Dream A Little Bigger, Darling - the Inception Fic Writer's Guide to Firearms, Pt 1
Introduction
So, I've noticed that a lot of fanfiction writers have very little firearms knowledge. That's not really something that I hold against them. Not everyone lives where guns are legal, and not all of the writers with access to firearms actually wish to go out to a range and try some out.
This tutorial is for those folks.
Now, here's the disclaimer; my only personal experience with guns is with small arms - handguns - and I'm not a qualified range instructor, just someone who likes putting holes in targets. If you want to do anything IRL with guns, hie thee to a range and chat with the nice instructor dudes before you start waving anything around.
This is a very brief, general tutorial written expressly for the purpose of educating fic writers on how to, and how not to write guns, and not meant to be any kind of instruction for any other purposes.
This installment, Part 1, covers gun safety, the mechanics of firearms, ammunition types and grenades.
Gun safety rules
The biggest and most important thing for anything involving a firearm is gun safety, summarized in the following four rules.
#1: Assume all guns are loaded.
No exceptions. Even when you have unloaded the gun yourself, treat it with the caution and respect you would a loaded gun, and never do anything with it that you also wouldn’t do with a loaded gun.
#2: Only point your gun at what you are willing to kill or destroy.
If you treat all guns as loaded (and you should, Rule #1 says so), then you should never, ever point it at anything that you don’t want a hole in. You should be aware of where the gun is pointing no matter what you are doing with it from the moment you pick it up, to the moment you put it back down, or holster it.
(And yes, this means almost all of the gunplay kink category is in violation of Rule #2, and as a result of it, Rule #1. Sorry, fangirls. You’re free to write whatever you want; I probably just won’t read it.)
#3: Keep your finger off the trigger until you are ready to shoot.
Keeping one’s finger off the trigger is known as trigger discipline. Trigger discipline prevents accidental discharges in the event of say, the shooter being startled, knocked over, or jolted.
Sharp-eyed fans will notice a few times where trigger discipline is not observed in Inception. One occasion is when Robert Fischer holds the gun to his own head in the hotel bathroom; which makes quite a bit of sense as he probably has no idea what he’s doing.
The other two are when Mal is threatening Arthur, and when Arthur has the Browning projection kneeling in the hotel room. In both cases that is not a violation of trigger discipline as both Mal and Arthur are ready to shoot, and showing their intention to.
#4: Always make sure of what your target is and what is behind it.
You always want to make positive visual identification of whatever you’re shooting at before you actually pull the trigger; that flash of movement could be a burglar, or your six-year-old kid. In a self-defense situation be aware that bullets can and do go through drywall to kill the person next door, and in a training or range situation be aware of what is behind your target. Bullets go somewhere after the gun is fired, and sooner or later you’re going to ruin someone’s day if you don’t observe where you’re sending them.
The Anatomy Of A Gun
Here’s a couple pictures illustrating some terms I’m going to be throwing around from here on.
A semiautomatic pistol.
A revolver.
How Guns Work
Very, very simply put a gun is a machine designed to throw a chunk of lead very, very fast; fast enough that it overcomes the resistance of whatever material is in its way and punches a hole in it.
How this works is by exploiting the process of combustion. In modern firearms a brass case is crimped around a bullet after it has been filled with gunpowder. This little package is called a cartridge. (A bullet is the chunk of lead the cartridge is assembled around). At the rear of the brass casing is a little cap of primer. When you pull the trigger of a gun, the mechanisms within the gun propel the firing pin forwards. When the firing pin hits the primer, it ignites it, causing the gunpowder to also ignite. This releases gas, which expands and forces the bullet down the barrel, and eventually out the business end of the gun.
This ignition and expanding gas is also why we have muzzle flash and the distinctive report of a gun, which leads us to our next segment.
A Special Note on “Silencers”
That report you hear when a gun is fired is the sound of the gases and (depending on the round,) the bullet itself breaking the sound barrier. What’s an extractor to do when he wants to be quiet, then?
That cylinder that Cobb screws onto the front of his Beretta is a suppressor. Its purpose is to slow down, and cool the gases that escape when a gun is fired. That fwip sound that Cobb’s Beretta makes when he fires it? Not exactly accurate.
In general one can hope for the sound of the gunshot to be reduced to hearing-safe rather than actual absolute silence. There are some exceptions, however - the H&K MP5SD is so quiet that the action of the gun working is actually louder than the report of the weapon itself.
