Bullets and Bologna

Now I’m pretty well domesticated after 38 years of marriage, but I still have enough testosterone dribbling through my system that I enjoy a good action movie when I can find it.

Despite that testosterone, I have enough brains bouncing around in my little head that the movies sometimes bug me with their wild inaccuracies.

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Obviously, Hollywood is in the entertainment business, and they don’t like to let logic, good sense, or realism get in the way of making money…er, uh, producing a movie.

To keep from making this single post into a multi-volume set, I’ll stick to one subject…guns.  Hollywood can sometimes make a really good action movies, including guns, if you don’t ignore their blatant avoidance of realism.

For instance…

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The number of rounds fired by actors in gunfights can get a little out of hand.  Count the number of shots fired by a cowboy without reloading and you will sometimes find that their (usually) six-guns have suddenly become 12- or 14- or more-shooter.

Some war movies carry things further than that by having their characters shoot more ammo than they could possibly even carry.  A Hollywood soldier may shoot an automatic firearm, shoot it some more, and then just keep on shooting it.

Yes, Rambo, I’m talking about you.

That banana magazine you usually see in Vietnam-era and later movies holds 30 rounds.  That sounds like a lot until you actually get in a firefight and somebody flips their M-16 to rock-and-roll and squirts out all thirty of those rounds in a flash.  Are you ready for this?  An M-16 can fire 30 rounds in less than THREE SECONDS!  Not counting switching out magazines, that’s a rate of more than 600 rounds in ONE MINUTE.

Now that 600 rounds, loaded into magazines, would weigh about 20 pounds.  That’s not much until you think that our movie hero is shooting about that much in a minute, and realize that a gun battle could easily last fifteen minutes.  Again, not counting reloading or breaks in the action, that could be as much as 300 POUNDS of ammo!

Now, the most studly soldier can probably lift 300 pounds, but even he would have a lot of trouble carrying that much weight far enough to get to the fight, let alone then doing battle using that ammo…and breathe.  Try carrying 300 pounds for any distance and breathe.  Those two don’t go well together.

Of course, that whole scenario is pretty ridiculous.  Besides the difficulty of changing out magazines, reloading them and all that, the U.S. military teaches troops not to shoot fully automatic in more than about three-round-bursts except in the rare circumstance where they are faced by a mass of enemy soldiers crowded together.  Why?  Because your accuracy goes WAY down as the recoil of an automatic firearm is factored in.

During the Viet Nam conflict the American military found that the U.S. soldiers’ accuracy was much, much worse than it was DURING THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION!  During the Revolutionary War, the solders were shooting matchlock or flintlock smoothbore weapons.  When those old-types of firearms were shot, the flintlock or matchlock ignition would flash out sparks and burning pieces of primer-powder in every direction, including toward the shooters’ eyes.  This meant that the soldier would generally fire by pointing his weapon, then CLOSE HIS EYES, as he fired!  That, plus the fact that their guns were smoothbore, (lacked the stabilizing effect of more-modern rifling) meant that a shot fired at someone more than a few yards away stood a good chance of hitting somewhere the intended target wasn’t.

Yet their kill rate per shot was better than their counterparts almost 200 years later?

You bet it was.

The average rate of fire for even a skilled flintlock shooter was a couple shots per minute.  Compare that to the more modern soldier who is capable of firing off three rounds PER SECOND and it becomes even more amazing.

I couldn’t find the “shots per kill” rate of the Revolutionary War but the rate of shots fired per serious injury at Gettysburg in the Civil War was estimated at 200 rounds shot per casualty inflicted.  The number of insurgents killed in Iraq and Afghanistan has been estimated at 250,000 shots fired to every single casualty! 

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While we’re discussing accuracy, you see heroes in westerns easily shooting weapons out of their opponents’ hands, and throwing bottles up into the air which they then shoot down with a quick draw-and-fire.

Both are possible but wouldn’t be easy, and I wouldn’t depend on such shots.

Then you see a group of bad guys in the gangster movies blazing away with Tommy guns without hitting anything, then the good guy draws his pistol and shoots them all dead.

Again, it’s possible but I sure wouldn’t be standing out in the open if I could duck behind a concrete wall…or a car…or pretty much anything.

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Watch a western and you’ll sometimes see a gunfight brewing in a saloon.  The two opponents face each other while other patrons of the establishment stand behind them watching with interest. 

Well, they had BETTER be interested because chances are some of those shots will either miss their intended target or hit him and pass through and hit someone behind him.

The same thing goes for the famous gunfight in the street.  Two angry men face off as people line the streets.  Those bullets the two fling at each other have to go somewhere.

