I get that gunplay is playing around with guns. I also know there’s no such thing as The Four Rules of Comedy. But I’m sick to death of Hollywood doubling up on heros’ handguns. I’ve tried the fists full of firearms technique. It sucks. Not only do you have to worry about sympathetic fire (when you squeeze one trigger you want to squeeze the other) but your brain gets confused about which gun is recoiling when. Unless you’re shooting two people point blank, the two-hands-‘o-gun method is the ballistic equivalent of a stupid pet trick. If that’s the way you want to go, Mr. Producer, how about a double-barreled .45? Come to think of it, why not two of them at the same time? D’oh!
The one time Hollywood got this one right:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DZXlhSgq7us
I will be watching that movie tonight thanks to you. One of my all time favorite westerns and a great example. The classic saying of “if you pull it, you damn well better use it” comes to mind.
Not to mention how great Ennio Morricone is.
I still LOL’d.
C’mon, it’s a funny video! Obviously, not serious firearms instruction…
^^ This ^^
Lighten up and learn to laugh at silly stuff.
Exactly! Well done and hilarious.
Hollywood is generally clue-less, except…
They know that most people do not know how or when to shoot a gun. They know that most people do not know how limited the ammo supply on board a particular gun (usually the one you have with you), is. They do know that people are instinctively afraid of being shot. So everything with Hollywood is spray and pray. If you’ve got a fully automatic weapon you just hose down the neighborhood and maybe you hit something, maybe you don’t, but you don’t give a shit ’cause EVERYBODY is scared of you. Pay no attention to the fact that bad guys almost never use full auto weapons and even when they use them in movies they are never referred to the BATFE for federal firearms violations.
So, in a movie, whether you are the good guy or the bad guy the point is to just put the maximum number of bullets downrange. Two semi-auto handguns, one in each hand, pointed in the general direction of the threat, and blasting away until empty or all the bad guys are (magically) dead. It helps if your Hollywood guns have “high-capacity magazine clips” holding about 50 rounds each, and you have unlimited reloads available. Aimed fire is for sissies, or Dirty Harry.
What happened to “Two are one and one is none”? 😉
Not enough time on my hands for a full take down, but here are some quick observations, and a more general problem with these so-called research studies::
2. “If gun control works, Chicago ought to be safe.”
The first paper they cite to prove that gun ownership increases homicide rates uses Guns and Ammo purchase rates as a proxy for gun ownership, and contains this little gem:
“Taken together, the results in this section strongly suggest that this
panel data set of Guns & Ammo sales rates provides a much richer set
of information about gun ownership than any that has previously been
assembled. One potential concern, however, is that very few readers of
this magazine may be criminals. ” (Duggan 1094)
Of the second paper,
One ironic quote: “Gun ownership is concentrated in rural areas and small towns, and among middle-aged and middle income households … these attributes are associated with relatively low involvement in criminal violence” (Cook 6)
But, from this promising start, the paper actually uses the “fraction of suicides committed with firearms” as a marker for the level of gun ownership.
The first paper falls into the classic trap of trying to use county-level data, failing to take into account a myriad of confounding factors that are literally impossible to control. For example, suppose there is rising prosperity in a South Caroline county because a company decided that S. Carolina’s right-to-work laws were better than Illinois’ death by regulation policies. This might lead to a purchase of a subscription to Guns and Ammo by newly employed South Carolina citizens. But, the increase in prosperity leads to criminal elements deciding to try and rob more citizens in the area- on the assumption that they’ll have more cash. Thus, the increase in prosperity drives an increase in violence, crime, and subscriptions to Guns and Ammo. I’m not saying this is what happened- I’m saying this is what could have happened- and they can’t prove otherwise.
With the second paper, once again a massive confounding variable: African-American poor inner-city youth do not commit suicide. African-Americans die faster from everything: HIV, Heart Disease, Diabetes, take your pick- but they are the race least likely to commit suicide. Thus, the paper is going to significantly underestimate criminal possession of firearms (which shouldn’t factor into discussions about gun control laws, since it’s not like those guns will be affected by gun control laws), and any discovery of a “link” between homicides and ownership of guns is thrown into doubt.
More generally, all these papers try this little formula: compare state A against state B, and see which states have looser gun control laws and which states have more homicides. The problem with this approach is that there are way too many confounding factors for this to actually be a valid scientific approach. For example: southern states like Texas and Arizona have high homicide rates and more gun ownership: but they’re also warzone central in the drug war. What’s more, poverty levels in many southern states are higher than in the North, and that also affects liklihood of violence. They try to adjust for this by doing regressions, but when Southern States are ENTIRELY more gun-friendly AND more Impoverished AND Closer to the drug war, statistical regressions go out the window.
Want an anecdote to break this down? Israel and Switzerland both used to send assault rifles home with every male (Israel not so much these days). They had a far lower crime rate than the US. Granted, the UK also has a lower gun homicide rate (yes, I’ve seen the articles about the UK police screwing with the stats, but let’s just let that one lie)- but that just illustrates the absurdity of trying to compare two different types of states with entirely different cultures, population make-up, social phenomena, and the like. Want a better example? New York City and Chicago had the same (or very similar) gun control laws for many years. Why did Chicago have 3 times the homicide rate with a third of the population? No one knows! And that includes the “scientists” who do this kind of B$ research. (Although, if you really want to have fun, claim in a debate that it was due to NYC’s stop and frisk policies- that’ll put your foolish opponent in the position of either defending systematic discrimination against African-Americans and Hispanics or trying to invent some other reason why two major cities have very different murder rates with the very similar laws)
Here’s the fundamental point: science is about hypothesis, controlled and experimental variables, and REPEATABILITY. If I do an experiment to see if gravity exists, I pick an object (only one, exact object), and drop it a bunch of times. If it drops, EVERY SINGLE TIME, then I say a force exists that pulls that one object to the ground. Then, someone else has to do the exact same experiment, and confirm my results.
These guys who do this research aren’t doing that. (To be fair, doing that is impossible with laws- it would be like banning all guns one year and legalizing them the next). Still, they’re claiming scientific validity where none exists- their findings aren’t repeatable- it’s just statistics and guesswork.
I’ll see if I can’t go through each point step by step when I have time-
I once read in a book that the whole dual wielding pistols thing started with the SpetsNaz before the invention of SMG’s. Though it makes no sense because the SMG was around a while before the Spets.
It’s in the Lexicon, it ain’t going no where, I don’t mind it personally. I own ‘assault rifles’ they have the potential to aid a person in doing great good or great evil. Words are wind.
I have a feeling Terry will get a point or two above Ken, ugh. I can’t believe Sarvis got so many votes. I don’t know how any self respecting gun owner could of voted for Sarvis or Terry for that matter.
Akimbo rules
Somebody piss in your Cheerios this morning, Mr. Farago?
Yeesh.
Good Lord above.
Marcos was a douche canoe. Too bad the Imperial Japanese didn’t get him in the arse with a bayonet.
Ultimate confiscation is exactly what the likes of Diane Feinstink, HCI, The Brady Bunch, Eric with-Holder and Barry envision. That is why they are interested in data bases.