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Jusme wrote:
Great post Noggin, we only have a vague estimation of UK gun laws, and restrictions.

Today I thought I would provide a bit more information by starting a new topic in the Off Topic Section.

Jusme[*] wrote:

Great post Noggin, we only have a vague estimation of UK gun laws, and restrictions. It's great to have someone here to give first hand info. I had forgotten the James Bond gaffes regarding guns, but looking back, not only were they laughable, but in hindsight I can see that they probably reflected the limited information available in the UK at the time.

Thanks - another Bond reference at the start of Dr No, bond told to quit using his Beretta .25 (because it is an underpowered "ladies gun") He is for the first time provided with his PPK, which in 7.65mm is described as "having a delivery like a brick through a plate glass window"!!!!!! Ok it was a step up from the .25 but hardly anything to shout about.

I have noticed that it many old b&w movies with stories in a contemporary 30s/40s setting (therefore Westerns excluded) most of the hand guns used by both heroes and villains tended to be much smaller than we see on screen today. OK the S&W Model 29 might not have existed back then but there has to be more than that to the fetish for small handguns in the B&W era.

Oh and what about all those movies and tv shows where they swing out the cylinder of a revolver and spin it whereupon it makes a clicking sound!!!!

OK I have a few old ones to add here:

The Good, the Bad and the Ugly - the final shoot out scene the camera cuts between their faces, their guns and their hands. Here we see they are all armed with Cap and ball revolvers, OK those would be approximately historically correct. Now for the "buts" They have belt loops for metal brass cartridges, to be fair rim-fire cartridges though not common did exist back then but would be no use with their wheel guns. However I don't think rimless centre=fire brass like 9mm shown on the belt was too common back in the 1860s IF that were not bad enough none of the nipples on the cylinders of the revolvers had any caps fitted, which would have made for a very quiet gun fight. To further compound the error the "Ugly" asks Eastwood when he unloaded his gun after several attempts to shoot and hearing it go click. You think he might have noticed the lack of caps on the nipples before the showdown. If on the other hand, Eastwood had simply taken the trouble to dig all the balls out of the chambers and pour out the powder to render the gun harmless, he would have needed to leave caps on the nipples so that it still looked ready for use. In which case there would have been a bit more than a click when it was fired.

Live and Let Die - I am working from memory so some details are not totally clear Bond is about to board a boat when girl in a bikini grabs a revolver (not sure about the make and model might have been .41 S&W with 4" tube) and threatens Bond with it. He then proceeds to snatch it out of her hands telling her that she forgot to release the safety catch, while I may not be sure of the make or model one thing I am certain of is that it was not a Webley-Fosbery, which is the only revolver I know of with thumb safety.

There was a Japanese movie back in the 80s I can't remember the title when a group of soldiers referred to a .50 cal as 50mm machine gun, to be fair that could have just been lost in translation.

I think I may wander a bit off topic at the moment to try and explain some cultural references. I was very conscious that people of my parents and grand parents generation would frequently refer to a semi auto as a revolver, furthermore they would generally only use the term pistol to refer to a single shot muzzle loaded handgun. This habit was also common in British books, movies, early TV shows and radio etc. I think these errors are to some extent mirror firearms evolution and gun control in the UK. In age of single shot or double barrelled pistols there was no gun control in the UK, there was little need such things were expensive toys and most common criminals could achieve their ends just as well with blades or clubs which did not need reloading. OK there were a few exceptions like “Dick Turpin” but his type were rare. With the advent of revolvers gun control remained a non-issue in the UK until just before the end of the 19th Century. By this time for most people the default handgun was a revolver and thus the term was used for any one handed gun. At this time semi autos were both rare and invariably of foreign manufacture. Then politicians started to get the jitters about anarchists and revolutions. It was from that time onwards that a steady increase in restrictions and licensing began to develop. As a result there was no real increase in gun ownership if anything there was a steady decline. Therefore the semi auto never became as well established in the culture and most people continued with the late 19th Century habit of calling any multi shot handgun a “revolver”

Strangely enough in the British military the situation is almost reversed – the term “pistol” is used generically to refer to any sort of handgun be it revolver or semi auto, the latter two terms being used a sub-categories of pistol.