…they seldom apologize. I offer you an exception.
I enjoy the Lucas Davenport novels of John Sandford, and his parallel Virgil Flowers series. There’s some appropriate humor; Sandford has a way with words that I appreciate; and in his latest “Prey” novel, he apologizes for past mistakes in an after-note.
After apologizing for referring to a .40 caliber pistol as 40mm in Golden Prey, he offers this explanation. “How do these mistakes happen? It’s not usually ignorance. They arise out of all kinds of things…haste, changes in story, weariness, boredom, juggling too many nouns at once. In another Prey novel, I had a man click off the safety on his Glock 9mm pistol, stolen from a Minneapolis detective, before he entered a house. The 9mm was fine, except Glocks don’t have safeties.”
Sandford continues, “I’d originally written that the man had been carrying a Beretta, which do have safeties. Then, I made the mistake of talking to a Minneapolis detective who told me there’d been a change of policy, and they were no longer allowed to have personal carry pistols. They were required to use issue pistols, which were all Glocks. So, trying to be accurate, I changed ‘Beretta’ to ‘Glock’ – this was after the novel was essentially finished – and forgot that several lines above that, he’d clicked off the safety…The thing is, I know about guns and have been shooting since I was in elementary school. I know the difference between millimeters and calibers. I know Glocks don’t have safeties.”
Kudos to Sandford. When I was a kid, I devoured the “87th Precinct” police procedural novels of the Evan Hunter, who wrote them under the pen name Ed McBain. The author, unfortunately, didn’t know crap about guns. In one novel he had his young detective character Bert Kling release the safety on his .38 Colt Detective Special, which of course didn’t have a safety. When called on it by gun-savvy readers, he didn’t cop to it: instead Hunter/McBain apparently picked up a copy of Gun Digest or something, found the one revolver in it which did have a safety (the S&W Centennial, which in its early iteration had a grip safety) and armed Kling with that in future novels. The sort of arrogance I’d expect from the late Evan Hunter after he came out of the closet as a rabid gun-hater, and I stopped reading his stuff…
As I have become more familiar with firearms, this type of thing annoys me greatly. Of course Stephen Hunter’s novels and the new ones from Jack Carr are nice exceptions.
I twice wrote to Stephen Hunter about a couple of issues in one of his Swagger novels. He did not reply. Disappointing.
I’ve really enjoyed the Jack Carr books. Carr really cares about kit and it shows in his books. He has said that a person’s clothing and gear tell a story. I’ve also really enjoyed the Stephen Hunter books (some may have jumped a shark or two, but still well written). I haven’t noticed as much inconsistency in his books, but I’m less than a novice when it comes to long range shooting, so I may not catch things like that.
Hunter’s early works were thoroughly ignorant about guns. They reminded me of Michael Crichton writing about computers: too much detail, written to impress, while utterly incorrect.
I grew up in the county where the Bob Lee Swagger series are set, and I’m pretty sure that Hunter never set foot in the Ouachitas, or he wouldn’t have written such nonsense.
Crichton’s novels were usually set “in the near future”, giving him some authorial wiggle room. He did know his computers; he had a degree in computer graphics from Harvard, and set up a company to sell software he wrote for managing motion picture budgets. He leveraged his graphics background when he produced “Westworld”, which was the first film to use what we now call CGI.
Stephen Hunter’s Dirty White Boys is one of less than 5 fiction books I like. Grisly and raw.
Just got a new copy of Unintended Consequences yesterday, thought I’d never see or read it again.
I want to re-up a modest selection of books (as well as movies and DVDs), in case hard copy entertainment is all we have. My minimalist nature got pretty out of hand. What really sucks there is some of my favorites have become insanely valuable, too much to end up back in my hands. I found that out after leaving Unrepentant Sinner near a fishing hole and trying to replace. At like 700., it’s not going to happen. And I really want to read it again
Stephen King used to be one of the worst offenders in this respect. I’m sure there are some sporting good stores in Maine. King could have just gone over there and asked somebody. But it was beneath him. He couldn’t be bothered to research the subject beyond whatever he’d picked up from some westerns and crime thrillers. Of course King has also revealed himself as pretty anti-Second Amendment.
