Dumb TV gun stuff

[shooterg]

Watched an episode of a Canadian cop shop show while snowed in - Cold Squad, I believe. Anyway an old murder was from a ".38" wound, a .357 had been recovered recently, and the forensics person was explaining to the cop that it could be the same firearm, since ".38's and .357's have the same barrel size" !
See, who says TV isn't educational !?

My wife tapes her soaps during the week and watches on the weekend - so yeah, I sit through some of 'em with her - the gun in the hand of the "bad guy" changed from a blued pistol to a nickel/stainless revolver in sequential scenes on one of 'em ! Whatever the prop guy picks up first, I guess.

[abunaitoo]

I remember in an early episolde of "Flash Point" the scope was mounted backwards on the rifle the actor was looking thorugh.

Even now on "Hawaii 5-0" it seems they have special firearms that have solved the recoil problem.

I always get a good laugh out of these.
Always remind myself "it's just TV"

[Ben]

Off topic a little bit.....but do you remember the old black and white westerns, where the 6 shooters would fire 25 times without stopping to reload ?

[starnbar]

Ben Listen Jerry Mickulic personally trained all those guys come on didn't you see his name in the credits ????????????? just kiddin

[376Steyr]

Watched an episode of "Castle" (silly cop/mystery show) where a major plot point was "proving" that a flintlock dueling pistol couldn't hit a man-sized target at what looked like 50 feet. Aaron Burr and Alexander Hamilton were unavailable for comment.

[Wots]

Or in some programs/movies, when they are shooting a semi auto/auto, and there is no brass being ejected.

[Jim]

I vote for Elmer Fudd's 25 round double barrel.

[1Shirt]

How about that opening shot in "Last of the Moheicans" where after running hundreds of yards after the deer, he pulls up, with his flinter, no weave or breathing problem, and drops the critter on the spot!
1Shirt!:coffee:

[DIRT Farmer]

Now don't be pick'n on the Last ofthe Moheicans, that is one of the origonal super heros.

Just saw on one of the shows my wife is watching, the perp shot a guy with a "454". Lot of muzzle flash no recoil.

[btroj]

What do you guys expect? They need to solve the crime the day it happened, that way the characters can get on with their over the top sex lives, etc.

I expect no more reality with firearms in tv or movies than I see with anything else.

It is all entertainment to me. Certainly not an educational experience.

[Bert2368]

The guy who taught us hunter safety and ran our junior rifle club in the 70's started the program every year with "don't ever try anything you see on TV. And ESPECIALLY anything you saw on Hawaii 5-0!"

Now I am out doing movie and video special effects, among other things. And I often can't make them look realistic, I have to make 'em look like what the audience is used to from TV and movies they grew up with- everything blows up real slowly and with lots of fire in tinsel town. Bullets sure act funny around there too...

[BOOM BOOM]

HI,
Those guns were like the ASPERLY AIMLESS. (SP) see the old thread.:Fire::Fire:

[shooterg]

The thing is - many non-shooters believe what they see on TV/in the movies is possible. So entertainment aside, I like to point out some of the absurdities to some of 'em. Everybody here knows better, of course !

[Gary Carter]

At least on TV they keep showing people shooting straight through the windshield instead of the dash on front of the person. By seeing this all the gang bangers will shoot straight in and there rounds will end up in the roof. Try watching tv with some gun/bullet knowlege and any sort of a medical back ground, the wife really gets irritated.

[Tom W.]

Off topic a little bit.....but do you remember the old black and white westerns, where the 6 shooters would fire 25 times without stopping to reload ?


And not only that, they almost had to throw the bullets out of the barrel!

[waksupi]

How about that opening shot in "Last of the Moheicans" where after running hundreds of yards after the deer, he pulls up, with his flinter, no weave or breathing problem, and drops the critter on the spot!
1Shirt!:coffee:

You mean like biathlon competitors do? :popcorn:

[Bret4207]

It's not even the gun stuff that's over the top on the cop shows, it's conducting autopsies in dark rooms, 2 cops working one single case for weeks on end with no other cases piling up, no paperwork, court time, training time, etc. Completely unrealistic.

And I don't know how many of you have ever tried to get a plate number during a high speed chase but you need to get a lot closer than old Marty Milner and Kent McCord did on Adam 12!