Famous gun-fighting lawman Wild Bill Hickock once lost his job in real life because he accidentally shot and killed one of his own deputies during a gunfight.

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Have you noticed that shotgun-wielding bad guys will often pump their weapon as a threatening gesture after they encounter an enemy or potential victim.  Think about this, why did he go into a dangerous situation without a round in the chamber?  His opponent might have had time to get a shot off before he could chamber a round and get ready to shoot.  Not to mention, pumping a shotgun not only loads the weapon, it ejects any round (fired or not) that was already in the chamber.  Have you ever noticed how many times some movies show someone pumping their shotgun as a threat, without ever even firing a shot?

Similarly, I’ve also seen lots of people in the movies thumb back the hammer on their pistol as a threat.  The same idea goes as with pumping a shotgun; why did they go into a dangerous situation with a weapon that was not ready to use?

Back to the pump-action of a shotgun, I’ve caught several movies where the shooter was carrying a single-shot or double-barrel shotgun.  Despite the fact that neither of those has anything that can even BE pumped, some movie-makers believe so strongly in the threatening sound of a pump that they insert the sound where it doesn’t even belong and makes no sense whatsoever.

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In the movie “Sharky’s Machine,” with Burt Reynolds, one of the characters fired a shotgun through a door to kill one of his enemies.  When the police were investigating the killing, one of them looked through the hole made in the door by the shotgun.  Yes, a shotgun will shoot through most any wooden door, and it will leave a hole, if fired from close range.  Most of the time you can even look through the hole…with one eye.  The hole would be close to the size of your eyeball.  The problem with Sharky’s Machine, and others I’ve seen, is that the cop’s whole face was framed in the door.  By the time the shot pattern from any shotgun, at least any that you could fire while holding it in your hands, got that big, it would make a lot of little holes, not one big one.

You say that shotgun was shooting slugs instead of shotshells?  Then you’d still go back to the hole barely big enough to look through with one eye.

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A few days back I watched a Mel Gibson movie, “Edge of Darkness.”  At the beginning Mel’s daughter visited him at his home in Boston.  She got very sick and asked if he could take her to the hospital.  As they stepped out the front door a ski-masked man fired a single shot from a shotgun and killed her.

Now, a shot from a shotgun can quite effectively mess up someone’s health record.  In Gibson’s movie, however, his daughter was blown back probably three to five feet, through the closed door, and probably another ten feet or so.

Let’s assume Mel’s daughter weighed a conservative 100 pounds.  A yearling deer weighs about that, so it’s a decent comparison.  I admit I’ve never killed a deer with a shotgun, but I have shot one with a 50 caliber black powder rifle, which has similar ballistics to a slug from a shotgun. 

Long story short, it dropped like a rock.

Good old, Isaac Newton’s third law of motion tells us that, for every action there is an equal and opposite reaction.  In other words, if my shot would knock the poor deer back, it would exert the same force on me, the guy firing the gun.  Yes, the gun kicks, but I wouldn’t hunt with a rifle if it knocked me fifteen feet back and through a wooden door when I shot it.  I doubt anybody else would either.

‘Nuff said.

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The opposite of Sharky’s Machine’s huge shotgun hole through a door is the western movies where people in a gun fight hide behind a buckboard or wooden watering trough.  Don’t get me wrong, as I said before, getting behind anything is better than standing out in the open, but any gun more powerful than the lowly .22 will pass through the side of a buckboard while retaining enough energy to do some serious damage…as in kill.  Even that little .22 will often pass through a one-inch board, such as the side of that buckboard or watering trough.

But wait, the wooden watering trough might not be such a bad thing to take cover behind, IF it was full of water.  Believe it or not, a little water will turn or stop a bullet pretty effectively.  I’ve seen some movies show someone shot and killed while they are swimming several feet underwater.  Now, please don’t EVER try this, but virtually any bullet that can be fired while being held in your hands, will slow so rapidly when shot into water that it could be caught in your hand within just a few, short feet.

Police departments use a fairly shallow tank or container of water somewhere around the size of a 55-gallon drum to stop bullets so that the lands and grooves left in them by the weapon’s rifling can be compared to bullets fired during the commission of a crime.

They shoot the weapon through an opening in the top of the container, then open the barrel and pick up the bullet, which expended all its power and settled gently to the bottom.

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How about the people who have their lives saved by a bullet hitting a coin, watch, or similar object in their pocket? 

I recently watched the movie “Hard Target” with Jean-Claude Van Damme.  Lovable actor Wilford Brimley played a bow-wielding Cajun who helped Van Damme defeat the bad guys in the final showdown.  In the last scene poor Wilford lay on the floor, having been shot by the evil ringleader Lance Henriksen.  

