Little Useless Gun: Difference between revisions

{{trope}}

 

A character treats a small firearm with contempt. The firearm will likely be physically small and will probably fire small-caliber ammunition, which is considered by some users to be weak.

'''Bond:''' No, sir. I would not.

'''M:''' Then from now on you carry a different gun. Show him, Armourer.

* In ''[[Kiss Kiss Bang Bang]]'', Gay Perry has a tiny Derringer that he refers to as his "faggot gun," because "it's only good for a couple of shots and then you gotta drop it for something better". Given the film's penchant for subversion, the little gun ends up being quite fatal.

* 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.

== [[Literature]] ==

* In the first of the [[Tom Clancy]]'s ''Op Center: Net Force'' books, a female assassin carries around a .22 pistol, favoring its discretion and concealability. She then proceeds to work around the "stopping power" issue by shooting her target in the [[Eye Scream|eye]].

** [[Clear and Present Danger]] has another aversion. A pair of assassins gets into a gun battle with an off-duty police officer and the neighbor kid fires on them with his .22 rifle. The police officer is killed and the assassins flee (the kid tries unsuccessfully to shoot them through their getaway car, but .22 rimfire bullets definitely don't have that ability). When investigators find their car one of the assassins has bled to death inside. The investigators reason that it was the kid who killed him, as the police officer had a subnose revolver at long range, while the kid had a rifle.

*** The .22 rounds don't kill instantly, either. One assassin gets hit in the head, but doesn't die until he goes to investigate his other wounds, which causes the weakened blood vessels in his head to let go, essentially a case of [[Your Head Asplode]].

== [[Tabletop Games]] ==

* 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.

* A common belief held by the Orks of ''[[Warhammer 40000]]'', 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.

** 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.

** That must be the only gun that is potentially more lethal if you ''throw'' it.

* The [[wikipedia:FP-45 Liberator|FP-45 Liberator]]. This pistol was intended to be dropped in large quantities into France during [[World War Two]] for use by [[La Résistance]], the idea being that they could use it to pop an occupying soldier and then acquire his weapon. Stopping power wasn't necessarily the problem (it was chambered for the beefy .45 ACP round), but its range was pitiful and the gun itself could be built more quickly than it could be reloaded. It was often described as "a great weapon with which to obtain another weapon".