Little Useless Gun: Difference between revisions

Line 36:

* Invoked in ''[[Back to The Future]] Part III'', where Buford "Mad Dog" Tannen threatens Doc with a derringer specifically because it will make his death slow and painful, mentioning a guy who took ''two days'' to die of his wounds.

* Completely subverted in ''[[Men in Black (film)|Men in Black]]'' with the "noisy cricket". It's the size of a small, cheap water pistol, and it blows a hole through a completely sealed door. And sends you [[Blown Across the Room|flying the opposite direction]] almost as fast.

* In ''[[Tremors|Tremors 4]]'' an Eastern dandy shows up in a Nevada mining town, and prefers to use one of these, even when confronted with giant burrowing worm-monsters. (It's an additional joke in that the man's [[Identical Grandson|previously-seen descendant]] is a rifle-toting [[Crazy Survivalist|survivalist]].)

* In ''[[Mr. and Mrs. Smith]]'', the eponymous characters are getting guns from a stash. Mrs. Smith complains when she is given the visibly smaller "girl gun."

* In ''[[In Bruges]]'', Ray steals a Smith & Wesson Model 60 from Eirik and shoots [[Eye Scream|him in the eye]] [[Combat Pragmatist|with a blank round]]. When Ken comes to kill him and prevents his suicide, he compares weapons with him, lamenting that he has "a bloody girl's gun".

Line 59:

* An episode of ''[[MASH]]'' focused on negotiating a prisoner exchange with the Chinese. One condition of the exchange was that the Americans had to come unarmed, but Margaret gave Frank a tiny pistol to carry in case he needed it. When the Chinese realized that the agreement had been broken they were ready to call the whole thing off, but when they actually saw the pistol in question they laughed it off as a joke. This is slightly [[Justified Trope|justified]] since the Chinese soldiers are heavily armed with automatic weapons.

* In the 3rd season final of ''[[Castle]]'', Chief Montgomery uses a small Derringer-type hold-out gun to kill a hired killer standing over him, preparing to finish off the Chief.

* In an episode of ''[[Sledge Hammer]]'', the hero's iconic [[Hand Cannon]] is taken away from him, and he's forced to carry a pistol that is so tiny that he holds it in two fingers to shoot.

* In an episode of ''[[Sledge Hammer!]]'', the hero's iconic [[Hand Cannon]] is taken away from him, and he's forced to carry a pistol that is so tiny that he holds it in two fingers to shoot.

* Averted in a conversation in ''[[Law and Order Special Victims Unit]]''. The team is discussing a murder that took place, where the victim was shot with a [[Hand Cannon|.44]]. Munch reckons that the large calibre weapon is strictly for an amateur who is [[Compensating for Something]] and reckons that a professional would go for two head shots with a .22.

Line 65:

* Inevitable in [[Tabletop Games]] that don't have bleeding rules. Low-caliber guns have the worst damage of any weapon on a typical gun list.

** In ''[[GURPS]]'' the .22 Derringer has almost no chance of killing someone unless you shoot them a ''dozen'' times,<ref>or hit them [[Subsystem Damage|in the brain]]</ref> although an incredibly lucky shot could be dangerous.

* A common belief held by the Orks of ''[[Warhammer ~~40000~~]]'', who follow the rules of [[Bigger Is Better]] and [[More Dakka]].

* A common belief held by the Orks of ''[[Warhammer 40,000]]'', who follow the rules of [[Bigger Is Better]] and [[More Dakka]].

** Averted by many other factions, digital weapons (that fit on a finger) are very much effective and in use by Inquisitors and nobles.

* ''[[Shadowrun]]''. Light and holdout pistols did Light damage, which on average resulted in one box of Physical damage. Characters could take 10 boxes of Physical damage before they even started to bleed out, and could take a number of additional boxes equal to their Body attribute before finally dying. In other words, to kill someone with a small pistol you'd have to hit them 10 times before they were even at risk of dying, and even then death wasn't inevitable if any form of healing were available.

Line 74:

** However the complete silence of the .22 makes it great for assassinations since if you can find a dark corner to hide in you can kill a target in the middle of a crowded room without anyone noticing, and the combination of high critical rate, high accuracy, and low AP cost means that you can take down an unarmored target with headshots almost as easily as with your big hand-cannons. Not to mention that it's the only gun that you can take in places where weapons are forbidden without a high sneak skill. The 9mm is still useless once you can find anything else.

* The [[AKA-47|SC Pistol]] from ''[[Splinter Cell]]'', while offering a ''20 round'' magazine, has pathetically little stopping power and even a headshot is not a guaranteed kill. [[Truth in Television]] for the Five [[Se7en]], particularly if using [[Armor-Piercing Attack|armor piercing]] rounds.

* ''[[Hitman]] Contracts'' has the [[SG 220]], a pistol with a seven round magazine and almost no stopping power. It is, however, very quiet.

** ''Silent Assassin'' also had the Makarov and .22 pistols, both of which had little stopping power. Of course, if you ''need'' stopping power, [[Stealth Based Game|you're a bad player.]]

* The Derringer in ''[[Call of Juarez]]'' is typical of this trope.

Line 89:

== [[Real Life]] ==

* The Israeli Defense Force once supplied its troops with a Ruger 10/22 as a "less than lethal" sniper weapon. Reality (and a judge and a number of dead bodies) eventually forced them to remove the classification.

* "Stopping Power" doesn't necessarily translate to lethality, but it's still an important factor in choosing a defensive firearm. In such an event, the objective is to stop the immediate threat as soon as possible, and a bigger bullet generally translates to more energy transferred to the target, increasing the liklihood that the attacker will be incapacitated quickly. Nobody's saying that small calibers are harmless, but there's a reason no police departments issue .25 caliber sidearms to their officers.

** Especially since the goal of a gun fight is not to ensure your attacker dies, but to ensure ''you'' live. It doesn't really matter if the bad guy dies if he ends you in a brutal fashion before finally dying. In a defensive situation, it behooves you not to have to wait an hour for your assailant to bleed to death. This is in large part why (in the USA at least) police departments stopped using the .38 as their service weapon in the early '90s. As Massad Ayoob wrote in his book ''In The Gravest Extreme'', the purpose of using a defensive gun is to stop someone from hurting you. Any bullet can kill someone, but it can't reliably stop them.

** That said however, getting shot in a not-immediately-lethal fashion will still make your average would-be robber reconsider their options (not to mention hurt like hell), so smaller calibres can be surprisingly effective as pure self-defence weapons.

Line 100:

[[Category:Guns and Gunplay Tropes]]

[[Category:~~Little Useless Gun~~]]

[[Category:{{PAGENAME}}]]