Not to drift too far off topic, but it is a well-known phenomenon that the more of the senses you engage in your perception of something, the more believable, memorable, etc. it becomes. Since movies and TV only allow the film maker to engage two of the five senses available to the audience, they typically try and use them both whenever possible. So the whole idea of racking the slide or cocking back a hammer or whatever with a gun whenever it is used on screen is to give it a sound, which makes it more "tactile" or "real" to the audience than something that's simply a visual. It's not so much that they are idiots or don't know about guns, as much as it is that they know how to communicate ideas to the audience using the only available medium (audio and visual). They add all kinds of sounds to things that don't make any or much sound for this same reason.atxgun wrote:I don't watch 24 but maybe Jack knew there was no magazine in the gun, racked it twice to make sure there was nothing in the chamber, and wanted to woman to have a false sense of security for some reason?Morgan wrote: Drives me crazy. There's this promo of 24 where "Jack" racks a gun TWICE and hands it to this woman and says, "here take my gun."
But of course no cartridge comes out. Nor does the slide stay back. Hmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm. LOL
On the DVD for The Bourne Identity (great movie) they have a featurette on the foley that exposes this extremely well. They just cover one scene but it is truly astounding the amount of extra auditory information they add in.
Yes, I have done a little bit of foley and written a score for a short film.
Anyway, how does this relate to the topic? Well just saying, making a noise with the gun is probably not as much of a threat to the real-world bad guy as it is on screen. It builds tension in a movie or TV show by drawing your attention to the gun. Trust me, the bad guy in the real world will have his attention on your gun without you racking the slide or cocking the hammer. Plus you are going to be yelling and screaming at the BG anyway, loud enough to cover up the sound of the hammer cocking back.
If you are justified to shoot a warning shot, you are justified to shoot COM. I concur with the rest of this thread. You either shoot or not. If drawing is sufficient to deter the threat, then great. But the only logical next step is to actually shoot at the BG in order to stop the threat. If you are not prepared to do that, then IMHO you shouldn't be carrying a gun to begin with.
Arrrrgghhh! No! Not the warning shot! Could we put that to bed already?