a cocked gun - in your pants!

* ''[[G.I. Joe]]''. These guys are supposed to be elite. Yet posing for a photo [http://www.yojoe.com/comics/image/dd26large.shtml while holding a gun like this] in [[Real Life]] is how ''civilians'' get featured on "Idiots With Guns" blog.

 

* ''[[Finishing the Fight]]'': When presenting their weapons to medieval era guards, the Chief still shows them his battle-rifle's empty chamber and removed magazine before putting it down on the table, empties out his shotgun and pistol while Johnson does the same, and the Arbiter does the plasma-rifle equivalent. Later, when they are teaching others how to use the guns, the Chief first stresses the correct procedures for unloading, reloading and teaching them what the 'safety' is.

 

 

* ''[[Beauty and The Beast]]'': Gaston declares his intent to marry Belle by pointing his gun at her. Not a good idea. It is true that his blunderbuss had recently been discharged and should have been empty, but later in the film he demonstrates that his blunderbuss is fully automatic, which is another problem entirely.

* ''[[Robin Hood (Disney film)|Robin Hood]]'': prison guard Trigger and [[I Call It Vera|"Old Betsy"]], his not-so-trusty crossbow, which he is none too careful with aiming. At one point he absentmindedly has the arrow aimed right at the sheriff's nose; when told to point the crossbow the other way, Trigger assures that the safety is on, patting Betsy's side and immediately causing an accidental discharge. Minutes later as he and the sheriff investigate a strange noise, he is pointing the arrow right at the sheriff's back.

'''Trigger:''' ''(while patting the crossbow)'' You bet it is, sheriff.

'''Sheriff:''' ''That's'' what I'm afraid of. You go first! }}

* ''[[Pulp Fiction]]'', the [[Trope Namer]] for [[I Just Shot Marvin in the Face]]: Vincent, an experienced hitman, is talking with Marvin, a guy he and Jules picked up in the aftermath of their hit near the beginning of the movie, in the backseat of Jules' car. While speaking with Marvin, Vincent is casually waving his handgun in the air, and when Jules hits a bump, Vincent [[Reality Ensues|accidentally fires the weapon]], shooting Marvin in the face and blowing his brains all over the rear window Even after the accident, Vincent doesn't remove his finger from the trigger; he continues waving it around as though the gun had nothing to do with the mess in the backseat.

* In [[Heat]], Mc Cauley does a brass check in the elevator to kill Waingro. While checking your weapon to make sure there's a round in the chamber when going into combat is a good idea, Mc Cauley does it by putting his whole hand over the barrel to push back the slide. If gone wrong, he could have blown his hand off. This is a rare example in a movie that otherwise notably averts much of this trope.

* ''[[In Bruges]]'': Ken is very careful with his guns. Harry locks his guns away when he's at home so his kids can't get at them. Ray is a bit more careless, but as he's young, reckless, and a bit suicidal, this is in character for him (and he never points a gun at anyone he doesn't want to kill, though his occasional poor aim when he does want to kill someone tends to get him in trouble). At one point a man tries to rob Ray with a gun loaded with blanks—Ray wrestles the gun off him and fires it directly into the man's eye. The blanks leave him partially blind.

* ''[[Bowling for Columbine]]'' has an (offscreen) example, where [[Michael Moore]] interviews a man (the brother of Oklahoma City bombing accomplice Terry Nichols) who literally sleeps with a gun next to his bedside. Though the audience doesn't get to see it, a subtitle informs us that the man has pointed the gun at his head. Moore freaks out a little, though the interviewed man clearly had no intention of [[Never Say "Die"|doing himself in]].

* ''[[McLintock!]]'': McLintock's spoiled brat daughter demands her father shoot a gentleman caller, at which point McLintock promptly goes over to his gun cabinet, pulls out a gun and shoots him. The young man falls over convincingly and Becky begins freaking out, at which point McLintock says that if he's dead, he'll be the first man killed by a blank cartridge. Of course, since this is a [[John Wayne]] [[Western]] with heavy doses of comedy made in [[The Sixties]], no attention is paid to the fact that blanks are still dangerous, or why McLintock had a loaded gun (even if it's loaded with blanks) in his gun cabinet. [[MST3K Mantra|Presumably they expected the audience to roll with it and move on.]]

* ''[[City Slickers]] 2: The Legend of Curly's Gold'' has a scene where Curly's brother, a sailor, checks to see if some gold bars are fake by scratching them with his gun barrel.

