There are a lot of gun myths out there. These myths can arise either because of common misconceptions about guns or because of what we see in shows and movies.
Regardless, these kinds of myths create the wrong idea either about what firearms are capable of or can cause people who don’t know much about guns to become more unsafe when using them.
Here are five common gun myths you should stop believing:
People Get Flown Backward When They Are Shot
Anyone who has seen a few action movies has no doubt seen when the main protagonist draws his pistol or machine gun and opens fire on the bad guy’s henchman, causing them to fly back when they get hit.
At the bare minimum, most movies depict people getting thrown back when they are hit at close range with a shotgun.
While this may be satisfying to see the villains get vanquished in the movies in this way, it bears no truth in reality. The reason is because of simple physics. For each action, there must be an equal and opposite reaction.
This means that for the bullet from a gun to throw someone who gets shot backward, the person firing the gun would have to get thrown backward just as hard as well from the recoil of the gun.
In reality, it doesn’t matter how much recoil your gun generates, it’s not going to generate enough to fling a bad guy who assaults you across the room. Furthermore, there’s not enough mass in the bullet to prevent a full grown person from flying backwards either.
If a Gun Drops, It Will Go Off
A major accurate way of saying this is that if a gun drops, it *might* go off.
The truth is that most modern-day firearms have what are called ‘drop safety’ features so they cannot fire unless the trigger is pulled.
Related: The Guns The Government Doesn’t Want You To Have
And even if a gun without a so-called drop safety feature is dropped over a hard surface, the chances of it going off are incredibly minimal.
That being said, accidents can happen and you should never just casually toss a gun onto the ground (even if the gun doesn’t go off, doing so would surely damage the finish on the outside of the gun).
Machine Guns Lack Accuracy
Both movies and video games are to blame for this myth, which commonly show bolt action or ‘sniper’ rifles as highly accurate while anything with fully automatic capabilities being significantly less accurate.
Here’s the truth: just because a gun has fully-automatic capabilities and a high capacity doesn’t mean it’s going to be inaccurate. Quite the opposite, in fact.
In real-world combat scenarios, fully automatic machine guns are commonly used to provide cover for advancing infantry forces by directing concentrated fire over an enemy’s position.
The common tactic is to aim the machine gun directly at the enemy’s position and open fire to pick hostile targets off.
⇒ Why You Should Never Hide Your Stockpile in Your Basement
A fully automatic weapon is really as inaccurate as the person shooting it is. If you shoot an automatic assault rifle from the hip like we commonly see in movies too, then sure, you’re probably not going to hit anything. And if you allow the muzzle of the weapon to gradually rise from the recoil, then your shots will be shot off target as well.
But raise the gun to your shoulder and carefully aim your shots with quick bursts of fire while controlling the weapon so the muzzle is kept down, and you should be able to place your shots accurately on target.
Furthermore, fully automatic weapons can be used as ‘sniper’ rifles too. It’s a big misconception that only bolt action rifles can be sniper rifles. In fact, the .50 BMG Browning M2 machine gun was actually used as a sniper rifle during the Vietnam War when it was mounted with a scope to view targets at longer distances.
A Suppressor Completely Silences a Gun
This is something else we see in movies, shows, and video games: the hero in a secret agent film, for instance, approaches the bad guy’s compound at night.
There are armed guards patrolling the outside. Our hero, dressed completely in black, affixes a suppressor onto the end of his pistol and picks off the armed guards one-by-one, each guard oblivious because of the silence of the pistol.
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When you mount a suppressor or a silencer to a gun, it completely silences the weapon, right? Wrong!
While it is true that suppressors have been used for decades to dampen the sound of guns going off, they do not completely silence the gun. For example, a suppressor cannot reduce the supersonic noise that the bullet creates when it is fired out of the gun.
The real reason for suppressors are threefold:
- They make it slightly more difficult for enemy combatants to detect a shooter’s location by noise
- They help to tame the muzzle flash of the weapon
- Since they at least reduce the noise of a gun, they can make them more bearable to shoot when hunting or at the range
Additionally, it’s a common misconception that when you affix a suppressor to a gun that you don’t need to wear hearing protection. Don’t make this mistake either. Always wear hearing protection when you go to the range.