Even if your weapon’s report is masked by background noise, you’re going to have to be careful of the ejected brass casing hitting the ground with its distinctive tinkle, and the thud of your opponent’s body. Cobb’s method - catching the brass with his hand, and then catching his opponent and lowering the body gently to the ground - is actually fairly clever and correct for someone wanting to remain stealthy. (Plus, the fwip sound can be explained by that sequence happening in a dream, which thus obeys action-movie physics.)
Also, if you fire through a suppressor enough it starts getting fouled and wears out, so having a character’s suppressor basically stop working halfway through a firefight actually isn’t entirely inaccurate.
Important Note: Not all guns can accept suppressors. The ones that can have barrels specifically threaded for suppressors like Cobb’s Beretta Px4 Storm and the H&K USP Tactical. A gunsmith friend of mine once complained of the poster for a Bond movie - Die Another Day - where Halle Berry’s character was holding a gun that should never have been able to take a suppressor. He grumbled about the “magical gun fairies” holding it on. (So, fans, please, no magical gun fairies in your fics! Do the research!)
Not all threaded barrels are threaded for suppressor use - some are threaded for the use of a compensator, which adds weight and porting to a firearm so the recoil isn’t as hard.
Here's a YouTube video showing you how a firearm sounds suppressed.
Added for clarity: This doesn't mean suppressors are useless; the *POP* *tinkle* of an unsuppressed gunshot is fairly distinctive. People hear that and they know a gun has been fired. The suppressor disguises the sound to more like a *clickTHUMP* like you hear with one of those electric Swingline staplers and not everyone knows what a suppressed gunshot sounds like, especially if you're catching your brass, like Cobb did. I'm a gun owner here in the US and I am only going off of YouTube and information from gun-owning friends on how a suppressed gunshot sounds, because I've got no RL experience with any.
So, if the dream fortress level were IRL, and Cobb were doing his stealthy sneaky thing, would he have been caught? That would depend on whether the guards had been trained to recognize suppressed gunshots, and that would depend on what their training was. I don't want to generalize too much but one can safely assume military types might actually recognize it, as would SWAT and paramillitary types, but probably not the average Joe on the street.
Moreover, (and this is a good note from my husband) the muzzle flash from an unsuppressed weapon can destroy your night vision - your eyes will have to adjust afterwards and it'll leave you blind, so even if you aren't trying to be completely silent a suppressor might still be a good idea on night-time missions.
Note: if you’re using a round that is normally supersonic, a suppressor is pointless, because the bullet is still going to make its distinctive crack. With subsonic ammunition it makes a sound closer to a loud stapler.
deviantsaint has some interesting information to add to the suppressed supersonic round description, and I'm putting it here in the interests of providing more information for fic writers.
In my experience a suppressed supersonic round (like a suppressed m4 carbine) makes sort of a loud "KAK" sound. It's also (for some reason) really hard to pin point direction. I've been told it's because you hear the crack of the bullet as it breaks the sound barrier in a location relative to the observer (hearer). I have no idea if that is exactly true, I just know that it does seem to scramble it a bit and seems to be hard to locate where the shot came from.
Thanks a lot!
Other note: Revolvers cannot be suppressed because there is not a gas-tight seal between the cylinder and the barrel. There is only one revolver make in existence that can be silenced - the Nagant M1895, which is a goddamn curiosity at this point.
Types of Ammunition
A gun’s a mostly-useless collection of parts without ammunition. This section’s going to be very brief, because there are shit-tons of wildcat calibers and variants out there and I’m only going to cover the most commonly-encountered rounds. Bullet sizes are indicated in two ways, in millimeters, or in caliber. A .45 ACP round is .45 of an inch.
The NATO Rounds
9mm - More precisely described as 9x19mm Parabellum, also called 9mm Luger. One of the most common and popular rounds; almost everyone in Inception seems to be packing a sidearm that fires 9mm - Cobb, Arthur and Eames most definitely. Almost everything comes chambered for 9mm - Glocks, SIGs, Browning Hi-Powers, Berettas.
5.56mm - 5.56x45mm NATO is a rifle round used by many, many militaries. Originally chambered for the M16 rifle, one can also find other rifles chambered for it, such as the Steyr AUG, the FAMAS, the M4 carbine, and that lovely SCAR-L Arthur pulls out in the warehouse.