[The Double D]

Just last night on NCIS it was suggested that a test be ran on the woman suspect for the presence of cordite and sulfur to see if she fired a gun.

.

[Rocky Raab]

Ahhh yes, the smell of cordite - and planes on the tarmac.

Nothing like using terms that sound "romantic" or "authentic" even if the things themselves haven't been used or decades.

[Bent Ramrod]

It's not surprising that nobody ever needs to practice their handgun shooting on TV or in the movies, since they get into at least one gunfight a day on those shows. Of course in those rare situations when they are on the range, it's always a benchrest cluster in the K zone, pretty much expected of someone who essentially gets their target practice in on the street.

They have to maintain this level of proficiency, since the bad guys, after handing over a briefcase of money, can always take a sample weapon out of a crate, pop in a magazine, and fire a 3/4" group on the brick wall at the end of a block-long alley from the hip, in the dark.

I watch most of them anyway, but not for the gun stuff. I like the part where the detective brings in the single hair or fingernail clipping and says "Get this to Trace." The person they are talking to says "I'm on it," and after A Word From Our Sponsor, the computer printout is delivered to the detective with the perp's name, address, driver and car license and his favorite flavor of ice cream.

When I drop off my samples, I get "Well, I've got Mandatory Training this afternoon, then I have a Doctor's appointment tomorrow, and then Official Travel for next week, after which I'm going on Vacation and I generally come home Sick, so I won't be able to get to your stuff for a while."

I need those shows![smilie=b:

[theperfessor]

I thought the original Miami Vice series had pretty realistic gun shot sounds compared to other shows of the time. And some neat guns showed up from time to time. Other than that it was sheer "entertainment".

[Bret4207]

It's not surprising that nobody ever needs to practice their handgun shooting on TV or in the movies, since they get into at least one gunfight a day on those shows. Of course in those rare situations when they are on the range, it's always a benchrest cluster in the K zone, pretty much expected of someone who essentially gets their target practice in on the street.

They have to maintain this level of proficiency, since the bad guys, after handing over a briefcase of money, can always take a sample weapon out of a crate, pop in a magazine, and fire a 3/4" group on the brick wall at the end of a block-long alley from the hip, in the dark.

I watch most of them anyway, but not for the gun stuff. I like the part where the detective brings in the single hair or fingernail clipping and says "Get this to Trace." The person they are talking to says "I'm on it," and after A Word From Our Sponsor, the computer printout is delivered to the detective with the perp's name, address, driver and car license and his favorite flavor of ice cream.

When I drop off my samples, I get "Well, I've got Mandatory Training this afternoon, then I have a Doctor's appointment tomorrow, and then Official Travel for next week, after which I'm going on Vacation and I generally come home Sick, so I won't be able to get to your stuff for a while."

I need those shows![smilie=b:

Yeah, I love it when they run a guys name, just his NAME, and instantly there's a color pic of the bad guy, his girlfriend, all known friends and accomplices, his car, his house or apt., his 5th grade teacher, his Drill Instructor from boot camp, his bank and phone records for the last 7 years, all his tax returns, every gun he's ever touched, the type of foot wear he's fond of, samples of his fingerprints, DNA, blood, semen, saliva, a few pubes and some ear wax. With a few more strokes of the key board they have video tape of his exact location over the past 6 weeks and live footage of his current whereabouts. I don't know why the cops have such a hard time catching these guys when they have all that stuff. I mean, they wouldn't put it one TV if it wasn't real.......right?

Same thing for fingerprints- they get a finger print, an absolutely perfect print BTW, off a hunk of rotten wood or some dog hair or some 36 grit sandpaper and the cop feeds it into the magic machine back at HQ. In an instant...(see paragraph above). Reality? Last I knew, if you were so incredibly fortunate as to be able to secure an actual print, it had to be hand carried by a Senior Investigator 2-300 miles to our super duper Forensics Investigation Center in Albany and then some lab dweeb would put down his Dunkin Donut and mosey over to accept the print. After that the print disappeared for an indeterminate period of time, usually 2-16 weeks, and then a response would be sent through the relays (hand carried across hundreds of miles) back to the Senior. Not quite like TV, eh?

I don't even want to get into TV vs. reality of investigations. Sheesh! Suffice it to say it a rare event to have more than maybe an hour straight to work on any case.