Thomas Harris on the other hand seems to really know his gun stuff. He throws in little subtle things only a real shooter would know. Which makes me think he either is one, or he’s not too proud of his ignorance to check with one.
What comes to mind are all the old westerns where dozens of rounds are fired from the old single action revolvers without any pauses for reloads.
….and they never recocked the hammer between shots.
Old westerns? Then there are the old gangster movies out of the thirties and forties where the bad guys have suppressors on their revolvers.
Well, they *needed* suppressors; imagine the hearing damage from firing 97 rounds from a six-shooter without reloading!
A long time appreciative fan of Mr. Sanford, I really enjoy the odd stuff he includes that happens in the real world and that his characters make mistakes. That said, one of my long standing gripes was having the main character in the Prey books invariably carry all his auto pistols with empty chambers. I do believe that in one of them, he kind of forgets to have the character charge the chamber. I think in the last couple books the chamber is loaded.
Overall, he seems to treat firearm ownership rather well. A couple of his recent works seem to suggest some issues with how many firearms one might accumulate in a life time and the number of folks with carry permits. A good analogy for the number of firearms would be the number of clubs in a golf bag. You don’t want to use a sand wedge when a fairway wood would be the better choice.
I have seen where hollywood sound effect techs add in after the film was shot things like the sound of a hammer being cocked, on a Glock……..
Another thing that happens is that often printing company proof readers and editors change technical items in novels that they have no knowledge of. Like changing “9mm” to ” 9mm Caliber ” not understanding that caliber is standard. Not metric. News reporters are the worst for this.
Plus the empty gun hammer click when the semi-auto slide should have been/was locked back. And, the oh-so-threatening 1911 with the hammer not cocked.
Yeah, it never fails to amaze me when some actor draws a semi-auto pistol from their holster and you immediately hear a click-click noise to imitate getting the pistol ready for action. Despite the noise, you can readily see they did no manipulations (cocking the hammer, racking the slide, etc.). I’ve recently noticed this again while watching reruns of the X Files. It occurs with both Mulder and Scully.
The famed newsperson Bill O’Reilly has on more than one occasion stated AR-15 rifles were “heavy weapons”. Yeah, an AR-15 could be easily mistaken for a 155mm howitzer.
Tom606,
I’m sorry to hear that because when Bill O’Reilly speaks, I like what he has to say. He seems to be answering questions that I have, so I like to hear him. Someone needs to take him shooting, and enlighten him. Of course, being a journalist, he should seek out the truth before making ignorant statements about guns.
Some people seem to think AR-15s are these devastating weapons which spray bullets everywhere, killing people in an instant. Sensitive people also recoil from studying subjects which are emotionally jarring. They wouldn’t spend time in an emergency room to see what goes on, nor will they even read about war because of the terrible things that happen to people. This fear keeps them from learning about guns because to them, guns are associated with unpleasant topics, so they remain ignorant.
I’ve invited people to my range on days when they can shoot multiple guns for free. They may initially say “yes,” but when the day comes, they don’t show up. They are afraid of guns. They are not afraid to ride in a car, but they are afraid of guns. This is the time of smart machines and stupid people.
Roger:
It’s unfortunate that O’Reilly sounds ignorant about firearms, although he claims to be pro-gun as far as hunting and self defense are concerned. He seems to see no use for so-called “Assault Weapons” and high capacity magazines even though these items are among the most appropriate tools for defending one’s well being.
Even books that are supposed to be non-fiction get things wrong. I read a book about gangsters a few years ago and they had all kinds of very authoritative-sounding errors, which is stupid because it had been written after the Web, where some semblance of fact-checking is easy. One of the reasons I always read Clancy’s stuff was that it was correct – at least the early stuff was correct, I never found errors. Stephen King? Gun errors all over the place.
Some years back I had a decent little thriller ruined for me by a writer who was totally ignorant about firearms. Another firearms savvy writer is Larry Correia, who as a bonus is VERY politically correct.