7.62mm - 7.62x51mm NATO is another rifle round that has seen service just about everywhere; the Vietnam War, the Troubles, the Falkland Islands. Rifles chambered for it: FN FAL, the SCAR-H, the Galil.
25mm - This thing is a cannon round and I’m not entirely sure anyone short of Eames on his biggest days would be packing this (and he’d probably need to borrow a gunship to pull that off). Suffice it to say that if characters are being strafed with 25mm autocannon fire they’re probably going to be chunky salsa shortly after.
Non-NATO Rounds
7.62x39mm - This rifle round was designed by the Soviet Union for use in the SKS and AK-47, the latter of which is the most common assault rifle in the world. Really.
.45 ACP - I am biased in favor of this one. It’s large, and one of the more powerful pistol cartridges available (more on wound ballistics later), and was designed by John Browning (inventor responsible for the 1911 and the Browning Hi-Power) for use in the M1911. It’s another very common round, and you can find guns chambered for it easily. Glocks, SIGs, 1911s, the H&K USP.
.357 Magnum - A revolver cartridge, this one was supposedly designed to defeat the vests and car doors that bootleggers were using for cover during the Prohibition Era. Found in loads and loads of revolvers, such as the Colt Python, S&W Model 19, Mateba MTR-8, the Ruger Security Six.
.38 Special - Another revolver cartridge, designed 1902. Revolvers chambered for this include the Colt Detective Special, the Ruger Security Six, S&W J-frame revolvers.
.40 S&W - Following the FBI Miami shootout, the feds tested 9mm and .45 ACP ammunition in preparation to replace the standard-issue revolvers which lacked the kind of stopping power they needed. S&W teamed with Winchester to develop the .40 S&W round to meet the FBI’s needs. It debuted in 1990 and is fairly popular. Guns you can find chambered in .40 - a lot of them. Browning Hi-Powers, Glocks, SIGs, 1911s, even.
.44 Magnum - Do you feel lucky, punk? This particular round has a certain mythos around it, probably thanks to Clint Eastwood in Dirty Harry. While it’s been eclipsed in recent times by .454 Casull, it’s still fairly popular. And no, it cannot stop a car if fired into an engine block - you probably want a rifle round for that. Guns chambered in .44 Magnum: S&W Model 29, Colt Anaconda, Ruger Redhawk. It’s also used in hunting, as it’s powerful enough to stop game up to and including brown bears. (I’ll be waaaaay over there in that tree with a proper rifle, thank you.)
.380 ACP - Another one of John Browning’s designs, .380 ACP is a popular personal defense round, although some argue that it lacks stopping power. Guns chambered in .380 ACP include the Beretta M1934, the Walther PP and PPK, and the Bersa Thunder 380.
Shotgun Shells
There are two general kinds of shotgun loads. Solid slugs, and shot. Shotgun barrels come in several sizes, from 28-gauge to 10-gauge. The smaller the gauge, the bigger the barrel size. 12ga is generally what military and paramilitary types use; 10ga is purely a hunting round. Shot is graded by size, with 4 being the smallest, the shot getting larger as the numbers get smaller. 00 shot is the stereotypical buckshot.
There is also the matter of solid shotgun slugs, for when you really want to put a half-inch hole in someone. Most of them come with pre-cut rifling to stabilize their passage through the smoothbore barrel of a shotgun. They leave an exit wound that a cat could walk through.
Examples of shotguns: Remington 870, the US military-issue Benelli M1014 and the H&K CAWS (discontinued).
Grenades, for those who wish to dream a little bigger.
This section is reaching the limits of my technical expertise, but I don’t want to disappoint Mr. Eames, so I will make an attempt at writing something about them.
I am covering here the kinds of grenades one can fire from a weapon, which leaves the kinds you throw out (sorry, Saito). These grenades are 40mm and come in two types - the 40x46mm for infantry use, and the 40x53mm for mounted and crew-served weapons. They are not interchangeable.
Most of the time one will encounter rifle grenades being fired from weapons such as the M79, or the M203 (designed to be attached under a rifle). And then there’s… that thing Eames pulls out in the warehouse, a Milkor MGL, which is… basically a six-shot grenade launcher. Dream a little bigger, indeed.
Future installments will contain notes on wound ballistics, different types of guns (small arms, shotguns, rifles), holsters, concealed carry, how to write good shooting, Hollywood gunfights vs Real World gunfights, legality and carry, and my observations of what the folks in the movie are wielding.
Edit: Part 2 of the tutorial is here!
