Help I'm slipping into the Twilight Zone...

Place is a mad house, feels like being cloned
My beacon's been moved under moon and stars - 
Where am I to go, now that I've gone too far?
And you will come to know -
When the bullet hits the bone...


The following rant contains spoilers for Psych season 6, Castle season 4, and Firefly, episode 1. Reader discretion is advised.

Here's another one of those gun related media cliches that annoys the bejesus out of me. Our hero (or one of our heroes) has his weapon drawn; facing him is a villain, also with their weapon drawn. Villain may have a hostage at which they are pointing their weapon, or they may be pointing it at the hero; either way, we have a Mexican Standoff, that great dramatic cliche. Except these particular scenes are inevitably examples of both "Fridge Logic" and "The Idiot Ball," and often times require out of character behavior as our hero inevitably surrenders to the villain, or allows them to escape, thus increasing the dramatic stakes of the story. This is cheap, and smacks of creative and intellectual laziness; more bad messages from Hollywood storytellers.

The first example to pop up here is the recent Psych episode, "Neil Simon's Lover's Retreat". Carlton Lassiter, ace detective and semi-psychotic gunbunny, walks into the hotel room of a suspect to find said suspect holding two of his ("friends" is a mighty strong word to use involving Lassie, so we'll merely say "more than casual acquaintances") at gunpoint. Lassie has his weapon drawn and on the aggressor rapidly, and orders him to drop the gun. The suspect instead instructs Lassie to drop his gun, and to show he's serious, cocks the hammer on his weapon - which looks to be a 1911 or Hi-Power, both of which are single action firearms (it's also possible it's a Dan Koonan - the gun was explicitly mentioned to be .38 Special, which is an incredibly rare caliber to find in a semiautomatic. The Koonan, a 1911 derivative, is the only one I know. It's far more likely that a writer botched his research when he tried to be special, and the gun in question is a 1911 in .38 Super. In all of these cases, though, it's a single action firearm and cannot be fired unless - tada! - the hammer is cocked.) Lassiter lives to shoot people - it's perhaps the defining aspect of his character, save perhaps for the fact that he will always be upstaged by Shawn - and yet, one scene break later, we find Shawn and Juliet freeing their two friends (and Lassie) from a steam room, having surrendered to the enemy.

When I point out that the weapon is single action, and therefore must be cocked, and therefore was not ready to fire without a gross movement of the thumb that requires breaking the proper firing grip (and also, on most 1911s, will result in disengaging the grip safety while you do so), I both refer to my earlier entry where I waxed eloquent on how hammers and slides are not "drama switches," and I also point out that Lassie would have recognized this - probably on sight, as he's more gun obsessed than I am - and should have taken appropriate action.

And at the risk of contradicting an earlier comment I made to a friend, where I remarked on the extreme difficulty of aiming for non-vital points as opposed to the often lethal center of mass, and how more people should visit a range and actually shoot a gun rather than demanding cops perform ridiculously difficult, nigh on impossible, trick shots to the weapon or arm rather than shooting to stop and winding up with dead offenders - Lassie was all of five feet from the guy. He could easily have put a slug in his shoulder before he cocked the hammer, thus ending the episode quickly. Which, of course, is why he didn't.

A second example, the season four episode of Castle, "Cuffed". Detectives Ryan and Esposito have discovered their friends and partners, main characters Beckett and Castle, imprisoned beneath the floor in a suspect facility. As they go to rescue their friends, who are in danger of being immediately eaten (it makes sense in context), the criminal foe throw down on them. Words are exchanged, including the dramatic pump of a shotgun. This situation has a little more leeway than the last; the risk of getting shot in a confrontation is higher, the reward of immediate capture of the criminals that much less. There are three bad guys, and only two police detectives, and the cops are armed with handguns whereas at least one criminal has a shotgun. Letting them go makes a little more sense in context, especially since they can be caught later - which, of course, they are. Except...

Reactions under stress are variable; different people react differently, and the same person will react differently to two different situations, even when they're outwardly the same. There was a police officer murdered during a traffic stop whose name I sadly forget, who could only scream "drop the gun! Drop the gun!" as the perp retrieved a rifle from his vehicle, loaded it, and began shooting. It wasn't until the murderer actually began to fire that the officer took steps to return fire and defend himself, and by that time he was quickly overwhelmed - all of this caught on tape. Similarly, one of the four victims of the 1970 Newhall Massacre was found with spent shells in his pocket - when he reloaded, rather than dumping the empties he'd caught them and pocketed them, a habit learned in training, which may have cost him precious seconds - and his life.

With all of this caveated, it still raises the question of why Detectives Ryan and, most especially, former Special Forces combat veteran Esposito - both of whom have been in numerous shootouts in the past, just over the course of the four previous seasons - would stand idly by and allow themselves to be threatened; more to the point, would move their weapons to allow the criminals to flee, blindly trusting that they wouldn't simply be gunned down by the desperate to flee villains who had already murdered at least one person. It defies belief - except, of course, that it doesn't move the story along, or allow the next scene to play out.