[Bret4207]

Just last night on NCIS it was suggested that a test be ran on the woman suspect for the presence of cordite and sulfur to see if she fired a gun.

.

HEY! NCIS has ZIVA. I can cut any TV show with a Ziva a lot of slack.

[Bent Ramrod]

Don't forget ABBY! I'd give a lot for an Abby in our lab. She wouldn't even have to look like her, just do the work like that.

She's also one of the few lab techs that doesn't carry a gun, interview suspects, or defy her superiors on a regular basis, which helps my suspension of disbelief just wonderfully.

[462]

Other than news updates and the ocassional "old"movie, I stopped watching television a long time ago. Thanks for reminding me that I've not missed anything.

[watkibe]

The same thing happens in print, which makes the mistake seem more enduring than video.

I can't count the times a good mystery/detective novel has been ruined by the hero who "snicked off the safety of his service revolver", or the bad guy who forgot to pick up "the 38 Special brass from his semi-automatic." (I know, there was one revolver (a Webley?) with a safety to meet a government contract spec; and there once was one 38 Special target semi auto made by S&W, made for a short time many years ago. I imagine street crimes commited with collector items are fairly rare...)

One of the worst was in a Robert B. Parker novel, where Spencer's sidekick Hawk has a 25 semi auto concealed inside his mitten for a winter showdown with the bad guys...and it actually fired more than once !?! Most 25's have trouble doing that every time when in the open, how it's supposed to work inside a mitten, I don't know.
I think every crime/mystery fiction author should own, at the least, a copy of Cartridges of the World, and a subscription to Guns & Ammo, haha !

[82nd airborne]

Guns & Ammo is one of the worst for printing erronious shooting info, are you kidding?
Barrel fluting makes a barrel more rigid?
A S&W AR22 is one of the most practical .22 pistols on the market?
Craig Boddington....Well I wont even say anything there, that is just a rich guy that does not know guns....

[KCSO]

Daniel Day Lewis ran with his trainer every day and pricticed with a flintlock rifle so he could do that. That wasn't hype he spent a month running so he could make that look good. A lot of the Muzzleloader Magazine crew worked on the film to make it as authentic as possible. From personal expirience I can say that a good man with a flinter in GOOD shape should be able to run 100 yards, reload on the run and hit a 6" target at 50 yards. I used to do this in demonstrations up till about 10 years ago when Uncle Arthur grabbed hold of me.

[Bret4207]

Again, "Last of the Mohicans" had Madeline Stowe. I can forgive a lot for Maddy. Plus, at least they were period flinters and not Civil War era percussion.

[NSP64]

You guys are almost as entertaining!!! LOL
I like ( I think it's on A&E) Cold Case Files & The First 48 They seem to give a more realistic view of how mind numbing and futile it sometime seems to get to law enforcement. They may get suspects and they may not.

I liked Last of the Mohicans and I thought Patriot with Mel Gibson was pretty good also.

[Bret4207]

Yup, "Patriot" had that blonde...Jo Lee Richardson or something I think. You can overlook balding old Mel as long as you get to look at her.

[firefly1957]

ANY shown and everything on HBO that holds a pistol sideways.

I can not remember what it was the other day they put blanks in a pistol to see were the empty casings would land.

[obssd1958]

HEY! NCIS has ZIVA. I can cut any TV show with a Ziva a lot of slack.


Again, "Last of the Mohicans" had Madeline Stowe. I can forgive a lot for Maddy. Plus, at least they were period flinters and not Civil War era percussion.



Yup, "Patriot" had that blonde...Jo Lee Richardson or something I think. You can overlook balding old Mel as long as you get to look at her.

Bret,
I've never been accused of bein' the sharpest knife in the drawer, but I think I see a theme here...

:kidding:

[ammohead]

Does silk really give you an extra 40 yards?

ammohead

[old turtle]

firefly, and they hold them with crossed arms while shooting them sideways. Perhaps they should put sights on the side of the gun. Shows produced by anti-gunners are the worst at BS shooting. To be expected I guess.

[waksupi]

Does silk really give you an extra 40 yards?

ammohead

Nope.

[S.R.Custom]

I want one of those revolver silencers. You know, one of those compact 1" units that'll make a Colt Detective Special quieter than a church fart. Like Bogey used to have.

