Seen on the street in Kyiv.

Words of Advice:

"If Something Seems To Be Too Good To Be True, It's Best To Shoot It, Just In Case." -- Fiona Glenanne

“The Mob takes the Fifth. If you’re innocent, why are you taking the Fifth Amendment?” -- The TOFF *

"Foreign Relations Boil Down to Two Things: Talking With People or Killing Them." -- Unknown

“Speed is a poor substitute for accuracy.” -- Real, no-shit, fortune from a fortune cookie

"If you believe that you are talking to G-d, you can justify anything.” — my Dad

"Colt .45s; putting bad guys in the ground since 1873." -- Unknown

"Stay Strapped or Get Clapped." -- probably not Mr. Rogers

"The Dildo of Karma rarely comes lubed." -- Unknown

"Eck!" -- George the Cat

* "TOFF" = Treasonous Orange Fat Fuck, A/K/A Dolt-45,
A/K/A Commandante (or Cadet) Bone Spurs,
A/K/A El Caudillo de Mar-a-Lago, A/K/A the Asset., A/K/A P01135809

Thursday, April 7, 2011

AARRGGGHHH! How Hard Is It to Get This Gun Shit Right?

I realize that there are a lot of authors out there that don't give a shit about guns. They don't know squat about them. They may have never fired a gun. I get that.

But you know, if you're writing in a genre for which the use of firearms is a common plot point and if a couple of your plot points involve guns, you ought to at least get try to get it right.

Cae in point: Moonlight Mile by Dennis Lehane. In this book, Lehane returns to the private investigative team of Patrick Kenzie and Angie Gennaro, which last made an appearance in 1999 in Prayers for Rain. Moonlight Mile is a follow-up to Gone, Baby, Gone, which was published in 1998.

Lehane brings the story forward in real time. All of the characters are a dozen years older and they are still dealing, to varying degrees, with the hard choices that Kenzie made in the earlier case. The writing is good, I enjoyed the story, but at the end of the book, the narrative makes two glaring errors with regard to guns.

First: In a scene where one professional killer is instructing his boss's wife on how to use a particular pistol to murder someone, he says "it pulls a bit to the left." Riight. In the "up close & personal" use of a handgun to murder a captive in a room, at a range of maybe six feet, that isn't going to matter jack point shit. Maybe you'd miss with one of those piece-of-shit derringers, but that's about it.

Second: A following scene has a character disassembling a variant of a 1911. You don't "detach the slide from the grip," which is what this character does. When you do remove the slide from the receiver, the "grip" and the frame (or the receiver) are not simply break down into individual pieces. You'd need a screwdriver (or an allen key) to remove the grip panels.

Maybe it shouldn't bug me. But it does. (And there is a glaring one that will also bother the foamers.)

But if you can overlook crap like that, Moonlight Mile is a good hard-boiled detective novel.

9 comments:

Nangleator said...

I always figured "pulling" was about automatic weapons, not about single shot aim. It's a pretty metaphorical thing to say it's pulling to the left to describe sights that should be adjusted to the left.

Comrade Misfit said...

Yes, but a just a few feet?

Nangleator said...

Yeah. But at least no one played Russian Roulette with a semi-automatic pistol, I hope.

(Yes, it's been done in real life, but you could easily argue that's a good thing.)

suz said...

How about a cop with an automatic revolver?. Yeah. I closed the book right there.

Nangleator said...

Here's a guy with an automatic revolver:
http://fc06.deviantart.net/fs70/f/2011/037/8/4/predator_minigun_reference_by_anonymousawhorse-d38x994.jpg

Comrade Misfit said...

Well, there was the Webley-Fosbury, but I agree that most people who refer to an "automatic revolver" have no idea what the hell they are talking about.

Don Brown said...

You ought to try being an air traffic controller sitting through an aviation movie. :)

Anonymous said...

This is why I am not allowed to watch CSI or other forensics shows. Shoot one TV set, you get a reputation for life.

Comrade Misfit said...

William: Seriously? You really shot your TV set? I am in awe.

Don and William: That's why I don't watch lawyer shows. There is almost always one ethical breach in every episode that is of the "you're going to lose your law license and become a title closer" kind.