* ''[[Goodfellas]]'' provides good examples of the biggest mistake many criminals make handling firearms; to conceal small guns the gangsters stuff them into their waistbands and in one case a woman hides a snub-nosed revolver in her panties. Doing that might keep them hidden, but if they go off you might lose something very important.

* A party guest in ''[[Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil]]'' randomly starts waving a loaded gun around and laughing. Jim Williams suggests they move to a different conversation. John Kelso adds, [[Lampshade Hanging|"Yeah, one less likely to involve gunfire."]] Subverted later on when somebody actually ''does'' get shot and killed, but not because of this trope: Jim Williams appears to practice proper [[Gun Safety]].

 

* ''[[Vorkosigan Saga|Mirror Dance]]'': Miles has amnesia, but when asked to reassemble a number of weapons from component parts, he does so without ever letting the guns point at a person, a big hint that he used to be a soldier.

* ''[[Black Light]]'' by [[Stephen Hunter]] Aversion: Even though they are pursued throughout the novel by gunmen, Bob Lee Swagger refuses to give his companion, Russ Pewtie, a gun. Because, as he explains, Pewtie is untrained, Swagger doesn't have time to train him and Swagger does not want to be around an untrained man with a gun.

* [[Defied]] by the Rebel Alliance in the [[Star Wars Expanded Universe]]. The ''New Essential Guide to Weapons and Technology'' mentions that Rebel soldiers were well known for practicing safe firearms usage, including modifying every blaster that came into their possession to have a safety if it didn't already.

** Verbally [[Deconstructed]] in the novella ''Side Trip'' by [[Timothy Zahn]] and [[Michael A Stackpole]], which features a customized weapon called a "hotshot". This is a blaster with the ''trigger guard cut off''. Supposedly the idea is along the lines of [[Gangsta Style]] (looks cool but is a bad idea), but the narrator mentions that anyone who knows anything about [[Gun Safety]] can see why removal of the trigger guard is a bad idea.

 

* ''[[The Andy Griffith Show]]'':Andy always makes Barney unload his pistol and only allows him one bullet which he keeps in his pocket,most times though he defies Andy and ends up shooting the gun into the floor or ceiling. Why Andy even lets him have the gun is anyones guess.

* ''[[Picket Fences]]'': Zachary Brock, bitter about his brother's injury in a school shooting, calmly retrieves his father's gun from its supposed place of concealment, pantomimes firing it at his brother's attacker, and then just as calmly returns the weapon to its place. Zack's father is the town sheriff, yet his means of securing his weapon barely even slow his son down. Oh, and did I mention that Zachary is about ''nine'' at the time?

** Averted, of all places, in the episode Rebels. Curtis is pissed and has his gun to a man's head yet he keeps his finger off the trigger.

* ''[[How I Met Your Mother]]'': Robin is a gun enthusiast who routinely loses her guns, accidentally points a gun at another character while making vague threats, and apparently goes to the shooting range while blackout drunk.

* ''[[Get Smart]]'': the [[Shoe Phone|Gun Phone]] is by its very design impossible to use properly. Guess which bit of it the earpiece is.

{{quote|'''Agent Smart''': 99 I'm gonna have to hang up now. I may have to fire my phone.}}

* ''[[Bones]]'': In one of the Valentine episodes FBI agent Booth waves an unloaded machine gun at his partner. Yes, unloaded but this is still completely wrong. Bonus fun; this happens in the gun range.

** And another episode averts it by showing that when Booth comes home after work, he first unloads his sidearm, then locks gun and magazine up in a safe.

* On ''[[The Wire]]'' during the famous [[Cluster F-Bomb]] investigation scene, McNulty wants to figure out the angle of a bullet entry and exit wound. So he takes out his loaded service weapon and points it at himself to simulate it. All perfectly in character.

* Discussed in an episode of ''[[The Pacific]]''. Gunny Haney rips a lieutenant a new one on the firing range when the officer handles his sidearm in an unsafe manner. Captain Haldane, who was standing next to the officer in question, flatly tells the lieutenant being screamed at that Haney's right.

 

* A number of first-person shooters play this one straight as an arrow, showing the gun being held with a finger on the trigger and ''twitching''. This may be justified since the character has to fire the gun instantly. If the character's finger was off the trigger, there would either be a delay in the firing animation or it would look weird.

** However, many modern FPS games will cause the character to lower their weapon, or be otherwise unable to fire if aimed at a friendly NPC, or while in an area with no enemies. Some games even will have the NPCs act annoyed at you if you hold a weapon in their faces.

