Why am I spending so much time on guns? Well, odds are probably about 90% that if you plan on someone murdering someone else in your novel, the natural tendency is to use a gun
Now, if you think all guns are exactly alike, you’ve never shot one. As a matter of fact, I tried a few different Glock 17’s before I bought the one I have- It’s actually the best one I’ve fired!
So, the first looks we had were at semi-auto pistols, and it occurred to me that I forgot to get into the mechanics of them.
To load a semi-auto pistol, you take the magazine, and feed rounds into it one at a time. A round is what most people call a bullet, but the bullet is actually the tip of the round (or cartridge). You can pre-load as many magazines as you own and have ammo for. Each magazine can get a little heavy. If you load your antagonist or protagonist down with 100 magazines of pistol ammo, people are going to put your book down and walk away – that gets heavy. Really heavy.
A loaded Glock 17 and two extra magazines creates a drag on your belt that gives you back pain after a while. Ask the next police officer you see how their lower back feels.
Anyway, once you’ve loaded the magazines, now you insert the magazine into the pistol. Rack the slide by pulling the slide back, and letting it go. It’s possible to do it quietly, but that involves “Riding the slide”, and that can force a malfunction on the pistol (PLOT POINT!!!!!!!!).
If you put that into your novel, you’ll have people who know guns buying all of your novels, because that little fact is never in novels. This is what’s called a double feed, where two rounds slide into the chamber at the same time. The pistol now cannot fire. The chamber narrows rapidly where the feed occurs, and there’s only room for one cartridge there. It can be cleared, but takes a couple of seconds – and in a firefight, you may not have those seconds.
Many pistols have a manual safety – remember that description. You refer to it shorthand as safety, but thanks to Glock, you need to specify at least once that your antagonist or protagonist engages the safety. The Glock has three safeties, but there’s really no way to prevent the pistol from firing if someone picks it up and pulls the trigger. Most other pistols do.
So, if you’ve decided to be romantic and give your protagonist a .45, here’s how you load it. You load the magazine with seven rounds. Insert the magazine. Rack the slide by pulling back sharply and letting go. Your thumb engages the manual safety. You put the 1911 back into its holster, and pop the magazine out. Take one additional .45 ACP round, and thumb it into the magazine. Re-insert the magazine. This technically is called carrying your .45 “cocked and locked”, meaning the hammer is cocked back, and the thumb safety is engaged. To do the add of a cartridge is called a “plus one” – you’ll see in sales literature that 1911 pistols carry “7+1” or “9+1”. Now you know why. This can be done to just about every semi-automatic pistol.
Not everyone carries plus one.
Let’s have a scene where your protagonist has run empty.
He digs into his pocket and finds one last .45 round. He ejects the magazine as the antagonist bursts from hiding, rushing towards him loading his pistol with a fully loaded magazine.Carpenter thumbs a round into the magazine. Slams the magazine home into the .45
…racks the slide as he lifts the weapon…
…the front sights filling with the face of Mr. Clean…
Arm extending as the finger begins squeezing the trigger…
Mr. Clean’s weapon fires…
And the .45 jumps as a hammer hits Carpenter in the shoulder. A burning ache overtakes Carpenter as Mr. Clean drops at his feet.
Okay, yeah! That’s got some drama into it. Why am I always picking on Mr. Clean? If I stop to invent a name for an antagonist, it’s going to spawn the idea of ONE MORE NOVEL, and I’ve got to hold off on new ideas for about 10 years!
Again, notice the action words in the scene.
DO NOT write Carpenter’s finger YANKS at the trigger. There’s only two appropriate words to describe accurately shooting a gun – squeeze or pull. Any other word will mean they missed. There’s a scene in “We Were Soldiers” where Mel Gibson loads his M16, racks the bolt, and pulls the trigger – and trained shooters will notice that the round would have gone right into the dirt because of how hard Gibson yanked the trigger. Apparently the enemy soldier that drops dead at his feet died of fright.
I haven’t gotten to revolvers yet. A revolver has a frame, cylinder, and a million parts. It’s easy. Release the cylinder, which drops out to the side. The cylinder does not come off the pistol without tools. If you write that, you need a gunsmith to save your protagonist.
You insert one at a time cartridges into the cylinder. Most revolvers have six round capacity, some have five. Charter Arms, one of the least expensive pistol manufacturers out there, sells revolvers with 5 round cylinders. If you’re going to have your antagonist carry a Charter Arms, be advised – they usually sell high caliber revolvers only. This means 38+P, .357 Magnum, and .44 Magnum.
While the Charter Arms revolver appeared in a Dirty Harry novel, Harry Callahan did not carry a Charter Arms – he carried the Smith & Wesson Model 29 .44 Magnum.
Revolvers tend to be heavier than semi-auto pistols, because they’ve got more weight.
Mistake number one – silencer on a revolver. Um… no. You could modify one to do it, but the exposed cylinder is going to still make a lot of noise.
Mistake number two – safety on revolvers. No. Most don’t have them. Don’t want it to shoot? Don’t pull the trigger.
Most accurate way to fire a revolver? pull the hammer back with one hand, squeeze the trigger. Pulling the hammer back reduces the distance of trigger movement, and reduces the amount of pressure to break the action (fire the pistol). This is why some people talk about having a 4 pound trigger, or a 3 (trust me, a 3 pound trigger pull would be a hair trigger). By modifying the springs inside a pistol, one can reduce the action needed to fire the weapon – but this has to be done with after-market parts and a gunsmith. If your character is a gunsmith as well, conceivably they could do it, but you’re really challenging the reader’s willing suspension of disbelief. Solution – get you a supporting character who’s an ex-marine. Suddenly the American mind assumes they know all about guns, and probably were an armorer.
By the way, I know of a lot of people who’ve modified the action of their semi-auto pistols, but I don’t know ANYONE who’s modified the trigger action of their revolvers. I’m sure they’re out there – I just don’t personally know any.
Tomorrow, ancient pistols!