That most notorious gun writer, researcher, and advocate Colonel Jeff Cooper said, in his book Principles of Personal Defense, "Speed is the absolute essence of any form of combat... on the very instant that we know that our assailant intends us serious physical harm, we must work just as fast as we can. If he has shot at us, we must hit him before he can shoot again. If he is holding us by threat of force, we have the edge of reaction time over him... the perfect fight is one that is over before the loser really understands what is going on."

A great example of this is the pilot episode of Firefly, and one of the reasons that I adore the show. Federal agent Dobson, who has already demonstrated his ruthlessness, lack of professionalism, and ineptitude by shooting adorable engineer Kaylee, is attempting to escape the Serenity and has taken crazy girl River hostage. As he stands there, gun on the girl, monologuing about how anyone who attempts to stop him will have the girl's death on his head, returning captain Malcolm Reynolds shoots him. No hesitation, no speech, he simply draws and plugs the man on his way up the cargo ramp; immediate reaction, immediate result. One can argue that this scene is a demonstration of Mal's recklessness, and that's entirely possible. Had he missed, had he failed to stop Dobson with that one shot, River might have been killed, or another crewmember; on the other hand, had Dobson escaped, the whole crew would have been imperiled, River might have been killed anyway, and by the by, there's a ship full of cannibalistic rapacious and rapist Reivers about to descend, and can we get this ship in the sky now?

This is probably one of the reasons Firefly was cancelled so quickly; as with so many things Joss Whedon, it delighted in turning the cliches upon their heads. And it is for this reason that it is so gravely missed and needed on today's television.

That's when I reach for my revolver...

That's when it all gets blown away
That's when I reach for my revolver
The spirit passes by this way...

So, lately I've been reading Janet Evanovich's Stephanie Plum novels. I'd call these guilty pleasures, but the sad fact of the matter is, I feel very little guilt over this; sure, they're formulaic, episodic, and fluffy chick-lit, but they're also entertaining, quick reading, and might give me some ideas I can utilize for my own writing. After all, everything's grist for the mill, everything's a tool for the toolbox. Unfortunately, I realized early on that she was going to commit a grave sin - I refer, of course, to Ms. Evanovich, not Stephanie - and yesterday while I was reading Seven Up, it finally happened.

Somebody used the safety on a Glock.

Now, pretty much anybody who knows me knows that I'm something of a gun nut. I know guns; I work with them, not on a daily basis, but regularly enough (as a matter of fact, my job this week is annual small arms training; I get to spend what looks to be a chilly, damp week on a range out in Pungo, shooting guns instead of, you know, actually working for a living. Class doesn't start until nine, and it's a much easier commute for me - not to mention, no searching for parking on the overcrowded Navy base. It's like a vacation, only I still get paid). I didn't grow up with them; my parents don't much like them, and I wasn't allowed to play with toy guns when I was a kid, which is probably at least part of the reason I have a gigantic arsenal of Nerf and airsoft guns now that I'm an adult. They are, however, something that's interested me since my early teens, and something that even before I owned or used any, I had read and studied a great deal about. I'm probably not the best person for this particular rant, and I'm no doubt treading over ground that's been beaten down many a time before, but it's one of those battles that will no doubt continue to be fought over, and over, and over again.

The cause of my frustration is this; Glocks don't have safeties.

Somebody, no doubt, read that last sentence and immediately headed for the comments box to point out the number of intrinsic safeties on the Glock "Safe Action" pistol, to complain about how Glocks have an undeserved bad reputation due to the number of people giving themselves "Glock leg" due to carelessness, or conversely, to complain about how horribly ugly or unsafe Glocks are. This rant isn't about Glocks, safe the above mentioned bit, that Glocks do not have (manual) (thumb operated) safeties. One could advocate that this is pretty much Glock's thing; their lack of safety and long trigger pull strongly resemble the old cop standby, the double action revolver, and their uncomplicated, straight forward method of use (draw weapon, point, shoot) are one of their great advantages. I've heard a gun shop clerk advocate not having a manual safety as a plus for a weapon, since under stress and fear for your life you might forget to deactivate it or fumble while trying to. I don't personally have a dog in that fight; I prefer my guns to have a manual safety because I like that extra step between "inert metal block" and "dangerous bang stick", but I follow the four rules as religiously as I can, so having or not having one shouldn't make much of a difference.

I'll digress quickly into the four rules here, for those who haven't seen them. They are, in no particular order and of equal importance:

1) Treat every gun as though it were loaded.
2) Keep your finger off the trigger until you're willing to fire.
3) Don't point a gun at anything you don't intend to shoot.
4) Be aware of your target and what lies beyond it; bullets travel.

The point of the four rules is that you can be breaking one at any particular time, and the other three should be in effect to prevent you from killing someone; you have to break several for there to be catastrophic effects. And yet, people are harmed almost every day through carelessness and neglect.

But to get back to the point of all of this, and end the digression; Glocks don't have safeties. The Glock semi-automatic pistol, in it's many different calibers and loadings, is probably the most popular handgun in America - possibly the world, overall, although I imagine one or another of the Warsaw Pact firearms has that honor, due to sheer number available, in much the same way that the Kalashnikov does. Law enforcement from local to federal levels favor it, private citizens buy them in droves, and probably the only reason the military hasn't switched from the Beretta 92F/M9 to the Glock is that aforementioned lack of manual safety. Uncle Sam likes his Misguided Children (and the rest of 'em, too) to have plenty of steps between paperweight and bang stick; it cuts down on paperwork. Two seconds of research (Glock.com, wikipedia) could point this out in a heartbeat. Yet writers continue to namedrop the Glock, and continue to have their characters activating or deactivating the nonexistent safety. Before the rise in popularity of the Glock, this was common on revolvers, another firearm that lacks any sort of manual safety; I suppose there might be a revolver out there with a thumb safety, just as there might be a Glock out there with the same. These would be a custom job, and rarer than hen's teeth, and unless one is present at the same writer's college all of these novelists have been going to, I fail to see why this error keeps popping up.

Sure, it's a small thing. But it's a glaring, grating omission, a failure to do basic fact checking, an error that could easily have been avoided - and there's no reason for it. Bad writing, in other words, or perhaps worse, lazy writing.

Back in 1990, a pulp novelist named Michael Newton wrote "Armed And Dangerous: A Writer's Guide To Weapons" It's a cute book, a good though shallow overview of various popular weapons of personal destruction, with a couple of errors that are mostly only of importance to the real nitpickers among us. Sadly, though, it's dated; the field is ripe, especially after the developments of the last ten years, for a new edition. This blog doesn't have the scope to cover all the ground a book of that caliber (forgive) should, and I doubt I have the knowledge to do so, but I figured I'd throw out a couple of the most egregious offenders here really quickly, and hope that somebody, somewhere, might learn something. These are as they occur to me, in no particular order.

Number one, Glocks don't have manual safeties. We've covered this, but I'll repeat it again, simply because it's so often repeated. If there's a round in the chamber and you pull the trigger, using a proper grip with your finger engaging the little second trigger inside the primary firing trigger, the gun will go bang. If your finger's not on the trigger, the gun is not supposed to go bang.

Number two, you can't put a suppressor on a revolver. First off, suppressors don't silence a gun; they merely lessen the sound to, as they say, a dull roar. Two, firing normal bullets out of a suppressed gun still results in a sonic crack as the bullet breaks the sound barrier. Bullets go very fast, in case you missed it, most things propelled by an explosion do. And third, most revolvers (all but one, actually, the Russian Nagant revolver, which is a curiosity) don't form a gas tight seal between the cylinder and the barrel when firing, so there's still a bit of gas and noise leakage from the gun, thus allowing sound to escape.

Number three, it's not a clip. It's a magazine. With again rare exception (the WWII era M1 Garand for example), you use a clip to put bullets into a magazine, the magazine is what actually goes into the gun. Clips are generally optional, a way to speed feed a magazine; unless you're fond of single-shooters, magazines are not. More on this here.

Number four, with the caveat that it's generally television that's guilty of this particular sin, the slide on a semiauto and the pump on a shotgun are not drama switches. Trying to use them like cocking the hammer on a double action revolver or a SA/DA pistol like the M9 doesn't work; they don't suddenly make the situation more serious, they mean the guy was threatening someone with an unloaded pistol before that. I illustrate what I mean with this scene from The Big Lebowski (warning, naughty language ahead), but I can think of scenes from Psych, Supernatural, and a couple other shows.

My friend Jared pointed out one I'm going to use for number five here, the slide lock/reload phenomenon. The bad guy has the heroes on the ropes, with gun aimed, and when he goes to pull the trigger - click! He's out of ammo and didn't realize it. Except the vast majority of semiauto pistols (and inevitably the one they're using in this scene is among them) have their slides lock back when the magazine runs empty, a handy visual cue that it's time to stick in a fresh one and get back to work. This one is growing less common - at least, I haven't seen it quite as often. Still, if you're a writer and you'd like to use this particular cliche - use a revolver.

Number six, any gun wherein the impact of its projectile will send a man flying will probably have the same result on the person flying - something along the lines of the "Noisy Cricket" from Men In Black. Newton's Third Law. It should be pointed out that most of the energy in a kinetic projectile is spent penetrating the thing it hits, or else ricocheting off; not much is transferred to the media, hence the reason you don't generally see people sending milk jugs or pop bottles flying when they shoot them (they tend to explode, instead). If the target is wearing an armored vest that stops the bullet, the force will transfer over and knock them back; otherwise, the main reason people tend to fall down when they get shot is because of shock/pain, not because they're getting blown off their feet. Consult your local physicist for more info on this.

I'm rapidly approaching 2,000 words here, and I'm sure I could go on for hours - but the key thing here, the really important thing, is that most of these errors are simple. They're things that could be picked up in a matter of moments with a Google search and some free time, and they're mistakes that could be avoided with a little thought. They're little things; but they're so obvious and glaring to those in the know that they can easily remove you from the mood the story is trying to set you in, disrupt your chain of thought, and nag at you. A hair in your soup isn't horrendously insanitary, but it's digusting, and it ruins your enjoyment of the soup; these little errors are the same thing, and there's no excuse for a published author, with the back up of editors, prereaders, and a score of previously published books under their belt, to make them.