Guns in Movies and TV shows

[pulledagroin]

I know nothing about guns.

In many TV shows and movies, when someone has a handgun pointed at someone, they will pull the little hammer back at the end. This is uaully used to intimidate someone further, saying "Yes I'm serious" or something like that. Also, this is usually after a few minutes of already having the gun pointed at the person, leading me to assume the gun could be used without doing it.

Does this action serve any purpose other than intimidation? It has never made sense to me, someone please explain!

[Borodog]

Many guns have both single and double action. In double action, pulling the trigger both raises the hammer and fires. In single action, the hammer is already cocked, and pulling the trigger simply drops it, firing the weapon. Manually cocking the gun to single action means far less pressure s required to fire the gun than in double action. On a semi-auto that is initially uncocked, the recycle from the first round leaves the hammer cocked for subsequent rounds, meaning the the first trigger pull is "heavy" while subsequent pulls will be "light".

[AncientPC]

When the hammer is pull back and cocked, a relatively light touch on the trigger will fire the gun and is called a single action.

Normally when the hammer is not pulled back, you need to pull harder on the trigger to cock the hammer and fire the gun and is called a double action.

[Macdaddy Warsaw]

If you pull the trigger on a gun, the hammer will start pulling back by itself, but if you pull the hammer back the trigger gets pulled back too, meaning you don't have to squeeze the trigger as hard.

[pulledagroin]

Thanks for that info.

I was watching Alias when some dude fired off a round or two, then pointed the gun a bit more, then after that he cocked the hammer back for emphasis. now THIS is useless, right? (as it should have already been cocked back from the previous shot)

What about the pumping action of a shotgun? Same deal?

[guids]

The shotgun pump is different, you cant fire a shotgun w/ out pumping, while lyou can fire a handgun w/o pulling the mechanism back. The gun in alias probably wasnt already "cocked" in simple terms.

[AncientPC]

[ QUOTE ]
I was watching Alias when some dude fired off a round or two, then pointed the gun a bit more, then after that he cocked the hammer back for emphasis. now THIS is useless, right? (as it should have already been cocked back from the previous shot)

[/ QUOTE ]

Yes. Then again there's never any recoil when firing guns in TV shows or movies either. *shrug*

[ QUOTE ]
What about the pumping action of a shotgun? Same deal?

[/ QUOTE ]

I have no experience with shotguns so I may be wrong here. With pistols the gases from firing a round is enough to expel the cartridge and cock the hammer for the next round. However with a pump action shotgun I guess there is no self-cocking mechanism but that's not a problem with semi-auto/auto shotguns.

[benfranklin]

[ QUOTE ]
Thanks for that info.

I was watching Alias when some dude fired off a round or two, then pointed the gun a bit more, then after that he cocked the hammer back for emphasis. now THIS is useless, right? (as it should have already been cocked back from the previous shot)

What about the pumping action of a shotgun? Same deal?

[/ QUOTE ]

If he fired off a couple of rounds from a semi-automatic, the hammer would already be back.

If it is a revolver, the hammer stays down after every shot, and pulling the trigger moves the hammer back and then releases it. A revolver can also be manually cocked, making the trigger pull for the next shot single action, and as discussed earlier, requiring less trigger pressure. With most hand guns, a single action shot is usually more accurate than a double action because of the reduced forced necessary to pull the trigger.

A pump action shotgun must be manually pumped after every shot to eject the spend shell and feed a new one into the chamber. If you shoot it once and don't rack the slide, you can't shoot again.

When the bad guy sneaks into the room and the hero racks the slide to make that nasty sound, he either did not already have a shell in the chamber, or he just ejected a live round for sound effects.