Handguns: Difference between revisions

{{trope}}

 

 

There are certain rules about guns and who's armed with what. In general, in non-military stories, the protagonist is armed only with their trusty handgun. Essentially, a character who carries a pistol as their primary firearm is showing just how cool he really is; he can take the field with an inferior weapon and win the day. However, pistols can be portrayed as wonder weapons, equal to a rifle in killing power.

To be fair, the handgun does provide certain advantages for many walks of heroic life. It is small, easily concealed, and easily used. Even when better armaments are available and sometimes more advantageous, many heroes still carry a handgun as their primary firearm. Rifles and the like are reserved for supporting characters or the [[Redshirt Army]] or [[Evil Minions]] to carry.

 

 

Exceptions apply for characters in the military, as rifles and other such military-grade weapons are standard-issue. Even then, such a character is frequently reduced to using his trusty sidearm when facing down the [[Big Bad]], or may carry a pistol if they are an officer or special forces.

 

However, when it comes to handguns, everyone agrees that [[Revolvers Are Just Better]]

 

== [[Anime]] and [[Manga]] ==

* While the various mercenary ne'er-do-wells of ''[[Black Lagoon]]'' use a wide variety of weapons, the most skilled tend to use either pistols or a [[Hand Cannon]]. Nevertheless, while chainsaw, minigun, and dual-pistol wielding maniacs are the order of the day, the most feared and effective force in the setting are Balalaika's faceless snipers and AK-wielding ex-paratroopers.

* The main crew of [[Cowboy Bebop|the Bebop]] usually use handguns. Possibly justified by the crew being too poor to afford anything else, and by ridiculously powerful weapons being a bad idea when you need to bring in your target alive to get paid, as well as both dangerous and conspicuous in the populated areas they often have to fight in.

* Teana's [[Weapon of Choice]] in ''[[Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha]]''. Helps that it's a [[Magitek]] handgun that fires [[Abnormal Ammo|magical bullets that pack a punch]] [[Roboteching|and whose trajectory she can control]].

* [[Gunsmith Cats|Rally Vincent]] almost always uses a pistol, but she does have bigger guns for she needs them.

** Another of [[Kenichi Sonoda]]'s manga, ''[[Cannon God Exaxxion]]'' has an interesting spin on this. The main hero only uses pistols, but since they're magnetic acceleration/chemical propellant hybrids built with alien supertech that require a supersuit so the force of the recoil doesn't kill the user, it's not like he needs anything else.

== [[Film]] ==

* The various [[James Bond]] movies almost always arm Bond with his trusty handgun. This makes more sense for a spy, who would want to use a subtle, concealable weapon. Of course, since when did James Bond [[Overt Operative|care about subtlety?]]

*** There are some real-life "machine pistols" and pistol-caliber carbines that work this way, in the form of attaching a stock and/or extended barrel.

**** To say nothing of pistols that one can attach a stock to. The C-96 Mauser and its replacement, the Luger, both had optional attaching stocks.

* For the house fight in the movie ''[[Mr. and Mrs. Smith]]'', John Smith went with a simple handgun while Jane Smith dual wielded a submachine gun and a shotgun. Other than her ability to shoot through walls, he was able to keep up with her although this was partially due to the confined quarters being more beneficial for the light weight of a handgun letting him shoot around corners.

* Chow Yun Fat's signature weapons before he came to Hollywood were a pair of Beretta 92Fs.

** He has a quote that deserves to be quoted. Having dismissed the M-16 as being so plastic that it feels like a BB gun, and stated his preference for his Colt, his superior officer remarks that maybe he should head by the Armoury and pick one up anyway. He responds; "Time comes I need one, Sir, there'll be plenty of 'em lying on the ground." The time duly comes, and he is sadly proved right.

 

* ''[[The Dark Tower]]'': Roland Deschain has a pair of pistols cast from the metal of the legendary Excalibur. He doesn't shoot with them, though. He shoots with his mind. But he kills with the heart.

** More to the point, he is the last of his world's professional gunslingers-and his [[Ancestral Weapon]] is a pair of revolvers. The power of the gunslinger's revolvers (ALL of the gunslingers, of which he was merely the last one) is known throughout his world, with revolvers being held up as the "ultimate weapon". Of course this also becomes an important plot point, as Roland spends most of the story with a bad right hand, and loaning one of his two pistols away to Eddie or Suze - neither possible if he had been a rifleman.

