This morning when I got to the 'Lifestyles' section of the Mason City Globe Gazette, the first thing to grab my eye was a lovely color picture of a frame from the movie No Country For Old Men, depicting an ostensibly soaked Josh Brolin in character as Llewelyn Moss standing next to a backcountry stream.
In this picture, he is half-heartedly brandishing a stainless steel M1911 pattern automatic pistol. I say 'half-heartedly brandishing' because that's exactly the way it appears to me. He isn't actually aiming it, as it is being held only in his right hand and far too low for the sights to be anywhere near his line of sight. 'Pointing' would only loosely apply, too. The best description would be that the muzzle of the pistol is oriented toward something far to the left of the photograph. Naturally, Brolin's index finger is resting on the trigger, and one cannot see whether or not the pistol's hammer is cocked back. The 1911 design, with very few exceptions, features a single action trigger. This means that the hammer must be drawn back either by the user's thumb or by the reciprocation of the slide when a cartridge is chambered or as the pistol is fired.
I have not seen this movie, and I likely never will. My understanding of it, other than that it will figure prominately in the Academy Awards tonight, is that the plot involves Llewelyn Moss, played by Josh Brolin, encountering a grizzly aftermath of the illicit drug trade gone bad while out hunting. Apparently the scene is complete with dead druggies, one trafficker left barely alive, and several million in cash left behind, which Llewelyn takes home with him. If I've got the details right, the real trouble begins when he returns later to check on the status of the wounded smuggler who was likely dehydrated by this time.
What I really see in this picture is something that has long bothered me.
A number of years ago, I worked for a company that leased household furnishings to those who could not or preferred not to purchase such things outright. It was a lousy business, and it's long gone now. However, one thing we would do for folks who acquired a television on a rent-to-own basis was to deliver it, plug it in, and program it so the tuner would jump from one active channel to the next. That was no big deal if all a person had was a set of rabbit ears because three channels is about all you can get around these parts that way. However, when the customer had cable, it took a bit longer. Sometimes there were upwards of a hundred channels, and during the programming process, a glimpse of each channel 'locked in' would appear on the screen. More than once, during one of these 'hundred picture' sequences, I would find myself looking down the barrel of an on-screen gun as I stood in front of the television. Yes, in thrity seconds to a minute of the television shuffling through the available channels, four to six times, or more, the image of a gun muzzle would dance in front of me.
What does that say to you?
Television and movies are responsible for decades, almost a century, in fact, of what I consider to be 'bad social programming'. Images are powerful, and people tend to believe what they see. Not only do they form perceptions of how the world is, based on the things they see, they also form their beliefs about what is acceptable behavior based on those images. If you see other people do things, you're likely to be doing them youself before long. This is especially true if you are a small child in your formative years, learning how the world around you works. At this stage in life, a person's observations and experiences become a nearly indelible part of who they become.
One place I've seen this first hand is when I worked at the sporting goods counter at Wal Mart years ago. I will tell you this much: You know who the pros and the amateurs are when they ask to examine a firearm. After you open the action and pass it over the counter, the average prospective buyer invariably cycles the action closed...and puts their finger on the trigger as they proceed to inspect or shoulder the gun. This would be perhaps 90 percent of the folks one encounters. How many ever opened the action again before handing the gun back? A few. The same people who kept their finger off of the trigger the whole time. The same few who carefully closed the action to sample the handling characteristics of the gun after selecting a safe direction completely devoid of other shoppers. After all, relatively few firearms seem the same when taken out of battery. A semi-automatic .22 rifle or shotgun are the onle examples I can think of right off the top of my head. With most of those designs, you can merely lock the bolt back and nothing significant changes. With just about everything else, an open action blocks the sights, changes the shape, or alters the balance to the point that it feels completely different. If you don't belive me, try getting a feel for a break-barrel shotgun when the breech is open. It just isn't the same! In all cases, the truly competent users were always considerate of others in how they handled the unloaded guns, watching the direction of the muzzle very carefully, never touching the trigger (since they were not about to actually fire the gun), and always took the gun back out of battery before handing it back.
I'm trying to think when the last time I saw a fictitious character on television or in the movies do any of those things, and I'm drawing a blank.