I’m a big fan of the 1930’s Shadow novels by Maxwell Grant, actually Walter Gibson who wrote most of them and over a dozen excellent ones by Theodore Tinsley. In these books the Shadow always carries a pair or more Colt .45 pistols, but others use guns which are described as “pistols” or “revolvers” from one sentence to another. It’s a bit aggravating to a reader who’s a gun guy, but I’ve grown used to it and just ignore these mistakes, and concentrate on the good tales of which there were over two hundred of them spanning the early 1930’s to the late 1940’s and I have every one of the reprinted Shadow stories.
Single-shot flintlock handguns are “pistols.” They were called that for centuries.
Samuel Colt called his guns “revolving pistols”, and when autoloading pistols came out half a century later, the manufacturers distinguished them by calling “automatic” or “self-loading” pistols.
The “only automatics are pistols” thing is from ignorant magazine writers. If you hold it in one hand, it’s a ‘pistol’, and always has been.
Always a disappointment when a writer you like gets it wrong about guns— mostly handguns— clicking off the safety of his revolver is the most common one I’ve seen. I ran into it recently with a writer I liked— can’t remember who, I read a lot— and I thought, ‘Surely this guy knows more than that about guns!’ But no….
Sanford satisfactorily explained his mistake, but I suspect most are just writing about stuff they know very little about. Which inevitably makes me wonder, ‘What else in what he’s writing about is BS?’
Also egregious: having the character rack the slide of his pistol or shotgun when things get dangerous: ‘Surely a savvy guy like that would be carrying a round in the chamber!’
Speaking of great books: the novels of Steven Pressfield are really really good.
He writes mainly about wars and warriors— ‘Gates of Fire’, about Thermopylae; ‘Lion’s Gate’, about the 6-Day War; ‘The Virtues of War’ and ‘The Afghan Campaign’, about Alexander the Great; ‘Killing Rommel’, about the North African campaign in WWII; ‘Tides of War’, about the Pelopponesian Wars; ‘A Man At Arms’, about the oppression of Christians in early Biblical Times; ‘The Professionals’, about war in the near future conducted by mercs; and several more I haven’t read yet. (I’m reading my way through his entire body of work on my Kindle). Definitely worth checking out if you enjoy stories about combat.
As a writer of fiction I can certainly empathize with Sanford. The common perception of writing is about as accurate as the common perception about guns.
No, authors don’t just sit down at a typewriter, pound out a 50,000-word book, and send it off to the publisher. Writers edit for far more hours than they spend writing and, as in Sanford’s example, it is ridiculously easy to make a necessary edit one paragraph, and set up errors on others.
But since I’ve also been a gun owner for more than 60 years, and an instructor for more than half that, I do try to keep my gunfacts straight.
I just finished watching “The Marksman” with Liam Neeson. Any mistakes about the guns themselves in books and movies pales compared to the flippant misrepresentation of access to guns. Bad enough that our President flat out lies about gun-show purchases requiring no ID or background check.
Possible spoiler here: The main character is depicted as able to buy firearms in a state other than the one of his residence with no more difficulty than buying a hamburger. There was further actual lawbreaking depicted, which reinforced the the fiction of the gun-buy, and will stick in the brains of anti-gun people as truth. . .bring about more calls for even more restrictive gun laws.
I was so irritated by that story-line at that point that the enjoyment of the rest of the story was greatly diminished.
Another funny situation in many movies is when someone breaks into a military surplus store at night and loads up on machine guns, rocket launchers, grenades, and Claymore mines from the back room. I know where to go now to get weapons when the Zombie Apocalypse occurs.
A definite “clunk” when you are enjoying a well written thriller and realize the author probably doesn’t know what he’s talking about in other areas if he puts safeties on guns without them. I also took issue with a female detective carrying a Beretta 92 in her handbag as her EDC.