** More common for the setting are rapid-fire handheld rail guns that launch small darts at high velocity. An infiltrator trying to sneak past a guard post on a relatively low-tech world is discovered because he was carying an old fashioned firearm rather than one of the much harder to obtain "Pulsers" that the guards in that organization happened to be equipped with.

* It's considered poor practice for a [[Time Scout]] not to be proficient with handguns.

* Malcolm Reynolds in ''[[Firefly]]'' and ''Serenity'' generally used a handgun, even though other members of the crew used rifles or carbines. Usually, though, gunplay happened at unexpected moments, requiring a quick-draw, or while he is in disguise. The rare instances where Mal ''expected'' to get into trouble and didn't have to worry about concealing his weapons, he packed a shotgun or assault rifle.

* Jack Bauer of ''[[24]]'' almost always uses a handgun, and on one occasion in season 5 even manages to shoot down a ''helicopter'' with one. However, he does use more formidable firearms when the opportunity presents itself.

** ''[[Deep Space Nine]]'' and ''[[Star Trek: Voyager]]'' had quite a bit of phaser-rifle brandishing in later seasons, because there was a greater emphasis on [[Scary Dogmatic Aliens]] threatening the Federation (or because the big guns had been passed on from the Trek movies). This was also seen when ''[[Star Trek: Enterprise]]'' was made [[Darker and Edgier]] with the Xindi war arc, leading to the introduction of the MACO's -- basically a special ops team who, unlike Reed's security mooks, had energy rifles.

** [[Fan Wank|They may have just run out of the good stuff by that time, since a huge emphasis was placed on ammo.]]

* ''[[Babylon 5]]'' Security uses the PPG plasma pistol as their standard weapon since they're basically cops. They only break out rifles when things get really bad.

** PPGs are used instead of bullet-firing guns so as to avoid putting air holes in the hull of the ''space station''.

* In ''[[Supernatural]]'', the Winchesters use handguns with silver bullets to take down shapeshifters and a werewolf. They also have a Colt [[Revolvers Are Just Better|revolver]] that can kill {{spoiler|almost}} anything.

* Its parent show ''[[Doctor Who]]'' features even more, with a USP compact, Glock 17, Webley bulldog, Beretta 92FS, SIG P226, Webley Mk. VI and IV, Walther PPK, Walther P38, Strayer Voight Infinity, Tokyo Marui Hicapa, Luger P08, Glock 26 Advance, Colt Single Action Army and Smith & Wesson model 27.

 

* In the online MMORPG ''[[Tabula Rasa]]'', the player starts with a pistol and 1000 rounds of ammunition. Soon after, the player gets more powerful weapons (completing the Basic Trinity - shotgun, rifle, and pistol). The pistol of the three can generate the highest damage-per-second of the three, due to its rapid rate of fire. Not only that, it remains useful throughout the game. Surprisingly, the weapons in ''TR'' require reloading, require crouching in place (beading) to fire at their most accurate and do the most damage, and otherwise behave like their real-world counterparts. This, from a ''science fantasy'' MMO.

* Snake, from ''[[Metal Gear]]'', consistently "recovered" a variety of weapons, including assault rifles, light machine guns, and rocket launchers. However, in most cutscenes, he's shown using his (usually suppressed) handgun, usually in .45 caliber. Which makes sense, considering he's on a sneaking mission and would prefer a single silent shot over a wall of lead.

*** A scoped long-barrel Desert Eagle would be a terrible choice because scoped weapons (not to be confused with, say, red dot sights) are terrible for indoor work, and the Desert Eagle is a slow, heavy firearm with all the weight of an M4 for half the power. And "just about any weapon" is not superior to a pistol in the very tight, confined areas inside buildings. Any "long" weapon, like, say, a rifle (even the military's M4 Carbine has this problem, causing some Special Forces units to use even SHORTER 10" barrels on theirs) has significant problems in close-quarters. It is not unknown for military-issue sidearms to see actual combat use by military units in urban warfare situations in Iraq/Afghanistan currently because they have touble maneuvering their M4s indoors, while wearing full battle gear, midway through a stack of a dozen soldiers, without "muzzle sweeping" your squad. This is a huge reason for the popularity of submachine guns, like the MP5, especially in Special Forces units, who have to fight in close quarters more often than not. Also, most combat shotguns are typically carried as breaching/specialized weapons (such as nonlethal, anti-riot rounds, for use on civilians who pose a tactical risk but not a direct threat, or are otherwise not safe to engage lethally due to current ROE).