Edit Again: Part 3 is up.
- Mel
So, I've noticed that a lot of fanfiction writers have very little firearms knowledge. That's not really something that I hold against them. Not everyone lives where guns are legal, and not all of the writers with access to firearms actually wish to go out to a range and try some out.
This tutorial is for those folks.
Now, here's the disclaimer; my only personal experience with guns is with small arms - handguns - and I'm not a qualified range instructor, just someone who likes putting holes in targets. If you want to do anything IRL with guns, hie thee to a range and chat with the nice instructor dudes before you start waving anything around.
This is a very brief, general tutorial written expressly for the purpose of educating fic writers on how to, and how not to write guns, and not meant to be any kind of instruction for any other purposes.
This installment, Part 1, covers gun safety, the mechanics of firearms, ammunition types and grenades.
Gun safety rules
The biggest and most important thing for anything involving a firearm is gun safety, summarized in the following four rules.
#1: Assume all guns are loaded.
No exceptions. Even when you have unloaded the gun yourself, treat it with the caution and respect you would a loaded gun, and never do anything with it that you also wouldn’t do with a loaded gun.
#2: Only point your gun at what you are willing to kill or destroy.
If you treat all guns as loaded (and you should, Rule #1 says so), then you should never, ever point it at anything that you don’t want a hole in. You should be aware of where the gun is pointing no matter what you are doing with it from the moment you pick it up, to the moment you put it back down, or holster it.
(And yes, this means almost all of the gunplay kink category is in violation of Rule #2, and as a result of it, Rule #1. Sorry, fangirls. You’re free to write whatever you want; I probably just won’t read it.)
#3: Keep your finger off the trigger until you are ready to shoot.
Keeping one’s finger off the trigger is known as trigger discipline. Trigger discipline prevents accidental discharges in the event of say, the shooter being startled, knocked over, or jolted.
Sharp-eyed fans will notice a few times where trigger discipline is not observed in Inception. One occasion is when Robert Fischer holds the gun to his own head in the hotel bathroom; which makes quite a bit of sense as he probably has no idea what he’s doing.
The other two are when Mal is threatening Arthur, and when Arthur has the Browning projection kneeling in the hotel room. In both cases that is not a violation of trigger discipline as both Mal and Arthur are ready to shoot, and showing their intention to.
#4: Always make sure of what your target is and what is behind it.
You always want to make positive visual identification of whatever you’re shooting at before you actually pull the trigger; that flash of movement could be a burglar, or your six-year-old kid. In a self-defense situation be aware that bullets can and do go through drywall to kill the person next door, and in a training or range situation be aware of what is behind your target. Bullets go somewhere after the gun is fired, and sooner or later you’re going to ruin someone’s day if you don’t observe where you’re sending them.
The Anatomy Of A Gun
Here’s a couple pictures illustrating some terms I’m going to be throwing around from here on.
A semiautomatic pistol.
A revolver.
How Guns Work
Very, very simply put a gun is a machine designed to throw a chunk of lead very, very fast; fast enough that it overcomes the resistance of whatever material is in its way and punches a hole in it.
How this works is by exploiting the process of combustion. In modern firearms a brass case is crimped around a bullet after it has been filled with gunpowder. This little package is called a cartridge. (A bullet is the chunk of lead the cartridge is assembled around). At the rear of the brass casing is a little cap of primer. When you pull the trigger of a gun, the mechanisms within the gun propel the firing pin forwards. When the firing pin hits the primer, it ignites it, causing the gunpowder to also ignite. This releases gas, which expands and forces the bullet down the barrel, and eventually out the business end of the gun.
This ignition and expanding gas is also why we have muzzle flash and the distinctive report of a gun, which leads us to our next segment.
A Special Note on “Silencers”
That report you hear when a gun is fired is the sound of the gases and (depending on the round,) the bullet itself breaking the sound barrier. What’s an extractor to do when he wants to be quiet, then?
That cylinder that Cobb screws onto the front of his Beretta is a suppressor. Its purpose is to slow down, and cool the gases that escape when a gun is fired. That fwip sound that Cobb’s Beretta makes when he fires it? Not exactly accurate.
In general one can hope for the sound of the gunshot to be reduced to hearing-safe rather than actual absolute silence. There are some exceptions, however - the H&K MP5SD is so quiet that the action of the gun working is actually louder than the report of the weapon itself.