Friend StevefromMA, the lady detective was probably Tom606’s better half, Brunhilde606 (lucky they are not “666”s!). According to Tom, her size makes a Desert Eagle .50 look like a High Standard derringer. Her handbag is also lead-weighted and has cooled many a belligerent. Beauty is in the eyes of the beholder. All this talk about safeties reminds me that my thumb switch on my favorite compact pistola locked in the “fire” position during cleaning today. I am debating whether to just keep it that way and rely on the Safe-Action type safety on the #$%&! as if the gat were a Glock. Less chance of locking on “safe,” I believe. Also less chance of clicking the lynch pin switch by mistake and losing the pin.
Lee Childs is another who would benefit from some firearms education.
A Beretta 92 that wouldn’t fire … wait for it ….
because the loaded magazine had weakened the spring over time.
Never mind that the one in the chamber would be unaffected.
Never mind that you could drop the magazine and the one in the chamber would still fire.
Or
Reacher knew it was safe to play Russian Roulette with a Colt Anaconda .44 Mag because … wait for it … it’s coming …
The gun was so finely machined that the weight of the one round would always carry it to the bottom of the cylinder when spun.
Arghhh
Playing Russian roulette is much safer when using a Glock 17 than with a Colt Anaconda. The odds are much better as with the revolver, there’s a 1 in 6 chance of getting shot, whereas with the Glock 17, there’s only a 1 in 17 chance of getting a bullet to the head, almost three times better. I suggest using the 33 round magazine in the Glock to improve one’s odds even more.
LOL. Some more gems from the Reacher series:
-Cocked and locked H&K P7M10 (Echo Burning)
-Reacher fires six rounds of .44 Magnum (without hearing protection), then hears the wind in the trees (Persuader)
-Reacher rolls a .44 Magnum (rimmed) cartridge straight across a table (Persuader)
-Female character prefers a Glock 17 to the 1911 “because she has small hands” (Bad Luck and Trouble)
One of them had some bad guys with a DShK(?) heavy machine gun hung from the ceiling with chains, with no explanation for it being there, other than Reacher uses it near the end.
Sherlock Holmes would be envious of Reacher’s ability to fit random observations together, though. So much interpolation from so few facts…
What’s wrong with having a DShK 12.7mm hanging from the ceiling? I use mine as a chandelier. I do leave off the tripod so it doesn’t hit my head.
Larry Correia Scifi writer gets it right.
I’ve stopped reading books and/or authors who can’t take the time
to google a weapon, brouse it’s specs and use the correct info in
their books. I’m just to old or maybe to old school but that’s where
I’m at. Kudos to Sanford for making his corrections. I haven’t read
his latest books but used to be a fan of his Prey books. May have
to go back and catch up. Oh, the Lee Child Reacher novels are one
of those that I quit reading due to this kind of crap.
The worst for me is all the”clickety-clack” whenever a Glock is drawn on TV or in movies. My wife has informed me that I am not allowed to speak or groan when watching. Stephen Hunter, one of my favorite authors, drove me nuts with the hammer cocking on a Mosin-Nagant sniper rifle in one novel.
I recall a early episode of Gunsmoke, in which Winchester Xpert shotshells were displayed on the shelves of the general store. The storyline was set in 1873!
Movies are just as bad when it comes to the ballistically challenged. In “Road To Perdition” when Tom Hank’s character buys one from Jude Law’s character right in front of a picture window, and the blood spray plasters the window, but the slug never breaks the glass. Hmmm…..
In his defense, I believe the Glock 19x can come with a safety.. at least my BB gun version of it does… that is why I bought a Glock 45 instead. Stephen King is awful with his gun writing. Glocks and revolvers with safeties. I think once I read about a Glock revolver in a short story. And always the wasting of a round or shell, racking slides and pumping shotguns immediately before using them. I will have to try some of the Sanford novels. I’m currently tied up with the long Joe Gunther series, written about cops in Mas’s former northeast homeland and neighboring Vermont. On the other hand, my writing knowledge is about on par with their knowledge of guns.
There was a lot of talk about a special NYPD Glock that was to have a thumb safety, back some time ago. I don’t know if that ever happened, or it was just gun magazine talk.