* ''[[Knights of the Old Republic]]'': Several of your party members can be armed with blasters. These same party members have scripted hand gestures that they make while talking. They make these gestures ''regardless of what weapons they are holding''. This can be especially unnerving when Carth Onasi is snapping at you about how he isn't sure he can fully trust you... while waving a heavy blaster pistol in each hand.

** The same gestures frequently cause melee fighters to impale themselves or others to make a point. At least Jedi will be waving around ''inactive'' [[Laser Sword|lightsabers]]...

* ''[[Mass Effect]]'': While characters usually put their guns away during cutscenes, some don't, which can lead to situations like a security guard waving a sniper rifle at you one-handed while he's telling you what a good job you did.

** Shepard him/herself often waves his/her weapon around in a way that would be outrageously irresponsible for a military or law enforcement agent of any kind. [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dJxJmkk877I&NR=1 The Renegade option for Conrad] alone may seem awesome, but if Shepard weren't above the law, he/she would be facing a courtmartial faster than you can say, "Immensely profitable trilogy." It gets worse in the next game, where you can simply shoot him in the foot.

** The second game did slightly better than the first, in that you could no longer draw weapons outside of combat areas. In the first, you were quite free to pull out your assault rifles and shoot up any part of the Citadel you like—including the high-security center of galactic government!--without anyone so much as batting an eye. You just can't actually harm any civilians by shooting them.

** Interestingly averted somewhat at one point—when you first meet Garrus, he takes down a thug holding a doctor hostage with a single shot. Shepard can either congratulate him on the shot or berate him for taking the very dangerous risk of shooting at someone when there's an innocent victim only a few inches away. (Mass effect weapons have built-in targeting computers and likely "smart" ammunition as well, plus Garrus' visor acts also helps his aim. Still, it's a very serious risk.)

** A lot of the NPC, especially those belonging to [[Private Military Contractors|merc]] or criminal gangs have poor [[Gun Safety]]. Possibly justified in that they are criminals and unlikely to follow good practice. Another particulary egregious example is of Jonn Whitson, who wants to sign up for the mission to kill Archangel, who takes his piece out and starts waving it around. Justified, given that he obviously has no combat experience.

* ''[[Deus Ex]]'' [[Lampshade Hanging|Lampshaded]]: where [[Gun Safety]] leaflets can be picked up and read. Averted otherwise, as JC always holsters any weapons when initiating dialog. Even if he's caught flat-footed by someone he may rather keep his gun on. In certain areas, some civilians will panic if you have your gun out when you attempt to talk to them, forcing you to holster your weapon beforehand. In other areas, though, the trope is played straight unless you initiate dialog with other characters.

** '''Caitlyn''' is shown with her rifle held over her shoulder. Presumably, whenever she does this it's not loaded or she has safety off. However, she takes a rifle and ''holds it in one hand'' while using one of her special attacks. In real life, this is ''asking'' for a sprained or broken wrist.

** '''Miss Fortune''' uses [[Guns Akimbo]], but whenever she runs, she quickly holsters them.

** '''Gangplank''' however has a pistol in hand and has it perpetually pointed up unless he brings it down to fire or use Parrrley. He does this to signal his ship to fire on a target location with his ult, and ironically even used to shoot his own men.

* ''[[Galaxy Angel (video game)|Galaxy Angel]]'' During your first meeting with [[The Gunslinger|Forte Stollen]], she is seen demonstrating her skills with a [[Revolvers Are Just Better|Revolver]] in the [[Cool Ship|Elle Ciel]] shooting range. After, presumably, firing every bullet in the chamber she turns around and ''playfully aims'' the gun at [[The Hero|Tact]]'s face, whom naturally reacts with fear. It's quite jarring, seeing as she is, otherwise, responsible with the handling of firearms.

* When a World of Warcraft character holds a gun but isn't firing it, they hold it level with the ground, pointing forward, by gripping the heel and trigger.

* In ''Shadowrun: Hong Kong'', before leaving for the final level there is an optional sequence where you can give one of the NPC vendors (a teenaged boy) a gun to defend himself with, as rioting is expected to break out soon. Upon finding out that he's never used a gun before, there is a dialogue option to give him a basic briefing in gun safety. If your character has a decent skill level in gun combat, your safety briefing will be a very accurate and succinct overview of Cooper's Four Rules. And if your character doesn't have the skill... then your weapons safety briefing will be inadequate, and you will return to find out that said NPC accidentally shot themselves in the foot while you were gone.