Even if your weapon’s report is masked by background noise, you’re going to have to be careful of the ejected brass casing hitting the ground with its distinctive tinkle, and the thud of your opponent’s body. Cobb’s method - catching the brass with his hand, and then catching his opponent and lowering the body gently to the ground - is actually fairly clever and correct for someone wanting to remain stealthy. (Plus, the fwip sound can be explained by that sequence happening in a dream, which thus obeys action-movie physics.)
Also, if you fire through a suppressor enough it starts getting fouled and wears out, so having a character’s suppressor basically stop working halfway through a firefight actually isn’t entirely inaccurate.
Important Note: Not all guns can accept suppressors. The ones that can have barrels specifically threaded for suppressors like Cobb’s Beretta Px4 Storm and the H&K USP Tactical. A gunsmith friend of mine once complained of the poster for a Bond movie - Die Another Day - where Halle Berry’s character was holding a gun that should never have been able to take a suppressor. He grumbled about the “magical gun fairies” holding it on. (So, fans, please, no magical gun fairies in your fics! Do the research!)
Not all threaded barrels are threaded for suppressor use - some are threaded for the use of a compensator, which adds weight and porting to a firearm so the recoil isn’t as hard.
Click to viewHere's a YouTube video showing you how a firearm sounds suppressed.
Added for clarity: This doesn't mean suppressors are useless; the *POP* *tinkle* of an unsuppressed gunshot is fairly distinctive. People hear that and they know a gun has been fired. The suppressor disguises the sound to more like a *clickTHUMP* like you hear with one of those electric Swingline staplers and not everyone knows what a suppressed gunshot sounds like, especially if you're catching your brass, like Cobb did. I'm a gun owner here in the US and I am only going off of YouTube and information from gun-owning friends on how a suppressed gunshot sounds, because I've got no RL experience with any.
So, if the dream fortress level were IRL, and Cobb were doing his stealthy sneaky thing, would he have been caught? That would depend on whether the guards had been trained to recognize suppressed gunshots, and that would depend on what their training was. I don't want to generalize too much but one can safely assume military types might actually recognize it, as would SWAT and paramillitary types, but probably not the average Joe on the street.
Moreover, (and this is a good note from my husband) the muzzle flash from an unsuppressed weapon can destroy your night vision - your eyes will have to adjust afterwards and it'll leave you blind, so even if you aren't trying to be completely silent a suppressor might still be a good idea on night-time missions.
Note: if you’re using a round that is normally supersonic, a suppressor is pointless, because the bullet is still going to make its distinctive crack. With subsonic ammunition it makes a sound closer to a loud stapler.
deviantsaint has some interesting information to add to the suppressed supersonic round description, and I'm putting it here in the interests of providing more information for fic writers.
In my experience a suppressed supersonic round (like a suppressed m4 carbine) makes sort of a loud "KAK" sound. It's also (for some reason) really hard to pin point direction. I've been told it's because you hear the crack of the bullet as it breaks the sound barrier in a location relative to the observer (hearer). I have no idea if that is exactly true, I just know that it does seem to scramble it a bit and seems to be hard to locate where the shot came from.
Thanks a lot!
Other note: Revolvers cannot be suppressed because there is not a gas-tight seal between the cylinder and the barrel. There is only one revolver make in existence that can be silenced - the Nagant M1895, which is a goddamn curiosity at this point.
Types of Ammunition
A gun’s a mostly-useless collection of parts without ammunition. This section’s going to be very brief, because there are shit-tons of wildcat calibers and variants out there and I’m only going to cover the most commonly-encountered rounds. Bullet sizes are indicated in two ways, in millimeters, or in caliber. A .45 ACP round is .45 of an inch.
The NATO Rounds
9mm - More precisely described as 9x19mm Parabellum, also called 9mm Luger. One of the most common and popular rounds; almost everyone in Inception seems to be packing a sidearm that fires 9mm - Cobb, Arthur and Eames most definitely. Almost everything comes chambered for 9mm - Glocks, SIGs, Browning Hi-Powers, Berettas.
5.56mm - 5.56x45mm NATO is a rifle round used by many, many militaries. Originally chambered for the M16 rifle, one can also find other rifles chambered for it, such as the Steyr AUG, the FAMAS, the M4 carbine, and that lovely SCAR-L Arthur pulls out in the warehouse.
7.62mm - 7.62x51mm NATO is another rifle round that has seen service just about everywhere; the Vietnam War, the Troubles, the Falkland Islands. Rifles chambered for it: FN FAL, the SCAR-H, the Galil.