FYI & FWIW Wikipedia used to have a entry for something called a Glock 19S which was fitted with a manual safety for use by the Tasmanian Police . . . it has subsequently disappeared. I suspect it never actually existed.
However a quick Google has thrown up rumours of prototype Glocks with manual safeties and also custom Gunsmiths/after market kits which will fit a safety catch to a Glock.
The mistakes made in books pale when compared to the ones made in Hollywood movies and films. For example, just off the top of my head:
1) In the (otherwise excellent) Clint Eastwood western “Unforgiven”, one member of the posse states that the general store won’t “sell us any more 30-30 shells unless we pay”. I assume pay here means “pay in advance”. In other words, no more ammo on credit. So, what is the problem? Well, the movie is set in 1880 and the 30-30 Winchester (AKA .30 WCF) round was not placed onto the market until 1895. The 30-30 Winchester was one of the first smokeless, commercial rifle rounds introduced in the U.S. Just how does the general store sell a type of ammo that won’t be introduced until 15 years into the future? The reference should have been to 44-40 “shells”.
2) In a recent re-make of the old “Death Wish” movie, Bruce Willis plays the vigilante. In the final gunfight, he “lights up” the chief bad guy with a fully automatic AR style pistol. When questioned by the cops, he says that he recently bought the pistol from a local gun store. The problem here is the fully automatic nature of the weapon. To legally own such a weapon, he would have had to pay the correct Tax Stamp and get approval from the BATFE. As anyone knows who had done this, it takes months (sometimes a year or more) to obtain approval. One does not do it in a couple of days as implied by the movie. On the other hand, if it was a semi-automatic weapon that was purchased and then illegally converted to full auto, then our hero should have been lined up, by the cops, for a ten year federal prison stay on an illegal weapons charge!
3) In the recent TV series, The Rook, the Protagonist leaves herself a couple of “lock boxes” with items and information to be used if she suffers (as predicted) a total memory loss. One of the boxes contains a handgun. If you look closely, the gun is a Glock 17 which has been heavily modified by Salient Arms International. You can see their name on the slide and you can see SAI engraved on the custom trigger. In the story, the protagonist has less than a month to prepare for her impending memory loss. So, how does she lay her hands on a custom modified SAI Glock in less than a month while living in the UK? Even as a member of a top secret UK intelligence service, this seems most unlikely. Handguns are REALLY, REALLY hard to get in the UK. If it had been a plain-Jane Glock 17, I would have accepted it. Glocks are used by the UK security services and one could “guess” that she got it via official channels. If it had been something like a Makarov pistol, I could have accepted that she got it via the UK black-market in handguns. Makarov variant pistols are common on the UK black-market. But a custom SAI Glock? A “Hollywood” gun customized by a company based in Las Vegas? Not likely!
And don’t even get me started on the actors who use Desert Eagles as their carry guns!
As I said, the mistakes made in books PALE in comparison to the “Firearm Fantasy Facts” that come out of Hollywood!
Also doesn’t the new Death Wish movie take place in Chicago?
They have mag restrictions and ” assault weapon” bans so he would have been going to state prison.
Not if Bruce’s character claims he’s black or identifies himself with that race, in which case he will be immune from any firearms laws in the Windy City. I remember reading the first Death Wish novel and believe Paul Kersey was given a .32 caliber revolver by a friend which he later used to knock off the criminals who murdered his wife. My favorite Death Wish gun was the Wildey .475 pistol used in the third movie. The Browning 1919 and LAWS rocket launcher was nice too.
Many times, it’s not the inaccurate portrayal of the firearms used in films, but the tactics. In more than a couple of episodes of Walker Texas Ranger, Chuck Norris’ character has his pistol in hand stalking an armed enemy. When he spots the bad guy, Walker holsters his sidearm and takes on the guy in hand to hand combat after kicking away his gun. Desert Eagles are excellent carry guns, especially when properly concealed in ankle holsters. I use mine in .50 AE as a backup in case my Secamp in .25 ACP runs out of ammo in a gunfight.
