Guns, Games, and Getting it wrong
How “Fake Killing” in Video Games and Movies May Lead to the Real Thing
You’ll probably disagree . . . but are you sure?
In the 1980s I was writing TV scripts on spec — I live in LA, what can I say — and was trying to make it in the business. I was working with a friend named Michael at the time who was having some success and periodically he’d read what I had written.
One day over a cup of coffee, his had a little Irish whiskey in it, he put the cup down and looked at me.
“Do you have any fucking idea how loud a .357 magnum handgun is?
“You write scenes with the bad guys and the good guys exchanging gunfire in a 15 x 15-foot room like nothing bad is going to happen if they don’t kill each other. At the very least they’ll be deaf for months.”
So, the next week he took me out to a gun range, put a .357 magnum in my hand, and pointed to the target. It wasn’t loud.
It was fucking loud.
And it kicked. And my hand, arm, and right half of my body vibrated for 20 minutes afterward.
He also brought a 10-pound pumpkin, put it on a hump of dirt, and loaded some hollow-point bullets in the .357. “Shoot it.”