25mm - This thing is a cannon round and I’m not entirely sure anyone short of Eames on his biggest days would be packing this (and he’d probably need to borrow a gunship to pull that off). Suffice it to say that if characters are being strafed with 25mm autocannon fire they’re probably going to be chunky salsa shortly after.
Non-NATO Rounds
7.62x39mm - This rifle round was designed by the Soviet Union for use in the SKS and AK-47, the latter of which is the most common assault rifle in the world. Really.
.45 ACP - I am biased in favor of this one. It’s large, and one of the more powerful pistol cartridges available (more on wound ballistics later), and was designed by John Browning (inventor responsible for the 1911 and the Browning Hi-Power) for use in the M1911. It’s another very common round, and you can find guns chambered for it easily. Glocks, SIGs, 1911s, the H&K USP.
.357 Magnum - A revolver cartridge, this one was supposedly designed to defeat the vests and car doors that bootleggers were using for cover during the Prohibition Era. Found in loads and loads of revolvers, such as the Colt Python, S&W Model 19, Mateba MTR-8, the Ruger Security Six.
.38 Special - Another revolver cartridge, designed 1902. Revolvers chambered for this include the Colt Detective Special, the Ruger Security Six, S&W J-frame revolvers.
.40 S&W - Following the FBI Miami shootout, the feds tested 9mm and .45 ACP ammunition in preparation to replace the standard-issue revolvers which lacked the kind of stopping power they needed. S&W teamed with Winchester to develop the .40 S&W round to meet the FBI’s needs. It debuted in 1990 and is fairly popular. Guns you can find chambered in .40 - a lot of them. Browning Hi-Powers, Glocks, SIGs, 1911s, even.
.44 Magnum - Do you feel lucky, punk? This particular round has a certain mythos around it, probably thanks to Clint Eastwood in Dirty Harry. While it’s been eclipsed in recent times by .454 Casull, it’s still fairly popular. And no, it cannot stop a car if fired into an engine block - you probably want a rifle round for that. Guns chambered in .44 Magnum: S&W Model 29, Colt Anaconda, Ruger Redhawk. It’s also used in hunting, as it’s powerful enough to stop game up to and including brown bears. (I’ll be waaaaay over there in that tree with a proper rifle, thank you.)
.380 ACP - Another one of John Browning’s designs, .380 ACP is a popular personal defense round, although some argue that it lacks stopping power. Guns chambered in .380 ACP include the Beretta M1934, the Walther PP and PPK, and the Bersa Thunder 380.
Shotgun Shells
There are two general kinds of shotgun loads. Solid slugs, and shot. Shotgun barrels come in several sizes, from 28-gauge to 10-gauge. The smaller the gauge, the bigger the barrel size. 12ga is generally what military and paramilitary types use; 10ga is purely a hunting round. Shot is graded by size, with 4 being the smallest, the shot getting larger as the numbers get smaller. 00 shot is the stereotypical buckshot.
There is also the matter of solid shotgun slugs, for when you really want to put a half-inch hole in someone. Most of them come with pre-cut rifling to stabilize their passage through the smoothbore barrel of a shotgun. They leave an exit wound that a cat could walk through.
Examples of shotguns: Remington 870, the US military-issue Benelli M1014 and the H&K CAWS (discontinued).
Grenades, for those who wish to dream a little bigger.
This section is reaching the limits of my technical expertise, but I don’t want to disappoint Mr. Eames, so I will make an attempt at writing something about them.
I am covering here the kinds of grenades one can fire from a weapon, which leaves the kinds you throw out (sorry, Saito). These grenades are 40mm and come in two types - the 40x46mm for infantry use, and the 40x53mm for mounted and crew-served weapons. They are not interchangeable.
Most of the time one will encounter rifle grenades being fired from weapons such as the M79, or the M203 (designed to be attached under a rifle). And then there’s… that thing Eames pulls out in the warehouse, a Milkor MGL, which is… basically a six-shot grenade launcher. Dream a little bigger, indeed.
Future installments will contain notes on wound ballistics, different types of guns (small arms, shotguns, rifles), holsters, concealed carry, how to write good shooting, Hollywood gunfights vs Real World gunfights, legality and carry, and my observations of what the folks in the movie are wielding.
Edit: Part 2 of the tutorial is here!
Edit Again: Part 3 is up.
- Mel