@ Tom606 – You carry your .50 AE caliber Desert Eagle in an ankle holster?
I prefer to carry mine in an Elite Crotch Carry Holster. See this link:
https://www.pistoleer.com/elite-survival-systems/crotch-carry/
Yes Sir! When you pack a Desert Eagle in a crotch carry holster, it gives new meaning to being “Well Hung”!
You just have to be REAL CAREFUL not to have a negligent discharge when you re-holster 🙂
TN_MAN:
I would carry the Desert Eagle in a crotch holster too, but unfortunately there’s not enough room in my pants as my other ‘blaster’ takes up too much space. 🙂
@ Tom606:
Quote of the day (from the movie “Full Metal Jacket”):
“This is my rifle, this is my gun, this is for fighting and this is for fun ♪♫ ”
🙂
That’s a good one. I have that old movie on DVD but haven’t watched it in years. I do miss the Gunny and his old History Channel series Mail Call.
Even Charles Portis got some gun details wrong in his novel True Grit. The book has a scene in which Rooster Cogburn, LaBoueuf, and a Captain Finch are having an impromptu shooting competition, firing at “corn dodgers” thrown into the air. Rooster, who the narrator has noted carries the same cartridges in his Winchester rifle as well as his Colt handgun (probably .44-40), has this exchange with LaBoueuf:
Rooster: “The Chinaman is running them cheap shells in on me again.”
LaBoueuf: “I thought maybe the sun was in your eyes. That is to say, your eye.”
Rooster: Rooster swung the cylinder back in his revolver and said “Eyes, is it? I’ll show you eyes!”
Colt single-action revolvers of the time had fixed cylinders that didn’t swing out. They used a loading gate for loading cartridges one at a time.
T.V. related; during the opening scenes of Cannon, you see/hear William Conrad’s empty pistol go “click click”, and he throws it away!
I was disappointed (a little) with Mickey Spillane in how he ended the last Mike Hammer story. (I call it the last. I know a few were released after The Goliath Bone but they all happened earlier.)
I can’t say much about it without spoiling the whole book as a gun guy there were 2 times I had to stop and say “Aw come on!”
The last *Spillane* Mike Hammer story, or the last authorized continuation by Max Allan Collins?
From the above comments by TN_MAN:
“In a recent re-make of the old ‘Death Wish’ movie, Bruce Willis plays the vigilante. In the final gunfight, he ‘lights up’ the chief bad guy with a fully automatic AR style pistol. When questioned by the cops, he says that he recently bought the pistol from a local gun store. The problem here is the fully automatic nature of the weapon. To legally own such a weapon, he would have had to pay the correct Tax Stamp and get approval from the BATFE.”
Assuming said pistol was made after the magic date in 1986, join the ranks of the erroneous and try again.
The pistol could have been made with a legally registered lower receiver manufactured before 1986. According to Demoncrats and liberals, ALL AR-15 type rifles are machine guns and should be immediately banned to save billions of American lives.
If you want to nitpick, then I should point out that the on-line “Guns in Movies” database identifies the weapon, in question, as a “F-1 Firearms BDR-15-3G”. So, it would appear that Bruce “hosed down” the bad guy using an airsoft gun. No doubt, with fully automatic “muzzle flash and blast” effects added by the special effects guys. See these links:
http://www.imfdb.org/wiki/Death_Wish_(2018)#AR-15_Variant
http://www.aps-concept.com/index.php?route=product/product&path=20_79_141&product_id=1569
Come to think of it, in the season final episode of “The Rook”, the home of the Russian Ambassador also seemed to be invaded by a crack team of British Special Agents all armed with some type of airsoft gun!
Fully automatic air soft guns loaded with cyanide tipped projectiles would be very deadly and quiet. Perfect for those folks who try to reduce noise pollution. I have a select fire, CO2 powered pistol modeled after the Mauser 712 and a bad guy/gal taking a 10+ shot burst of BBs in the face at close range would not enjoy it much.