But you know what's sad? This old Marine knows better.

http://graphics8.nytimes.com/images/2007/05/10/arts/11marvin190.3.jpg

[old turtle]

Bent Ramrod, while not forgetting Abby ( how can I) I have read her bio. on several sites and she has a degree in forensics.

[1972]

Does silk really give you an extra 40 yards?

ammohead

Apparently it does, and helps you see in the dark as well. :-P

But I DO love that show anyway. One of my all time favorites.

[AZ-Stew]

I've always admired the members of The "A" Team who were able to take out a guy at 100 yards with a revolver shot from the hip, but when caught in a fire fight in an appartment while carrying their full-auto Mini-14s, weren't able to do any more than puff up tufts of stuffing from the couch the bad guys were hiding behind.

Tens of thousands of rounds fired for half a dozen hits. We used to call this The Hannibal Smith School Of Marksmanship. Lots of folks at our local range have attended.

By the way, in Hollywood, all bullets stop after having reached the exact distance to the target. I believe most of them dissipate their excess energy in the form of a sort of whining whistle, like you'd hear from a ricochet, except in Hollywood, it's just the sound, allowing the bullet to drop harmlessly to the ground.

Regards,

Stew

[wallenba]

Dumbest thing I ever saw was a TV news reporter relating how a suspect was arrested after shooting at police officers with a gun loaded with teflon cop killer bullets. An officer held them out for the camera. They were shotshell 22's with the blue see through capsules.

[MtGun44]

"Barrel fluting makes a barrel more rigid" -----

Statically, not true, of course. BUT - dynamically, a solid maybe. The natural frequency
of vibration (everything has one) is controlled by mass and stiffness. The amount of mass
removed by fluting is quite a bit, but the fact that there is still a lot of material out there
far from the center means that it will retain a large portion of it's original bending stiffness. SO
- the mass is down more than the proportion of stiffness is down, I would expect the natural
frequency of vibration to go up a good bit. Higher frequencies should have a lower maximum
displacement, I would expect that there is at least a solid technical possibility that you
retain a good bit of the improved accuracy of a bull barrel while shedding some of the weight.

I'd bet that a fluted 3.5 lb barrel will shoot tighter on the average than a normal 3.5 bbl since
more material is far from the center where it adds a whole bunch more stiffness due to being
farther out from the center.

No proof, and I may need to make a computer model and run it each way to see what the
natural frequency does and the amplitude. So - no proof, for sure, but it is not completely
baloney, at least from the engineer's standpoint.

If I was a cop, I'd hope everyone that shot at me was using .22 rat shot! If you're not careful,
that stuff could put an eye out at 25 yds.

Bill

[firefly1957]

old turtle I do not even think it is that they are anti gun as much as they don't know squat about guns.


S.R.Custom revolver silencer I was doing some testing on a High Standard HD-military and shooting it into a pipe with cloth half way down and end buried in sand and a tightly wrapped cloth to seal around barrel . It worked well to keep noise down all you could here was the clap clap of the action cycle then I had a thought (Usually this is time to run). I got my S&W model 17 and did the same I will tell you even 22 shorts sounded as loud as normal from the cylinder gap.

wallenba If reporters actually knew what they were doing they would make a living in the real world. That goes double for meteorologists.

[Markbo]

It is because of all these gaffs, that my missus will just about not watch anything with me that has guns in it. I canNOT control myself from calling BS when I see something obvious. I just can't help it.

Apparently it 'ruins the moment' when Ahnold gets shot at 40 times from 6 feet without getting hit and then he drops 5 guys in a row running at 100 yards from the hip and I cry out "That is BULLSHIRT!" or crack out audibly when the tension is thick from the sniper about to shoot the President and has not removed the scope's lens covers.

And don't even get me started about the ballistics BS from the same lab that is able to provide DNA evidence in hours. :groner:

[WILCO]

Off topic a little bit.....but do you remember the old black and white westerns, where the 6 shooters would fire 25 times without stopping to reload ?

Every John Wayne movie I've watched. I don't care though. :wink:

[82nd airborne]

Im pretty sure John Wayne could shoot 20 shots out of a six shooter with out reloading if he wanted too, even in real life!

