Gun Mistakes in Fiction Writing: Handgun Edition

https://www.swiftsilentdeadly.com/blog/gun-mistakes-in-fiction-writing-handgun-edition

by bushwart • 20 days ago

67 89 20 days ago

nephihaha• 20 days ago

Geoffrey Boothroyd wrote some letters to Ian Fleming about James Bond's armoury, which Fleming took on board. Fleming incorporated a Boothroyd character into the books who was later merged with Q.

bombcar4• 20 days ago

Bond using a “top secret compact rifle” that I recognized as an AR-7 was greatly disappointing to me, especially I had just finished discovering how crappy a gun that thing is.

defrost4• 20 days ago

(28th June 2021) .. and I didn't find a Mistakes: Long Gun Edition.

5424582• 20 days ago

I'm not a deep-in-the-weeds expert, but if I had to put together an "obvious long rifle mistakes in fiction" article, it’d probably be:

* People pumping shotguns after every round, or unnecessarily cycling the bolt after every round

* Wrong action type for the gun

* Wrong shotgun ammo for the context

* Wrong safety type for the gun (most long guns have safeties, but they are operated in a variety of ways)

* Magazine vs clip vs chamber vs tube

* Shotgun impacts launching people across rooms, or unrealistic recoil (both too high and too low) for the weapon type

defrost4• 20 days ago

How about accounting for Coriolis "force" in addition to drop and wind when shooting ULR 5,000 yards?

Have you seen that in a film? Is it actually a thing, can you ignore it?

RayeEvtuch• 20 days ago

Many long guns are not semi-auto and have to have their action cycled after each round. that's super common.

waltwalther3• 19 days ago

Generally, all long guns that are not auto/semi-auto must be cycled after every shot in order to chamber another round. This includes pump-action, bolt-action, and lever-action rifles/shotguns. There are exceptions, such as revolver rifles.

There are also instances when semi-auto pistols might need to be cycled after every round.

calyth20182• 19 days ago

Buckshot spread is another common mistake in fiction, e.g. when it's close you still need to aim

dn35002• 20 days ago

I'm not a handgun expert at all but I've caught a few of these, like the guy who racked the slide on his revolver. The author who really impressed me, although not with his handgun knowledge, was Tom Clancy. I was in the anti-submarine warfare business in the 1970s and some of what he wrote in Red October I only knew from classified sources.

bombcar4• 20 days ago

Didn’t he piece rumors and made intelligent guesses so well that the government freaked out wondering where the leak was?

lukan3• 20 days ago

Possible he had a real source?

Simulacra3• 19 days ago

I seem to recall reading that is basically what he did. He had good sources, he was an excellent writer, and a world class researcher.

dvh• 20 days ago

Chuck Norris can rack the slide on his revolver

waltwalther3• 20 days ago

Church Norris can spin the cylinder on his Glock.

Simulacra3• 19 days ago

There's a rumor that Reagan very seriously asked his admirals repeatedly if it was true. I know he "couldn't put it down."

Tangentaly related observation, but Reagan may have been the only president to really pay attention to movies and entertainment for inspiration of future events, and possibilities. It was said that he had a similar reaction to War Games, and took it very seriously

kibibu• 19 days ago

Until it came to anything vaguely to do with computing or electronics, which turned into basically magic

fractallyte• 19 days ago

Precedent: A 1944 science fiction story accurately described an atomic bomb – so much so that it prompted a visit from the FBI to the NY office of Astounding Science Fiction. Definitely a point of pride for editor John W Campbell.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deadline_(science_fiction_stor...

pseudohadamard2• 19 days ago

If I was doing this, I'd take it to extremes: "He heard the 'snick' of the revolver's safety as the baddie slid a fresh magazine into the handle, followed moments later by the click-click as the bolt shot home. He knew he still had a few moments while the baddie nestled the stock against his cheek, taking care not to catch his fingers on the bayonet lugs".

There, that should do it.

ghusto• 20 days ago

Jesus. Is this what _we_ sound like when talking about IT?

bombcar4• 20 days ago

Yes, it’s the flip side of Gell Mann Amnesia - nerding out!

nottorp2• 20 days ago

Probably.