Placing one's finger on the trigger when you're not 100% committed to depressing it is the leading cause of accidental discharges. Apparently those do not happen on TV or in movies. I sure wish real life was that way!
Prop guns used for cinematic productions generally fire blank cartridges that have a primer, a very light charge of fast burning propellant, and something such as a paper card 'wad' to hold it all together in lieu of a bullet. Propellant functions well because it generally burns under increasing pressure. That doesn't happen with a blank, which is very sooty. Filthy, in fact. Because no real pressure is building, the report from a blank is usually less than that of a firecracker. It's enough to startle a person, but nothing like an actual cartridge being fired. Therefore, in the studio you can stage all kinds of stuff that would range from highly objectionable to downright intolerable if done with actual firearms and ammunition. A shootout in a concrete parking garage filled with vehicles is a prime example of this. It's just loud enough with blanks to get some adrenaline rushing when actors play it out. With real handguns, which vent hot gas under tens of thousands of pounds per square inch of pressure as the bullet leaves the muzzle, the noise and atmospheric disruption are not only seemingly unreal, they're excrutiatingly painful and will quite often cause permenant hearing loss to those involved. In reality, most real-life instances involve one or more parties who are completely unaware of this beforehand, and the number of shots fired is very few indeed as a result of this very rude awakening once the action starts. Real guns are not at all like what you see - or hear - on TV or in the movies.
A couple of years ago, my friend Carol was given a 9mm Glock 17 pistol by her brother. They went out in the country somewhere to try it out, and neither one of them had any ear plugs or muffs. I don't think Carol had ever fired a gun before in her fifty years, and therefore didn't appreciate the necessity of hearing protection. Her brother should've known better, but failed to be proactive in this area. However, after firing ONE round, the gun was put back in its case and it has remained there ever since. Carol still complains about how uncomfortable that was and how she really has no interest in ever touching it again. She learned first hand that the 9x19mm cartridge operates at between 20 and 36 thousand pounds per square inch, depending on the loading. They crack pretty good, don't they? So loud, in fact, that no known speaker can accurately reproduce it. Which is why they don't sound so bad on TV or in a movie theatre!
Not only does entertainment media delude so many of us into thinking that reckless endangerment of other people with firearms for any reason, supposedly 'justified' or not, is acceptable because it's seen so often, it also implies that firearms are much more mild mannered than they really are. They are far more capable of achieving results for their users on screen, do not cause anywhere near as much damage in the process of accomplishing those goals, and are much more pleasant to use than most of the real-life counterparts of the guns portrayed are. Now, to be fair, most anything in .22 rimfire works in real life as on TV. They're easy to handle and hit with because they're not very noisy and recoil very little, so a person with minimal experience and skill can fare quite well with one. They tend to cause minimal injury, although they are still quite deadly. It's just that solid projectiles of less than 1/4" in diameter don't tend to splatter a human target quite so much as a larger diameter bullet with more speed and several times the mass that is designed to expand on impact does! If you ever are party to or witness to a real world shooting with a larger handgun designed as a combat weapon, such as a police officer's service weapon, you will find that the experience is so real it's unreal and that is far louder, messier, and more traumatic to everyone around than anything they'd ever put on film or videotape for the public to watch.
One of my biggest peeves in this regard is poor handling and ettiquette by supposed law enforcement officers and other personnel who should know better. Competent authorities who are licensed to carry firearms DO NOT draw them gratuitiously at the earlist opportunity to do so. Television characters are not real, so naturally they are not competent, not authorities, and they're not licensed. Thus, apparently they get to do whatever they want, with little likelyhood of facing any meaningful consequences. Unfortunately, the effect they have on real people who are watching the garbage these characters are featured in is very tangible. People see what the characters do, then begin to assume that that's exactly how it works in real life.
Friends, it just isn't so. Guns stay in holsters until drawing them becomes the last resort. If weapons are drawn, it means that in one or more officers' professional opinion, real danger is imminent. Guns don't come out to impress the watching bystanders...if that happens, it's only a coincidental byproduct of the situation. And, unlike television and movies, if an officer screws up, there will be a lot of direct questions to be answered. If that screw up involved someone being hurt of killed, then there will genuinely be hell to pay somewhere.
Stage guns may not launch actual projectiles, but the image they can project can cause as much or even far more damage in the long run.
Things to think about,
The TiGor
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