[Bret4207]

Bret,
I've never been accused of bein' the sharpest knife in the drawer, but I think I see a theme here...

:kidding:

Yup, just sayin' a little eye candy can make up for a lot of otherwise forgettable script. OTH, no matter what she's in I get a severe case of the blahs with Angeline Jolie, Kate Blanchet and whole slew of other allegedly comely lasses. Don't need 'em nekked either.

[TCLouis]

Firefly1957

Remember there is a huge difference between on air weather personalities and meteorologists. Especially what they do on a professional basis.

Like news personalities and reporters.

Overall print and electronic media have not the time or inclination to do research and background checking to write/cover a story on an informed basis. If local personalities are any indication, I doubt they know enough to know if an expert in the field really is that, to give them information.

Oh wait look where they learn the "skills ans who is teaching them . . . Never mind.

[watkibe]

Guns & Ammo is one of the worst for printing erronious shooting info, are you kidding?


Not that I know of, and not why I referred to it; in fact quite the opposite. G&A would be quite instructive for print and screen writers, who could learn much about "stupid gun stuff".

[3006guns]

Anyone watch any of the "Police Squad" satires? I think it was the first one where Leslie Neilson and O.J. Simpson are in a do or die gunbattle with the baddies on a factory roof. While Neilson is blasting away with a 2" revolver, O.J. is quickly assembling "tactical" accessories to his automatic, i.e. bipod, silencer, flashlight, corkscrew, etc.....

The scene ends abuptly with the bad guy getting blown to pieces....Neilson turns and there sits O.J. on a flak gun.........................I darn near died laughing.

On the other side, the original Batman movie has Jack Nicholson as the Joker, in a gunfight inside a chemical plant. He threatens Batman with a Smith and Wesson (looks like a 1917) and the gun is promptly knocked from his grasp. As it hits the metal grating it magically turns into a Colt............

[frankenfab]

My biggest pet peeve is when an actor swings out the cylinder on a double action revolver, gives it a good hard spin, and it goes wheeeeeeeeezzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz.:groner:

[82nd airborne]

Not that I know of, and not why I referred to it; in fact quite the opposite. G&A would be quite instructive for print and screen writers, who could learn much about "stupid gun stuff".

Sorry, I wasnt trying to bash you, or your post, I had just set down the latest G&A, it is better than nothing. I got your point, didnt mean to come across that way.

[cattleskinner]

Old Turtle,

I believe this is what you were talking about.

[old turtle]

cattleskinner, Good one. Gave me todays chuckle. Thanks

[376Steyr]

Then there was the John Wayne western (I don't remember the title) where for artistic reasons the print was reversed, so the Duke was seen merrily blazing away with the only left-handed Winchester 92 known to man. Plus I wish I had a dollar for every 1873 Peacemaker and 1892 Winchester that Hollywood put into a Civil War epic.

[cajun shooter]

My pet peave for quite a while now has been all the CSI shows. I admire the actors and some of the cases. Gary Sinese has made several trips overseas to give support to our troops. Now for the shows. I was a cop for about 15 years and I never saw a Crime Lab Tech take a case from start to finish. They are not authorized to investigate any cases on their own. When a street cop submits evidence on a big case or small case he is given that information to go forward with. The Lab does not go out and make the arrest. Now let me say this all lab people are overworked and not given any credit for all they do. They did go with us on all meth lab warrants to keep us from getting our butts blown off and I was happy they were present. But the shows are way off base and the Miami show where a certain actor has to turn to the side and slip off his hollywoods is unreal!!!

[wiljen]

My favorites were the Nickel 1911 in Titanic and the "check spin" at the start of Hawaii 5-0 where all the primers show having been struck. He then promptly closes the gun without reloading - good plan DanO.

1.) If you look, it has a 1911A1 hammer which wouldn't be available for several more years after 1912.

2.) The first 1911s released for commercial sale were in March of 1912 and were all Blued guns.

3.) The likelihood that anyone in England to board the titanic in April 1912 got one of those blued guns in Hartford CT, had it customized and refinished and transported to England is NIL.

[Bent Ramrod]

That thing David Caruso does with his neck (supported or not by the sunglasses business) gets more irritating and ridiculous every time he does it. Kind of puts me in mind of Snoopy pretending to be a vulture in the old Peanuts cartoons.