Another funny Follywood firearms blunder was in a movie or TV show I recall watching where a character was firing at someone and the numerous empties shown bouncing on the floor appeared to be .38 Special cases, and the gun was not a Colt 1911 National Match, S&W model 52, Desert Eagle, or Coonan Arms pistol. It would take a good sized book to list all the gun related mistakes Follywood made in their movies and TV shows.
@ Tom606 – Speaking of empty brass bouncing on the floor, it reminds me of the second Rambo movie (AKA Rambo goes back to Vietnam). In the climax, Rambo rescues the POW’s. As soon as he lands the helicopter, he grabs a M60 machine gun and a belt of ammo and goes into the control center. He uses the M60 to blast all of the computers and equipment in the place.
At one point, the camera shows empty brass flying out of the M60. Then the camera moves down and shows all the brass cases bouncing on the floor. If you freeze the movie at that point and look closely at the brass cases on the floor, you will see that they are all blank cases. They all have the neck extension indicative of blank rounds.
Yes Sir! Old Rambo shot the whole place to pieces with blank ammo! Just imagine what he could of done if he had a belt of actual live ammo to work with! 🙂
Blanks are dangerous too. Actors Brandon Lee (Bruce’s son) and Jon Erik Hexum both died when they stupidly pointed handguns loaded with movie 3-in-1 blanks at their heads and pulled the trigger. The muzzle blasts scrambled their brains, which obviously failed in their jobs to protect their hosts from doing dumb things. Darwin Awards for both of them.
I refer to it as the “clang” moment, or someone else on this thread said, the “clunk.”
You’re reading along happily and suddenly “clang.” Something jumps out at you as wrong. Though to be fair, occasionally the author got it right and the “clang” is you. A non-firearms related one for me is when I saw the word sabotage in a Victorian detective story, I’d always believed it originated in World War One with Belgians harassing the occupying Germans by using wooden shoes, sabos, to damage machinery etc. Turns out that there are uses of the word well before then.
And sometimes it’s just the author making a silly typo which, the non-firearm orientated, proof-reader doesn’t pick up on. One writer who prides himself on getting the details right, and generally does, had a character armed with a 4.55 Webley revolver. I’d imagine recoil management and muzzle blast would be a real problem, and I’d imagine finding a holster for it would be a problem as well. Though I’d doubt that there’d be any problem with stopping power . . .
The Webley Forsbury revolver was one of the very few revolvers which had a manual safety, so for writers whose character(s) ‘clicked off the safety on their revolver’, it may be true if they carried a Webley Forsbury. I believe a character in the movie The Maltese Falcon did have one.
In the movie and in the book as well.
Though apparently the movie had a mistake in that it was described as an eight shot 45 calibre automatic revolver. The books gets it right when it’s eight shot 38 calibre automatic revolver.
The Webley-Fosbery was made in two calibre, the larger calibre, being a six-shooter.
“Fake Novel” is a term that comes to mind when reading unthoroughly researched fiction. Narratives that contain less-than-factual details do tend to suspend the suspension of disbelief that goes with being absorbed by a story. We are surely going through a general phase of fake times. I woke up past midnight and picked up Edward Hunter’s “Brainwashing, from Pavlov to Powers” and studied it some more. The most genuine of any book ever written. Hunter thoroughly explains the evil communist tactic of presenting fake plots as tools for subversion. “Critical race theory” represents to me a kind of leftist fake plot calculated to divide and conquer. Dan Bongino gives uniquely articulate explanations.
Mas, I just watched a JustPoliceVideo(s) of a police chase where a teenage perp apparently killed a 61-year-old pedestrian. In the past I have most often chosen to pull over and stop on highway shoulders to get out of the way of flashing light bars. I just realized that I might generally rather stop either in the right lane or get clear off the highway if possible. Keeps the shoulder for the police to pass through when both lanes of the main highway are blocked. Any advice you can give on the subject? Obviously sometimes getting clear off the roadway can be too problematic. What do officers mostly want people to do? What are the rules?
Depends on traffic road conditions etc. As with so much else, totality of the circumstances.
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