 

* ''[[Schlock Mercenary]]'': [http://www.schlockmercenary.com/d/20070920.html Averted]. [[The Captain]] is so confident in the [[Gun Safety]] skills of his crew, many of their weapons [http://www.schlockmercenary.com/d/20010316.html don't have safeties] ([http://www.schlockmercenary.com/d/20030704.html except] for certain [http://schlockmercenary.com/d/20070522.html heavy weapons] issued to certain [[Trigger Happy]] crewmembers). Played straight in this [http://www.schlockmercenary.com/d/20091007.html strip] along with [[Gangsta Style]]. The next [http://www.schlockmercenary.com/d/20091008.html strip] makes it clear that he knew how stupid he was being and just didn't care.

** Then there's [http://www.schlockmercenary.com/2006-05-02 this strip] with the local police trying to arrest Elf. Which rule was "know what's behind your target" again? (However, this is a deliberate set up by the author.)

* ''[[The Dreadful]]'': Someone shows up at Kit's door and starts threatening and talking down to her, while flipping his revolver around like [[Metal Gear Solid|Revolver Ocelot]]. Unfortunately for him, Kit is [[Improbable Aiming Skills|good enough a shot]] to hit the hammer of said revolver in midair, while it's pointing at his [[Boom! Headshot!|head]].

 

* ''[[Whateley Universe]]'' Frequently averted: The Range staff are very, very hot on [[Gun Safety]], understandably given that they work at a ''school''. A couple of the writers appear to be gun enthusiasts and/or soldiers of one stripe or another. Big deals are made in-universe of the times when people don't follow the rules.

* ''[[Kickassia]]'': It seems like Sage is going to [[I Just Shot Marvin in the Face|blam himself]], doing things like holding up his 'Immortality' Uzi to his head to ''wipe his tears away.'' {{spoiler|He doesn't.}}

* [[Cracked.com]] has [http://www.cracked.com/article_18576_5-ridiculous-gun-myths-everyone-believes-thanks-to-movies.html an article deconstructing this trope, as used in Hollywood].

* Mostly averted thanks to a glitch in the game engine in [[Red vs. Blue]], a Halo machinima. To keep the characters from looking like they were pointing guns around while talking to one another, the creators were able to exploit a glitch in the first game in which a character would be looking down but would appear to be looking straight ahead, making it appear they lowered their weapon. (In subsequent games, Bungie actually deliberately put this functionality in for the use of machinima makers.) Despite that, everyone still carries around multiple weapons and fire them off for little to no reason on occasion. Perhaps the most egregious example is Tex using Caboose as target practice in her first appearance ([[Knife Outline|shooting ''around'' him]], not ''at'' him). Although she's a highly trained fighter and an excellent shot (as well as {{spoiler|an AI, so she theoretically should have perfect aim... if we ignore the example of Church}}) and she's only a few feet away from him, it's still an insanely dangerous thing to do.

 

* ''[[Sym-Bionic Titan]]'': Galaluna's military academy has the worst security imaginable. To wit, Baron, who admittedly had the best record at the school, is able to take fully charged laser weapons to try to kill Lance without having to go through any security or check out procedures. They're kept in an unlocked cabinet. It gets worse when they enter the training wing, where both boys are able to hijack ''fully-armed''<ref>and ''loaded''</ref> battle mechs without so much as a security code. The only way to deactivate these things is a shutdown switch built ''on the mech'' rather than in a remote station since they are training devices. Another possibility is that the control console was too far away to reach in time to keep the people nearby safe.

* ''[[Gargoyles]]'': Elisa is, at one point, seriously injured when Broadway accidentally shoots her while playing with her gun. Elisa, a NYPD detective, had left her sidearm, holster ''and'' gun belt unattended ''in another room'' from where she was (she admits later that she should have known better). Notably, she's much more careful for the rest of the series.

* In ''[[Daria]]'', during the ''Daria Hunters'' episode, several characters are shown playing paintball without safety goggles on. Granted, Paintball guns are not necessarily deadly weapons, but they still hurt and and can inflict [[Eye Scream]] if they hit an unprotected face. Sandi even calls Quinn, Tiffany, and Stacey out on this because the rules of paintball state you're supposed to wear goggles.

 

{{reflist}}

[[Category:Guns and Gunplay Tropes]]

[[Category:Did Not Do the Research]]

[[Category:Guns Do Not Work That Way]]

[[Category:Stupidity Tropes]]