After dispatching Henriksen, Jean-Claude was lamenting the loss of his friend.  Good old Wilford stirred and began to get up as he pulled his whiskey flask out of his pocket, clearly showing a bullet hole in the side.  His life had been saved by his drinking habit.

Now, not that it matters much, but in that movie Lance Henriksen carried a single-shot Thompson Center Arms Contender chambered in .45-70 Government.  For the record, that caliber round was popular around 150 years ago when it was used to produce single-shot kills on American buffalo.  The buff would often drop like they had been pole-axed and barely twitch.

I have shot a .45-70.  That round fired from any weapon would blast that bullet through both sides of that little metal flask like a rocket through a piece of paper, then pass completely through poor Mr. Brimley as well as any automobile unlucky enough to be parked behind him.

Yes, in some instances, a coin, being significantly thicker and more massive than Wilford Brimley’s flask, will stop a bullet, which would be a good thing for a good guy, but that energy is still expended, sometimes pushing that coin in front of it, as it drives into the poor victim’s body.  Maybe it won’t go as deeply into the body, but the damage it does would be even more impressive, if not as deep.

Somewhere in my coin collection I have a quarter that I shot with a .22 on a whim.  Remember, a .22 is one of the smallest and weakest rounds commonly available today.  That little, low-powered .22 round folded my 25 cent-piece almost double!  Anyone who had been carrying that quarter in his pocket when it was hit by my .22 would have been seriously injured, maybe even killed.

Without going much deeper into explanations, a .22 produces about 117 foot/pounds of energy, whereas a .45-70 produces between three and four THOUSAND.

NOW you get it?

As for a pocket watch stopping a bullet; it almost certainly would not present much more of a bullet-stopper than Brimley’s flask.

Then there are those who are saved by a bullet that hits a book, usually a bible, that they carry in their coat pocket.  I’ve experimented with shooting catalogs and, let me tell you, while it is possible for SEVERAL books or magazines stacked together to stop a bullet, it is at least as likely that the poor victim will end up with a bullet AND lots of little scraps of paper inside their bodies.

Yeah, think about that.

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Now, let’s discuss the famous “through-and-through”, or shot that passes completely the victim’s body.  Annie and I have lately developed the habit of calling out, “through-and-through,” whenever someone in a movie declares that a bullet wound is relatively minor, and won’t be fatal, because “it’s a through-and-through.”  In other words, if the bullet passes completely through the victim’s body, instead of staying inside.  Now, granted, a bullet that stays in your body is not a pleasant thing.  Heck, it just expended all of its energy inside you, but a bullet that passes through made an entrance wound, AND an exit wound.  Anyone who has ever seen the damage made by a through-and-through can vouch for the fact that an exit wound is exponentially bigger than an entrance wound.  That’s one small entrance wound, and one BIG exit wound…all the better to leak blood…and life.

Add to that the fact that moviemakers often don’t seem to pay any attention to human anatomy when they declare their “through-and-through” a minor wound.  One western Annie and I watched a few days ago had a character who was shot in the upper leg by a pistol.  The poor man was hit just below his “private” area but one of the protagonists said that the wound missed the bone (it couldn’t have been by much, I’d say) and was a, let’s say it together, “through-and-through” so he’d be OK.

A shattered femur is a bad thing, but even a nicked femoral artery can prove fatal within seconds.  Yes, I said seconds, and darned few of those.  Someone shot through and through in the upper leg is NOT going to be walking around or fighting anytime soon.

Another character in the same movie was shot in the chest, within inches of his heart.  That through-and-through would most likely have passed through his right lung.  Heart shot or not, a lung wound can lead to a very unpleasant death in minutes by drowning in one’s own blood.

The same type thing goes for the famous shoulder wound.  Before Hollywood discovered the through-and-through, moviemakers would frequently have their characters declare that “it’s just a shoulder wound.”  Check out any anatomy book and you’ll see that there’s a lot of bone in your shoulder.  Moreover, it’s a very important joint.  More than just a grazing wound in the shoulder is a life-changing injury.  The same goes for almost any major joint like knee, elbow, or hip.

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I can’t say I love my guns, but I like them at least as much as any other tool I own.  I don’t say my hammer is equal to Thor’s hammer, but neither do I say it is innocuous as the Three Stooges’ hammers that only irritate Curly when they are bounced off his head.

I still enjoy many movies out of Hollywood, but that enjoyment is tempered when the show is full of malarkey, or should I say, bullets and bologna?

Just sayin’.

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