Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Hunter's Campfire How much do gun goofs in books bother you?

We've all seen the endless parade of film gun goofs. In a similar vein, if one reads enough fictional works, well gun goofs will be encountered. I've seen them in both mainstream, successful authors and more obscure writers.
For example, I recently read the first of the Dirty Harry novels (not novelizations, different stories) and started a second before wandering back to the nonfiction stack. (Oh, they are utter pulp trash, but that is one of the appeals.) What was odd for a quintessentially "gun guy" film and book series, there was a lot of goofs. And I don't mean just the wacky ones like a gigantic .44 Magnum revolver with an equally huge silencer hanging off it. Naturally, there are others, often in the horror genre, that I read from time to time.
But I've meandered enough. Do the goofs ruin the book for you? Or, nah, no biggie? What were some authors and genres you found surprising to find such therein?

Drives me nuts! Let us not forget the always popular ".... smell of cordite hanging in the air". Another peeve is illustrators of paperbacks who depict weapons without having read the book.

Pay no attention to the goofs. Not worth stressing about. I merely laugh and continue with the story or article. MTG

I don’t read that 4th grade level bulls hit! At present I’m reading The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich! Try it…..you might learn something!

Color me impressed!

Interesting question, I've been interested in guns for 56 years. When I read or hear something I know is incorrect or untrue I immediately doubt the credibility of the speaker or writer. Way it is , Hollywood is total bullshi t and some authors are too. What they don't know helps you understand their lack of expertise and their credibility. Dirty Harry is Hollywood but a 6.5" M29 is what it is, hard to not like the actual m29 even if if you got choke down the bile someone is saying about it.

Don't tolerate them in books whose focus is firearms. A book specifically about Glocks mentioning something that doesn't exist on a Glock - garbage.

If the book is simply a story - western, fiction etc - IDGAF about it. I'm there for the story and rarely does the gun matter.

Gun goofs are no different from history goofs, car goofs, aircraft goofs or any other printed goof. Sometimes the writer simply didn't know any better, sometimes he simply repeated something "everybody knows" and sometimes it is done for simple effect because he thinks the reader doesn't know any better.

Reading is for suckers

If it ain't on TV, I ain't interested

Any guns in that story?



Bruce

The cover of the paperback "Enemies at the Gate" showed a left handed Mosin Nagant. Bothered me a bit that there was such a major goof.

I'm told that there are Luggers and Mousers in it, Bruce.

Not so much that I'd quit reading a good book because of it. But it is irritating, mostly because the author doesn't have to be a gun person to get it right. A few minutes research on the internet is all that's required. So what actually irritates me is that the writer is lazy.

Not really, Shaun. A non-gunner might believe it is absolutely true that all gunpowder is called cordite, or that silencers work on revolvers, because "everybody knows that." Why bother researching if airport grounds are all tarmac? Everybody knows that. Why check to see if cowboys only loaded five rounds in a six-shooter?

That doesn’t bother me as much as TV and movies portraying about what’s like to serve in the US uniform in a combat environment.

I cannot and will not watch modern military movies anymore. The amount of BS in these movies is so thick, it’s really unbelievable even though the stupidity is expected. Most people under 30 think the Call of Duty is pretty accurate assessment of combat.

What a friggin joke.

.31 squirrel rifle shooting 1 inch at400 yards with iron sights. Lots of minor time frame or mechanism errors.

Paperbacks by CJ Box are full of gun goofs. Guns are very prominent in his stuff too.

No "gun goofs" in Louis L'Amour's books.

I am bugged when an author mentions a shooter using a " .9 mm" handgun. I usually put a stroke through the offending error and write in the correct description.

Jim

Complains about gun goofs and then goes on to use the term “silencer”🙄🙄🙄🙄