But I think sometimes we're more justified than the gun nuts. Take for example the movie series favorite "we'll track him through his GPS".

skinfaxi• 20 days ago

More justified for what?

boesboes• 20 days ago

yeap. And if you talk about trains like this, they blame vaccines ;)

jdkwxnkwxnsk3• 19 days ago

If _you_ sound like this when talking about IT then you really ought to reevaluate your social skills. It’s not the topic, it’s the stuck-uppiness of it all.

kriro2• 20 days ago

I guess my pet peeve of "firing an arrow" is also a gun mistake of sorts. It can be found in many fantasy books. A bow is not a gun, there's no gunpowder involved. If a commander orders his archers to "fire" what should they do, set their bows on fire?

alias_neo2• 20 days ago

What's the correct term? Loose? I'm sure I've heard that before.

I know nothing about arrows except to identify the pointy end.

cenamus• 20 days ago

Shoot?

doikor3• 20 days ago

It is very tiring to hold back the shot in a position like that. In real life you just wouldn’t do that. And in general your archers know their range and will/should start shooting as soon as they have a target in range without any orders.

The volley fire thing is from black powder musket/rifle days. Basically volleys were used so you can actually seen what you are shooting at (aim) and manuever (hard to move while reloading. Easier if everyone reloads at the same time). Most armies still had small groups sharpshooters/snipers running around the field and taking shots freely.

stasomatic2• 17 days ago

"Loose" is kind of for a volley of arrows, not aimed, just pointing in the general direction of the attacking horde. Otherwise, you shoot them, not fire them. In English.

defrost4• 20 days ago

Dip their arrow heads in the fire braziers so the tar / pitch starts to burn, ready for the coming "pull" and "loose" commands?

folbec• 20 days ago

And what about archer companies doing "volley fire" ? As in what looks like 99% of Hollywood movies.

https://acoup.blog/2025/05/02/collections-why-archers-didnt-...

amiga386• 19 days ago

The worst archery bollocks I've ever seen in a film is in Timeline (2003)

The French are defending their castle at night from an English siege. They simultaneously exchange volleys of arrows with their tips set on fire. Very cinematic.

Then the dastardly English commander calls for "night arrows". What are those? They're arrows whose tips aren't set on fire.

The French soldiers, knowing there's a pile of archers at their door, and knowing exactly where they are thanks to the attackers all carrying torches, stand waiting for the signal to loose their counter-volley, and are surprised by the "night arrows".

Such nonsense.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hcUVOlbNb30

nkrisc2• 20 days ago

This is a good example of movies using inaccurate depictions that audiences will easily understand instead of accurate depictions that may confuse them.

Just think of it as a translation.

enaaem• 19 days ago

I wonder what would happen if someone would make a serie or movie with realistic historical fighting? It might just break all previous works. For example armour that actually works and spears being better than swords.

JKCalhoun5• 19 days ago

Alas, and a missed opportunity for education…

asimovDev• 20 days ago

thanks, now I will never be able to stop noticing this when watching anything in English

ajdude• 19 days ago

I was just watching Tom Scott's latest video, he mentioned firing a trebuchet and the guide pointed this out that you don't "fire" a trebuchet since it doesn't involve gunpowder, you launch it.

Tom's commentary later was that he disagreed with that sentiment. "I disagree with those potential comments. Words change their meaning overtime. In modern English, you can fire an arrow, you can fire a torpedo, we were gonna fire that trebuchet"

kriro2• 19 days ago

There's a decent argument for using today's words even for settings that are no the current world. But for fantasy specifically I find it breaks immersion quite a bit. I'm not convinced by the "language changes over time" line of argument. If you take it to a bit more of an extreme it would also be fine to have characters say "cool" or even use some gen-z-ism etc, because hey words change meaning over time after all.

However, I'm also aware that I'm kind of a hypocrite because I'm totally fine with current world grammar and punctuation for example.

dn35002• 19 days ago

In the US Navy at least, you don't "fire" a torpedo, you "shoot" it. The lore is that "fire" has a very specific, very urgent meaning on a warship and you don't use that word unless there actually is a fire.

JKCalhoun5• 19 days ago

In reverse, "point blank" is an archery term indicating the distance where, with your bow fully drawn, the point of the arrow can be sighted directly on the target. (Closer and you have to bring the point down, farther and you have to bring the point above the target.)

It seems that "point blank" has come to mean simply, "a shot you can't miss".

n6242• 20 days ago

One mistake in non-fiction blog posts: not including a label or title for the pictures.

doikor3• 20 days ago

One thing I have noticed messed up in a lot of fiction (written/tv/movies/etc) is how loud guns actually are. Scenes of multiple people without any hearing protection emptying their guns that doesn't have any kind of supressors/silencer multiple times in a closed space (usually a single room) and then just casually chatting with each 5 seconds later.

In general the sounds of guns are very bad in most movies/tv shows (Heat from 1995 comes closest for me).

rayiner• 20 days ago

I wonder if part of this is also failing to consider the acoustic effect of loud sounds in enclosed spaces. Guns don’t sound nearly as loud if you only shoot outside.

calyth20182• 19 days ago

Guns are still not hearing-safe outside. And if you're indoors, you probably should double up on the hearing protection (foam plugs with over the ear protection on top)

This one is not that surprising in mass media - there's no way the good guys and bad guys are going to take a pause and actually put on PPE before the shoot out.

nickpeterson• 19 days ago

Michael Mann movies tend to get this right, Heat and collateral have really decent gun sounds. Turns out they are very loud.

Edit: just noticed you mentioned heat already, I need more coffee…

thrill2• 19 days ago

Just watch "that scene" from Heat again - it's like a double espresso.

m463• 19 days ago

The only time movies try for sound accuracy is with flashbangs.

stasomatic2• 17 days ago

A buddy of mine was showing off his new Ruger hammerless .357 to me. Intrigued by the hammerless design, I asked him where the safety was. He fiddled with it and the thing went off. We were both deaf for about a week. The round went through a dresser and 2 dry walls. We found the slug in the kitchen (we were in another room). I lived to tell, but guns are indeed loud, even a 22.

ourmandave• 20 days ago

The first complaint is "heard the snick of the revolvers safety."

I assume a lot of writers get their misinformation from Hollywood sound effects and the countless other gun related liberties.

Like the terminator asking for a phased plasma rifle in a 40W range. Everyone knows those weren't available until 1997.

kevdoran2• 20 days ago

Kinda like when the hacker character in movies does... just about anything

waltwalther3• 19 days ago

...enhance...enhance...

kevdoran2• 19 days ago

...Rotate 180 degrees to the other side of the subject....

Simulacra3• 20 days ago

I'm sure it exists, but we need this for movies. Of all the things I wish the movie industry would do, removing the sound of racking a slide or pulling back a hammer...on an automatic.. is top of my list of things that need to absolutely go.

RJSquirel• 19 days ago

This. Every movie shotgun uses the sound of a Remington 870 racking. Every camera uses the sound of a Nikon MD11/12 winding. I'm sure there are more.

jdkwxnkwxnsk3• 19 days ago

Please, these are more often than not just creative choices, sure they may be inaccurate but accuracy is seldom the point a director is trying to make when taking creative liberties like this.

If every movie was as close to reality as possible they wouldn’t be classified as entertainment.

gabriel666smith• 19 days ago

Honestly maybe my favourite part of being an author is being able to get briefly and deeply obsessed with any topic I choose - it's a rare privilege.

Beginning and then almost immediately dropping niche hobbies (eg flight simulators, poker, guns in the linked post) is transformed from something a spouse or partner might see as an undesirable and potentially annoying personality trait, into: "this is research, darling, it's my job", which is probably significantly more annoying.

It is easy to make mistakes with a verb one might not think to question like "cocked". Of course, ideally, you'd question every word used, so that the % of readers who understand its full associated meaning don't have their immersion in a story suddenly & painfully torn away.

To be less glib, I find that when speaking about a topic from a character's perspective - in dialogue or narration - a relatively important part of empathising with their point-of-view is understanding the physical and linguistic structure of their world. Sometimes I find there's no way to do this without putting hundreds of hours into understanding the tools they would use or the way they would live. Write what you know!

darksaints• 19 days ago

One of the things about fiction is that it gets almost everything wrong. It isn’t just guns. It’s professions like spies and snipers, cars, boats, planes, programming/hacking, radios, technology, etc. And those are just the areas that I personally know they get wrong, because I know more than the average person in those areas.

Some people judge fiction way too harshly for inconsequential but inaccurate details which only serve for narrative structure. There are actually tons of authors who get all of these details right, but you almost never read their books because if they can get them published at all, nobody reads them, because they absolutely suck. An author that gets these details right and is actually a good storyteller is extremely rare. It’s basically a list consisting of Tom Clancy and John Le Carre.

It’s just a pet peeve. At some point you have to let it go, or you’ll end up wasting your time writing blog posts begging authors (who largely don’t care) to talk to you so they won’t get inconsequential details wrong.

geerlingguy• 19 days ago

A modern author who's fairly good in this regard is Andy Weir; the main thing is you have to do a ton of research while writing and have trusted sources (I think Clancy had many) to rely on when mulling over the details.

The tough thing is, once you get "above average" in terms of accuracy, those of us who like to be a little more pedantic will grade on a curve!

JKCalhoun5• 19 days ago

So hand-wavy is the correct answer.

thrill2• 19 days ago

When a certain now famous (in those circles) narrator was first getting started he mentioned on his FB page he wanted help with pronunciation of certain military terminology. I offered to help, knowing people in many fields plus my own. And ... my goodness, the absolute poor quality of some the writing he sent me. One author would use the full terminology for every firearm every time he looked at it, picked it up, loaded it, holstered it, drew it, released the safety, fired it, cleaned it, thought about while in the shower, whatever. You got tired of reading about the "Heckler & Koch HK45 Compact Tactical (HK45CT) MK-24 Mod-0" fully spelled out three times a page.

And then the author with his own specialty started writing about my field ... oh so badly.

So, knowledge of weapons doesn't translate in knowledge of writing (or vice versa). My only criteria any longer is just don't say "clip" unless your character has scored himself a Mauser C96 or similar and we're good.

rascul• 19 days ago

I just wish they would wear military uniforms properly in movies. I can handle the rest.

pseudohadamard2• 19 days ago

This is why you don't have a gun, you have a boomstick. It's some sort of shotgun and that's all you need to know. Go boom, splatter deadites.

bestouff• 19 days ago

You know how to recognize an American movie ? There's a gun on the poster.

CrociDB• 19 days ago

What if they're not mistakes at all, just creative choices?

jdkwxnkwxnsk3• 19 days ago

Then most people on this comment section would have to find something else to preach and declare absolute knowledge about. Ah wait, that’s just every comment section around here.

stevage• 19 days ago

Somehow this almost inspired me to write some fiction just for the sole purpose of including some real howlers of this kind, that the average reader wouldn't notice. I wonder how many you could squeeze into one scene.

caboteria• 19 days ago

I'm surprised that no-one has mentioned the "magic unlimited magazine" yet, especially with fully-automatic weapons. It's distracting to watch the hero shoot and shoot and shoot and never reload.

Big props to the John Wick franchise for making reloading* a first-class part of their gun-fu choreography.

* ...and badass one-handed press checks that no-one should ever do IRL.

OptionOfT• 18 days ago

To add to this:

    * Finger on the trigger. Very dangerous. Pulp Fiction showed the consequences
    * Using ball ammo

I actually dislike the pistols without manual safety. CCW people always say: but the Glock/P365/P320/VP9/... have an internal safety, a trigger safety and a drop safety.

But these safeties are not additive. If your trigger safety fails, the gun will go off. Same with the drop safety.

At least with a manual safety those are additional. It's not that because your car has an airbag that you stop wearing your seatbelt right?

Gun Mistakes in Fiction Writing: Handgun Edition

Related Stories