Bullets Cause Sparks Upon Impact
If you’ve seen enough action movies, you’ve no doubt seen where a squad of villainous henchmen open fire on our hero with automatic weapons, and the bullets cause sparks to fly when they strike the environment around the hero.
The truth is that not all bullets cause sparks when they ricochet off of targets. While it undeniably looks cool in the movies, just because a metal bullet strikes another metal object doesn’t mean that it will cause sparks to fly.
Guns may not do everything we see them do in the movies, but that doesn’t make them any less useful (or deadly) in real life.
The realities to the above myths should help to clear some major misconceptions that you have had about firearms in the past.
Simply picking up a gun isn’t going to turn you into an invincible movie character, and it’s still important to follow essential firearms safety protocols as well.
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My favorite myth is hiding behind a car door will protect you..
Depends on the door
A trapdoor works.
While a car door may seem like an added level of protection, it’s a rarity that it would stop much more than a 22lr. Just depends on if you’re lucky enough for the bullet to hit the window motor or not. That would stop most pistol rounds in the 9mm and down range and down, but it may just ricochet them off and into the interior of the vehicle. Any of the larger handgun rounds and pretty much any rifle round, excluding some of the rimfires, will sail right through the outer sheetmetal and the interior door panel. If a fairly straight on shot, 22LR will too! So it’s best to think of vehicle doors as cardboard so as not to be disappointed.
Again depends on the door
Or a couch…
A couch is a joke when it comes to stopping any caliber bullet.
I liked the one where the woman on The View said shooting a deer with an ar15 would blow the deer up and not leave any meat to harvest.
Why is ‘The View’ still on TV when other shows are terminated for their political voices of nonsense. Is this true because Direct TV which is ATT owns that show and CNN, ESPN political commenting under the Walt Disney corporation umbrella, correct? Or is there something else going on?
Your hypothesis is correct plus there’s still an audience for this crap because there are still alot of Boobus Americanus present amongst us. Some days i still debate w myself that this whole depopulation agenda might not be a bad thing afterall.
I say thank God these TV people are completely ignorant.
They need to be water boarded at least to clean out there liberal cobwebs of liberalism. Ha, Ha!
Yes, but, the problem is that they can still vote! And procreate! And probably even raise kids if they can’t have any of their own!
Saw on the news the other day, guy got shot when he pointed an “assault type pistol” at the officer…
Gun myths include,
Hollywood has made a mess of reality and fantasy when it comes to the movies involving guns or weapons.
The old western movies, cowboy and Indian, detective, science fiction and some war movies, gun handling was a joke.
Which may psychologically have spawned this kids today to do mass shootings. Associated were fantasy cartoons with character shooting and the victim gets up an runs away after being shot several times.
People had a better grip on reality decades ago, father an sons would go hunting, this past on vital information of gun use. There where also NRA Hunter Safety classes for the young before being able to purchase a gun for hunting and for sport.
Now we got mayhem in today’s society, besides movies we got social media challenges. Influencers in the media because many people have low self esteem, no commonsense, void of responsibilities in today’s Litigious society. We can go on about myths and truth of having guns.
Don’t leave out the violent video games made in China put out there that mold young kids’ minds to kill people.
Guns are useful in the hands of experienced people who have had basic training from qualified instructors not training from some street wreck gang banger.
We have anti-gun propaganda well funded preachers who use 1984 Doubletalk to get their message across to liberals on gun matters.
Another topic;
The Doublespeak Award is an “ironic tribute to public speakers who have perpetuated language that is grossly deceptive, evasive, euphemistic, confusing, or self-centered.” The recipients of the Doublespeak Award are usually politicians, national administration or departments. “Wikipedia.”
Clinton’s, Obama’s and the Biden’s are the modern godfathers of Doublespeak, hey don’t forget Dr Fauci. Doublespeak can be seen as analogous to doublethink and Newspeak, concepts created by George Orwell in 1984.
That is why social media is so popular because these platforms use all three forms to manipulate users.
Does VP Harris’s word-salad be a good example?
Guns, Bidenomics, religion and politics sadly make our modern world go around these days.
We need money to buy guns, ammo, food and mortgage or rent, it’s all related.
Related topics,
CBDCs, Bitcoin, cryptocurrency, my basic understanding of are based on Block Chain Technology run on computers or server farms using up Kilo Watts of electricity. The green energy and push to go all electric has various flaws, one for sure is the power grid interruption for days, brownout.
My concern is everyone wants to go all electric and digital than being analog, paper an pen, manual, gas powered.
One flick of the wrist on some computer can wipe out all our finances and important documents erased forever, depending on whose political agenda is in charge.
Operation Choke Point – a program created by the Department of Justice during Obama’s administration
Gold and Silver are the best assets to hedge against liberals.
We have Chinese nationals and foreign terrorist coming across the Southern Border, even the Northern Border. The electrical grid is being hacked by the Chinese possible in preparation of advance probing into our weakened electrical grid that can be wiped out by several well placed hacks.
It is no coincidence we have the Washington Deep State keeping the real scary details under wraps.
Out in California plenty of the Sheeple turned in their guns for a gift card from law enforcement this past weekend. Yes I am here from the government to help you
Crypto a person who adheres or belongs secretly to a party, sect, or other group. Do people honestly know what all this digital currency truthfully is all about, other than a lot of Doublespeak 1984?
The great Office Of Personnel Management hack around 2015 was done by foreign black hat hackers. What and where is this information being used today? How many Manchurian Candidates do we have walking around the halls of congress, Washington DC, many alphabet agencies and State governments selling us Americans out?
Swalwell.
Funny , is that people watching gun fight movies think that the Actors are Actually Firing the guns. But these are ALL Fake prop guns , Except for the one in Baldwin’s RUST.
They showed the real shooting spree in the John Wick’s Movie3 and all the guns would go -Click,Click,Click when the trigger was pulled, but NO bullets coming out of the barrels , so all the bullet impacts and gun flash were all added with Squibs and charges and CG Computer Generated
I see you , DG is christopherchris new name , is that funny or what ?
How many trolls do we have on this comment section?
His mistake is carelessness , not checking for himself, and trusting someone else to do his job and take care of the work.
everyone should always check your guns, verify , keep away from idiots who should never use or have them .
I have a disagreement with part of this. The first time I shot a 3″ shell from a 10 gauge shotgun, it knocked me back. The same thing happened the first time I shot a hot loaded .454 Casull.
Of course they have recoil but if you had a proper stance it would not knock you down.
Yeah, I had the same problem when I fired a 75 mm cannon from shoulder height. Remember, Joe Biden said we need jets, tanks and atomic bombs to fight the U.S. Government. BWHAHAHAHAH!!!!!!
Another myth is “knockdown power” on game. A central nervous system hit or breaking both front legs twill cause an immediate collapse . If the bullet actually caused “knock down” the knockdown would be on both ends. Having enough power to get to the vitals is the real “knockdown”
power.
We need knock down power on all those organized gangs at shopping malls and the corner store. These punks need some permanent knock down love.
We need well funded police to kill the criminals on the spot red handed doing the crime. Instead of Biden-Soros DA lawyers letting those lowlifes back on the street. Send them to jail and deport the rest of the illegals causing crimes too.
We also don’t need a Minority Report Police State either. There are too many smartlight cameras surveilling us in the public square. And yes I still believe in having privacy in the public arena as it was before the Patriot Act was forced on us.
A great TV show was ‘Person of Interest’ showing the New York city surveillance cameras hooked up to what would latter be called AI. Was this TV show a precursor to the Chinese Social Credit system or the other way around in Precedence in this woke culture. Did the Chinese CCP copy that for real application?
The liberal gun myth is the gun killed the criminal, in real life it is the criminal the pulls the trigger to commit the crime, the gun is a tool, it is not a living thing.
Correction; the gun killed the victim, sorry:)
The Real Myth is : Common Sense , Reasoning, logical deduction s and conclusion s which can be supported with reality
Guns dont kill , people do and with wrong training, no accountability , no thought for actions and certainly NO Conscience or remorse for actions
Dead People Walking
other is all guns have a reverse force , amt is determined by load or size of weapon
other is bullits blow up everything , never believe people who dont have a gun , shoot a gun or trained with guns
other Is Guns offer Deterance and stopgap to stop the idiots, unskilled, no brain , kids raised to be absulutly idiots with No brains
Guns are a deterance if used correctly and handled correctly , in the right hands
Guns are for Protection , Hunting , and survival ( same as Preping )
if you grow up with guns , you understand the common sense values of guns
if your some moron , villiage idiot in the cities , yu think guns protect you
Truth is , if you walk around with an attitude , it will be a matter of time before the attitude gets you killed anywhere.
Buy, Train, Learn , but everyone use common sense with guns , accidents are because of carelessness and stupidity , nothing more
The most dangerous is the person who has no respect for God , people and those around you , YOUR neighbors , cultivate good relations
pure view idiots , no common sense , just social need to be accepted
Ok, most of you know this, but do wear surgical gloves when loading your magazines. Even when SHTF the martial law government will be able to trace the shells back to you through DNA.
PROTOCOLS FOR FIGHTING – FROM YOUR CAR :
1 -Leave – Just drive away. Preferred.
2 – Escape. Use your car as a battering ram to Escape .
3 – Get out of your car & Fight – use your car for “Concealment” and “parts of it”
Engine, Wheels, Axel for “Cover”. You need to know what parts of a
car offer “Cover” – Generally – Only – Engine, Wheels, Axil.
4 – “Last Resort” – Fight from Inside your car.
Fundamentally Cars “Fighting From Inside” are Death Traps .
Windshield Deflections:
Shooting thru windshield from Inside to Outside- Bullets will deflect “UP” by say 10-30deg.
Shooting thru windshield from Outside to Inside – Bullets will deflect “Down” by say 10-30deg.
Fundamentals :
Generally – Car Bodies and Windows will NOT STOP Bullets.
“Cover” – “WILL stop bullets” and “May” also hide/conceal you.
Car “Cover” – Generally Only – Engine, Wheels, Axil.
“Concealment” – Will “Hide You” but may or May Not stop bullets.
Car body panels.
I have a video tape (an antique) … where someone, devoted about an hour, to debunk movie gun myths. Shooting a bullet into a cars fuel tank and the car blows up. A ‘bullet proof’ vest, stops bullets and any injury. The flying back when hit … shooting straight through a slanted windshield and the bullet hitting it’s intended location … shooting through brush, and hitting a target. (even fine brush can move off target a 50 cal. projectile) … shooting a car, and killing an engine, shooting a passenger in a car, through the door … and lots of others. The quality was miserable, as it had been copied probably hundreds of times, but was still worth watching.
Non the less I’d love to have one off those pistols shown in old western movies that could shoot 500 rounds before reloading. Do you remember those?
Just to clear up what the author says about fully automatic belt fed weapons in the military… These are designed NOT to be accurate as they are designed for surpressive fire. They fire in a cone shape to surpress the area.
I know because I used to use the British GPMG which is a fantastic weapon. I also used the LSW (long barrelled SA80) which was too accurate for the role it was designed for (and rubbish/unreliable) plus it was magazine fed only. Thankfully they got rid of that piece of junk and eventually changed it out for the Minime (can’t remember the exact name) which was great, especially when it was belt or magazine fed.
Being shot dors not always equal immediately dead.
Being shot does not always equal immediately dead.
(The following is a joke)
Note: The actual title of this piece was
“Everything we know about guns we learned at the movies” by a majority of democrats.
Actually, it isn’t unheard of for a person to “fly” backwards a bit when shot. 99.9% of the time its because the shot person perceived he/she was about to be shot at and tried to get out of the way of the bullet. But its never as dramatic as in the movies or TV.
When I was a teenager, my dad and I would watch the TV show “Combat.” Dad was a WWII Marine infantry vet and saw many people get shot. In one episode a German soldier got shot by one of the GIs and he just crumpled to the ground. My dad jumped up, pointed at the TV, and said, “Finally, someone who looks like he really got shot!”
“…and it’s still important to fire essential firearms safety protocols as well.”
Mr. Oetken,
Please edit/correct your last line to read “…FOLLOW firearm safety protocols….”