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Evil Overlord Bizarre Gun Syndrome
Mar. 28th, 2010 12:38 pm
OK, walk through this with me.
It is the height of the Cold War. You are a CIA agent in Moscow. You need to arrange somebody's demise. It's going to have to be a shooting, but you want the Soviet authorities to think the killer was Anybody But the CIA... or at least you want there to be some doubt in their minds.
Keeping in mind that it is always possible the weapon will fall into the opposition's hands, which weapon do you choose?
a.) A Smith and Wesson .357 Magnum, with a special-length barrel and no serial number, such as was instantly recognized as standard CIA issue by James Bond in one or another of the movies
b.) An all-plastic single shot pistol with blades to shave all traces of rifling from the bullet the instant it is fired, to make the bullet untraceable; it involves high-tech plastic-ceramic composites developed for the Apollo Program and various Lockheed aircraft that "don't exist"
c.) A sniper rifle in a unique .334 caliber, made by hand by an exclusive Gunmaker to Kings, a blind genius workman laboring in an unmarked backstreet shop in Vienna but spoken of with reverent awe by gun nuts worldwide
d.) A Soviet Tokarev military pistol, manufactured in 1942, "lost" at the front in 1945, and purchased in a Moscow back alley for $50 in US currency and three bottles of good vodka
I think the answer is obvious, if you stop and think about it for a few seconds. Yet writers seem to have this unbeatable urge to arm some of their heroes, and almost all of their Evil Masterminds, with some bizarro weapon that is unnecessary, counterproductive, and which quite likely wouldn't work.
Examples:
James Bond gave us the aforementioned CIA .357 which was so anonymous and untraceable that you knew it the instant you saw it. Bond also gave us Scaramaga's Golden Gun. In the movie this is the only one that actually made a bit of sense, since it broke down into a pen and a lighter that you could carry with you and not appear to be armed. In the book it was a gold-plated .45 Colt Single Action, the classic "cowboy gun." Goldfinger also used a gold-plated gun, but in his case it was a .25 Automatic.
The bizarre plastic single shot contraption was from an episode of Hawaii Five-0 I once saw. Even at the time, and I must have been about eight years old, I realized that a gun that used rocket science in an attempt to shave markings off the bullet as it fired was about a bajillion times easier to trace than some rusty relic from a pawn shop. Remember, being able to trace the bullet back to the gun is only useful if you can then trace the gun back to the shooter. If he tosses the gun down the sewer after the deed is done, it's untraceable.
The villain in The DaVinci Code uses a Medusa. This is a real revolver with the distinction that it can fire almost any .38-ish or 9mm-ish revolver or autopistol cartridge made, all in the same revolver, without modifications. It's just the thing if you're wandering a Mad Max nuclear aftermath where you might find two or three .357 Magnum shells today and one corroded, dented, but possibly live .38 Super next week. However, it choked in real life, because shooters generally find it easier to buy one particular kind of ammunition and not one box of each of 42 kinds; and if you're only buying .38 Specials, why do you need to pay extra for a gun that will fire a few dozen other calibers too?
Not that I fault the writers in these cases for not knowing their weapons, but it would have been obvious they were being silly if they'd stopped to think for a moment. Hey, guys, your Evil Overlord can have all the wild style he wants in his clothes, the uniforms of his henchpersons, his car, and his lair; but not in some pocket pistol which is his last ditch defense of his own life. And especially not in some throw-away weapon he intends to have left behind at the scene of the crime.
It is the height of the Cold War. You are a CIA agent in Moscow. You need to arrange somebody's demise. It's going to have to be a shooting, but you want the Soviet authorities to think the killer was Anybody But the CIA... or at least you want there to be some doubt in their minds.
Keeping in mind that it is always possible the weapon will fall into the opposition's hands, which weapon do you choose?
a.) A Smith and Wesson .357 Magnum, with a special-length barrel and no serial number, such as was instantly recognized as standard CIA issue by James Bond in one or another of the movies
b.) An all-plastic single shot pistol with blades to shave all traces of rifling from the bullet the instant it is fired, to make the bullet untraceable; it involves high-tech plastic-ceramic composites developed for the Apollo Program and various Lockheed aircraft that "don't exist"
c.) A sniper rifle in a unique .334 caliber, made by hand by an exclusive Gunmaker to Kings, a blind genius workman laboring in an unmarked backstreet shop in Vienna but spoken of with reverent awe by gun nuts worldwide
d.) A Soviet Tokarev military pistol, manufactured in 1942, "lost" at the front in 1945, and purchased in a Moscow back alley for $50 in US currency and three bottles of good vodka
I think the answer is obvious, if you stop and think about it for a few seconds. Yet writers seem to have this unbeatable urge to arm some of their heroes, and almost all of their Evil Masterminds, with some bizarro weapon that is unnecessary, counterproductive, and which quite likely wouldn't work.
Examples:
James Bond gave us the aforementioned CIA .357 which was so anonymous and untraceable that you knew it the instant you saw it. Bond also gave us Scaramaga's Golden Gun. In the movie this is the only one that actually made a bit of sense, since it broke down into a pen and a lighter that you could carry with you and not appear to be armed. In the book it was a gold-plated .45 Colt Single Action, the classic "cowboy gun." Goldfinger also used a gold-plated gun, but in his case it was a .25 Automatic.
The bizarre plastic single shot contraption was from an episode of Hawaii Five-0 I once saw. Even at the time, and I must have been about eight years old, I realized that a gun that used rocket science in an attempt to shave markings off the bullet as it fired was about a bajillion times easier to trace than some rusty relic from a pawn shop. Remember, being able to trace the bullet back to the gun is only useful if you can then trace the gun back to the shooter. If he tosses the gun down the sewer after the deed is done, it's untraceable.
The villain in The DaVinci Code uses a Medusa. This is a real revolver with the distinction that it can fire almost any .38-ish or 9mm-ish revolver or autopistol cartridge made, all in the same revolver, without modifications. It's just the thing if you're wandering a Mad Max nuclear aftermath where you might find two or three .357 Magnum shells today and one corroded, dented, but possibly live .38 Super next week. However, it choked in real life, because shooters generally find it easier to buy one particular kind of ammunition and not one box of each of 42 kinds; and if you're only buying .38 Specials, why do you need to pay extra for a gun that will fire a few dozen other calibers too?
Not that I fault the writers in these cases for not knowing their weapons, but it would have been obvious they were being silly if they'd stopped to think for a moment. Hey, guys, your Evil Overlord can have all the wild style he wants in his clothes, the uniforms of his henchpersons, his car, and his lair; but not in some pocket pistol which is his last ditch defense of his own life. And especially not in some throw-away weapon he intends to have left behind at the scene of the crime.
