Category: All About Guns

Gun Stories

The gun world is rife with such misinformation, and woe to the gun writer who punctures these cherished “realities.”

I had a good example thrust into my lap, even though it was totally unrelated to journalism. I was assigned to sit on a panel reviewing the final presentations of police officers seeking to become certified instructors.

An earnest young instructor candidate strode to the podium and began his presentation on exterior ballistics. Things were going fine until he endeavored to explain how bullets continue speeding up after leaving the muzzle before they begin to slow down.

I was dumbfounded. The central point of his presentation was wrapped around this dubious “fact.” He had somehow conflated the normal parabolic arc of bullets relative to the sights with an increase in speed.

When I tried to gently point out his error, he proceeded to become more and more agitated while using ever-more fantastical — and non-existent — physics to explain the concept.

He was so absolutely sure of the matter someone in his past had likewise explained the concept to him and he could not begin to fathom it might be incorrect. But he was certainly wrong, absolutely, positively 100% wrong.

As an aside, in case you are within the tiny fraction of shooters who still believe in this urban legend, bullets (or any object) can only increase velocity when additional kinetic energy is applied, otherwise it will continually slow down due to friction. Once a bullet leaves the muzzle, no additional energy is added (unless the bullet contains a tiny motor), so it starts slowing down immediately while thrashing its way through air molecules.

The bullet does indeed move in an arc relative to the sightline, but this is intentional because of how the bore line and sights are positioned, not because the bullet is speeding up. If the sighting system were exactly parallel to the bore, the bullet would never strike the point of aim because it continually drops. I might not have explained it perfectly, and there are other minor forces at work, but this is a proven fact. If you are still shaking your head in disbelief, look it up from a reputable physics source.

Anyway, shooting is replete with such urban legends of every variety. If you think magazine springs take a ‘set’ after a few years, they don’t. There is no “ultimate manstopper,” and “Knockdown power” doesn’t really exist.

Bullets don’t knock people backward — they might stumble or even launch themselves through the plate glass window if they think that’s what’s supposed to happen when shot, but the kinetic energy of the bullet cannot do it. This is why big guns can be effectively shot by diminutive people. If not, they’d likewise be flung backward out the saloon door upon firing. It’s the old “Equal-but-opposite forces” law of physics.

Meanwhile, cartridges did not “hit harder” or travel faster in the ‘old days’ given the same material and loadings. Manufacturers are not intentionally suppressing a new gun or cartridge because it was too good in testing. The truth is far more mundane — they simply project possible sales versus cost and decide if the product is economically feasible to manufacture.

There is no magic cartridge or bullet design which works every time. The truth is, bullet placement is far, far more important than the flavor — or cost — of the projectile.

The sound of a pump-action shotgun being racked doesn’t always stop a fight. Shooting someone outside your home and then dragging them inside isn’t going to protect you from prosecution and will likely have the opposite effect. Bulletproof vests don’t always live up to their name. Meanwhile, silencers mostly are not.

It’s also an urban legend all gunfights are “Three yards, three seconds, three shots.” Many are, but there are a sizable number which aren’t. This is why you should be able to hit at all reasonable ranges for your particular weapon.

And the “Gun Show Loophole” doesn’t exist. Of course, if you want to get into the Gun Control urban legends (let alone the lies), we’ll need a few hundred more pages.

Any discussion of firearms folklore certainly must mention the Old West. The history of the western U.S. is rife with shooting mythology, but the biggest of all is the “Gunslinger” trope — two steely-eyed men standing mano-a-mano in the street at high noon. Sorry, but it is literally a legend. Only two or three such actual duals have ever been discovered by historians. Sorry, Hollywood!

The Big One

And finally, there is the biggest firearms urban legend of all — “Gun writers are just shills for manufacturers!”
Sorry to bust your bubble on the last one, kids. Writers — and editors and magazines/websites — do have a vested interest in keeping gun makers on their good side, but there are very few (rumored) instances where a lousy gun or load was intentionally given glowing press simply to keep the hogs at the trough.

Trying to keep a positive relationship with an industry partner is simply good business sense, but writers walk the fine line between maintaining a relationship so they can have future access to information and products and sharing every blemish.

I’ll never claim we give a total, comprehensively unvarnished report on every topic, but we do try to bring the reader everything they need to know in an entertaining way. So far, it’s worked for almost 70 years.
And you can count on this as a fact, not an urban legend!