I used to like Emily Procter as the brittle blonde lab tech, because she started out as a certified gun crank. But then they had an epiphany for her in one episode where her psycho codependent boyfriend killed himself and she obviously blamed the huge collection of guns on her lab wall and has treated them only as necessary evils ever since. Typical CBS fantasy wish-fulfillment. In their "ideal society" on these shows, all guns are registered (or it is unusual and unfortunate that they aren't), every perp who kills someone with a registered gun says it was "stolen last week" and is proven a liar, and everybody's fingerprints, DNA, cell phone location and financial and credit card info is "in the system" available on every laptop in the field or office. A genuine hi-tech Orwellian nightmare, in entertaining dramatic form.

The security camera trick where they make the little square, expand it on the computer, add a bunch of pixels and show the official earring of the 59th St. Esevato Yakuza Gang on the ear on the shadowy head in the SUV going sixty MPH at 100 yards distance is pretty neat, too. Unfortunately, the News comes on right after, where real perps grin right into real security cameras at a distance of five feet, and all one can gather is that they have a nose, a mouth, and at least one eyebrow. And "anybody recognizing them please do not approach them but phone the authorities." Good luck on that one.

[1Shirt]

Well, I sure can't argue with Bret regarding TV and movie eye candy. Does help to make up for the errors. Instead of or maybe inclusive of the Last of the Moheicans, would be the Texas Heart shot on a going away buff by Cosner in Dancing With Wolves, with a 44-40, and the clean kill before it killed the kid. Whatever! That seems to be the way kids end a discussion anyway.
1Shirt!:coffeecom

[rockrat]

I always had to laugh when someone was getting ready to ambush someone and they showed the muzzle near the victim, but the gun was actually pointing way off to the side.

[HollowPoint]

I think it was an old Steven Segal movie I saw this in.

Anyway, the scene showed a hellacious full-auto fire fight, and just for dramatic effect they showed a millisecond close up shot of empty brass hitting the ground at three-quarter-speed slow motion.

I guess the special effects director didn't know the difference between Blanks and real ammo. Because it was a close up shot, the crimped mouths and slightly longer necks of all those Blank rounds were clearly visible.

The makers of this movie must have assumed that all of the viewers were just as ignorant as they seemed to be.

HollowPoint

[KY_Camper]

The security camera trick where they make the little square, expand it on the computer, add a bunch of pixels and show the official earring of the 59th St. Esevato Yakuza Gang on the ear on the shadowy head in the SUV going sixty MPH at 100 yards distance is pretty neat, too.

A few years ago I was working as an engineer at a TV station and a very young officer brought in a very poor quality VHS security camera tape and asked me to do just exactly that. At first I thought he was joking. He was very disapointed when I had to explain the difference between TV shows and reality.

[Gelandangan]

My peeve is the way the "heroes" hold their guns AGAINST their head while doing room to room searches.
Baboooom.. loss of hearing, lost of sight and burn out a good patch of hair :)

[oldhickory]

The yellow sparks when boolits/bullets hit something-Anything!...And no hole or mark! Just a shower of yellow sparks. I think I first noticed this in the A-Team.

[3006guns]

Hickory, as usual you hit the nail right on the head. Just about every action movie I've seen in the last 10 years has got those magic "sparking bullets". Not small sparks either.......oh, no.......each strike looks like a miniature cutting torch! Try as I may, I just can't duplicate the effect with lead OR jacketed.......must be some Hollywood technical "secret".

[Southern Son]

Hickory, as usual you hit the nail right on the head. Just about every action movie I've seen in the last 10 years has got those magic "sparking bullets". Not small sparks either.......oh, no.......each strike looks like a miniature cutting torch! Try as I may, I just can't duplicate the effect with lead OR jacketed.......must be some Hollywood technical "secret".

A mate that I used to shoot with owned an SKS (How long ago was that????). Anyway, he used to feed it Chinese surplus ammo. If we were spotlighting at night and there was some quartze like rocks on the ground, we did get sparks every now and then, maybe Hollywood get the Chinese to make the ammo for them?

And the rest of you, LAY OF THE MOVIE AND TV SHOW MAKERS!!!! Where would society be without them educating all those people who aren't inclined to go out and find the truth for themselves. [smilie=l: