Top 15 Gun Myths Created By Hollywood

We get it – shootouts look more dynamic and exciting when a bright flash of light accompanies every shot. Movie crews achieve these muzzle flashes using fancy tricks like flammable powders and fake guns that create an artificial spark – and of course with CGI. There’s even a practical purpose to these exaggerated flashes: they’re useful to the sound editor when they’re adding the noise of the gunshots to the scene. In real life, most guns have little to no muzzle flash when fired. In daylight, even those that do flash would barely be visible. But you have to admit, these scenes look a lot cooler with those powerful blazes of light.

Even handguns are powerful weapons, and anything that can launch a bullet with that much force is going to have some kickback. Of course, prop guns aren’t actually firing bullets, so they typically don’t have much recoil, if any. Using the proper grip when firing a real gun will make the recoil much more manageable, but most shooters in movies don’t bother to do that. Often, the only time movie guns are shown to have noticeable recoil is when it’s used for humor. In those scenes, it’s so exaggerated and over the top that it’s even less realistic than having no recoil at all.

To be fair, there are some types of guns that do make a clicking sound if you fire them without ammo. But Hollywood would have you believe that all guns do this, and that’s just not true. In the vast majority of semi-automatic handguns, the slide locks back when the magazine is empty, and pulling the trigger does nothing. Many experienced shooters can tell by feel that the slide is locked and don’t bother pulling the trigger at all. However, in a movie gunfight, the moment when one person runs out of ammo just wouldn’t be as dramatic without that telltale clicking sound.

This trope only applies to bad guys, obviously. We’ve all seen those action movies where the hero only has to fire a single shot and his opponents drop like rocks. Meanwhile, the hero himself can take one bullet after another and keep on fighting. In reality, less than a third of gunshot wounds are fatal, and depending on who you ask, that number might be even lower. Even headshots are only fatal 90% of the time. When someone does get shot, they almost never die instantly. Instead, they’re more likely to writhe around in pain and bleed out slowly. But having a bunch of screaming, injured bad guys rolling around on the floor during your movie shootout would be pretty distracting.

So your hero has been shot, and because he’s the hero, he didn’t die instantly. But he’s got to get that bullet out fast, right? Wrong. Unless it’s lodged someplace important, like a blood vessel, having a bullet in your body isn’t that dangerous. Doctors leave them inside gunshot victims all the time. Digging around inside an open wound, potentially causing more bleeding and risking infection, is way more dangerous than just leaving the bullet in place. In a survival situation, it’s a really bad idea. It’s much more important to stop the bleeding and get the wound bandaged than to pry out that tiny piece of metal.

Although it is easier to buy a gun in the U.S. than it is in many other countries, you still can’t walk into a gun store and walk out with an Uzi. It seems like every movie gun shop has a secret back room where the good stuff is hidden, or a shop owner who’s willing to ignore the law for a bribe. In movies, anyone can find an illegal dealer with a trunk full of machine guns, or even buy one online if they know which dark website to go to. Fortunately, it’s not that easy to get your hands on high-powered weapons in real life.

If you’re a movie character wielding a gun, whatever you do, don’t drop it. Unless, of course, you’re in a standoff and you want to fake out your opponent by pretending to drop your weapon. Then, you can throw the gun to the ground knowing it will fire and shoot the other person. In the real world, most states have laws requiring gun manufacturers to test their weapons for drop safety. If guns randomly fired any time they were mishandled or dropped, it would be incredibly unsafe to be around them at all. The gun industry has a strong incentive to make sure that doesn't happen.

Hitting a target is nowhere near as simple as Hollywood makes it seem. It takes years of practice to become a reliably accurate shooter. Even for experienced gun handlers, proper grip and stance still matter. Shooting while running, holding two guns at once, or turning the gun sideways are all going to make it far more difficult to hit whatever you’re aiming for. And don’t even get us started on shooting from the hip. Yet in movies, characters do all of these things and still hit their targets easily. Even characters who have never touched a gun before are able to pick one up, start firing, and make every shot.

If you remember high school physics, you know this is nonsense. Newton’s third law of motion says that for every action, there’s an equal and opposite reaction. That means that if a gun is powerful enough to send someone flying off their feet, then it’s also going to send the shooter flying off their feet. That doesn’t stop movies from showing people getting literally blown away. Apparently, even a single shot from a handgun is enough to send someone flying. Meanwhile, the shooter doesn’t even feel a kickback. It’s a ridiculous trope that directors just can’t stop using.

It seems like no one ever runs out of bullets in a movie unless it’s for dramatic effect. Handguns, machine guns, and even shotguns apparently have infinite ammo. No reloading necessary. We get why directors fall into this trap. Many action scenes would be a lot less exciting and dynamic if the characters had to stop and reload after every few shots. It even shows up in movies that are otherwise pretty realistic with their gunplay. And once you start noticing it, it’s hard to stop. Take our advice: don’t start counting shots unless you want to ruin your viewing experience.

We all know that the water is a bad place to be in an action movie. It’s cold, it ruins your badass outfit, and it makes you an easy target for foes trying to fill you with lead. Seems logical, since bullets can punch through wood and some metals, so why not water, right? Consider this though: what hurts more, belly flopping off a diving board, or off a bridge? The faster you’re moving, the more force you hit the water with, and the water hits back just as hard. Slow moving bullets, such as pistol rounds, impact with less force, and can travel through up to 8 feet of water in the right conditions. Any rifle round or bigger will lose all its energy impacting the water, and will not be able to kill you after a few feet. So, next time you’re being chased by a helicopter, go for a swim.

Who needs water when you’ve got a car? If there’s one thing Hollywood has taught us about getting shot at, it’s that you can always rely on the ingenuity of the automotive industry for safety. Trust us, though; you’re better off with diving in a pool. Cars are built with structural support to keep them safe from other cars hitting them, but the metal panels on the car’s body are kept light to save on weight. A bullet could easily punch through a car door, travel through the car’s cabin, out the door on the other side, and still be lethal to the action junkie who thought he was safe. There is one bulletproof part of a car, and that’s the engine. All that heavy-duty metal is just too much for a little bullet to make it through. Just don’t expect to drive off after the gunfight.

So if you throw a couple bullets at a car, it’ll cause a flashy explosion, right? Not the case: in fact, car manufacturers actually work pretty hard to make sure the gas tank is protected and won’t explode at the slightest rupture, so the car has to take serious damage for that kind of fireball to happen. It’s true, though, that under certain conditions, many things will explode when shot, such as pressurized objects like spray paint cans, but even then they usually need an open flame source nearby to really get that booming explosion you see in the movies. Directors often use sparks from gunshots to illustrate where the bullets are going on screen, but in reality there’s only a spark if the bullet hits a specific metal, and even then it’s not usually enough to ignite anything. Sorry, Michael Bay!

Who hasn’t cheered when our favorite character is saved by a bulletproof vest? Hey, if it works for Doc Brown it’ll work for us! Turns out his field was obviously in time travel and not ballistics. So does body armor stop bullets? Depends on the armor, but more importantly it depends on the bullet. High-end soft body armor, which is typically made of Kevlar, is rated to stop up to a .44 Magnum, which is great if you’re being chased by Dirty Harry. But rifle bullets, which are smaller and moving a hell of a lot faster, will shred soft body armor. Military and tactical police units use armor plates, made out of steel or ceramic material, and will stop some rifle bullets. However, even if the armor you’re wearing stops the bullet, there’s still significant energy transfer. So it doesn’t mean you’re safe.

Let’s make one thing clear: gunshots are really freaking loud! That rock concert that left your ears ringing was in the neighborhood of 130 decibels. A jet engine is around 140. Your average gunshot… 160! Bruce Willis has permanent hearing damage in one ear from making “Die Hard,” so be careful. That’s okay, just slap on a silencer. The problem is, when a gun fires, you’re actually hearing three different sounds at the same time: the action of triggering the gun, the gunpowder exploding, and the bullet breaking the sound barrier. A suppressor will help with one of these sounds, but at best you’re knocking 30 decibels off. In other words: that’s still extremely loud! Maybe not deafening, but the other henchmen are definitely going to hear it.


Which movie gun myth drives you crazy? Let us know in the comments.