** In ''[[Metal Gear Solid]] 3'', Eva's [[Weapon of Choice]] is a Chinese copy of the Mauser C96. And just guess the weapon that [[Revolvers Are Just Better|Revolver]] [[Animal Motifs|Ocelot]] carries. ([[Comically Missing the Point|An ocelot?]])

** Although this was most likely unintentional, the pistol is arguably the absolute best of the first game's weapons. Its boost talent (Marksman) is ''far'' more effective than the assault rifle equivalent (Overkill), while its very tight grouping and zoom ability makes it a better choice for mid-range sharpshooting than the actual sniper rifle (the magnification's much weaker, but the reticle doesn't wander like the real thing's).

** Pistols are divided into [[More Dakka|submachine guns]] and [[Hand Cannon|heavy pistols]] for the second and third games, where they become less [[Game Breaker|broken]] but far more fun with the addition of things like the [[Laser Sight|Phalanx]], the [[Sawn Off Shotgun|M-358]] [[Revolvers Are Just Better|Talon]], and the [[Sticky Bomb|Scorpion]].

* Subverted in ''[[Fate/Zero]]'', where the protagonist Kiritsugu Emiya and his assistant use Assault Rifles, compact Sniper Rifles, Submachine Guns and High-explosives to get the job done. In the one part where he uses a handgun, he uses a Thompson Contender, a handgun designed to fire rifle bullets that are about 3-4 times more powerful than even the Calibre .50Action Express used by the Desert Eagle.

* Very often played straight in video games, where, perhaps for game balance, pistols will be more accurate and more powerful than assault rifles, perhaps owing from the delusion that the volume of fire achieved by assault rifles and machine guns MUST mean that each of those bullets is weaker. Or perhaps its the other way around. The first ''[[Halo]]'' game is a particularly bad user of this trope, creating the infamous scoped pistol that kills in three headshots... compared to the entire magazine of ammo required from the 60 round 7.62 assault rifle (that caliber would technically designate it as a battle rifle) to achieve a similar kill... and at a much shorter range.

** Less so in "tactical shooters," where they tend to be more defensive/backup weapons. For example, drawing your pistol in ''[[Call of Duty]] 4'' is faster than reloading a primary weapon, but you get only the iron sights for aiming. (''Rainbow Six: Vegas 2'' allows a laser aiming module attachment.)

** Subverted in ''[[Jagged Alliance]] 2'', where semiautomatic pistols are starting weapons for cheap, low-level mercs and are at best early game, or speciality weapons if using accessories and/or specialized ammo; even then they're surpassed by machine pistols, which also benefit from these but are themselves surpassed by long guns which usually can also benefit from accessories and/or specialized ammo. (The ''v1.13'' mod as of the November 14th, 2008 build leaves pistols with only a lower Action Point cost to ready.)

* In ''[[Left 4 Dead]]'', all players start out with handguns (although the beginning of each round gives you a selection of other, more powerful guns). The trope is ''slightly'' averted since they're not as powerful as the other guns, but they have unlimited ammo, while the other guns do not.

* Averted in all of the ''[[Grand Theft Auto]]'' games, where the handguns are often the weakest weapons available, with a shorter range than any weapon except the shotgun. Even the more powerful handguns, like the Colt Python in ''Vice City'' and the combat pistol in ''IV'', aren't wonder weapons, and are frequently outclassed by sub-machine guns and assault rifles.

* In ''[[Final Fantasy]]: [[Dirge of Cerberus]]'', Vincent's three-barreled handgun ("Cerberus") is a very nice weapon to have and is very customizable, even capable of being reconfigured into an assault or sniper rifle.

* In ''[[Rainbow Six]]'', pistols are very useful close range weapons because their reticule closes almost instantly regardless of the assault skill of the operative. This means you can fire an accurate shot faster than someone wielding an assault rifle or a submachine gun or a shotgun (though buckshot with a shotgun would probably hit the enemy anyway even if the reticule wasn't closed). Also operatives specializing in fields other than assault (especially snipers for some odd reason) have lower assault ratings (usually) and therefore aim slower with non-pistol guns. This does not apply from Raven Shield and onwards.

* ''[[Wasteland (video game)|Wasteland]]'', the RPG, also started your Desert Rangers with some sort of pistol. A character generation exploit would let you take a full inventory of them to the nearest gun shops and get at least rifles.

* Didn't many [[Light Gun]] games have your character start with, and mainly use, a pistol? Makes sense for the police-oriented ones like [[Time Crisis]], less so for Area51 (where you're military).

 

== [[Web Comics]] ==