A question about guns.

[mollipen]

Watched the original Dawn of the Dead again tonight, and a few things stood out to me as I watched it this time. First, I don't remember being as pissed off at how God-damned stupid the main characters acted when watching before, but damn, the main characters are God-damned stupid.

Anyhow, one of the other things that I really thought about was when they're raiding the ammo shop - all of the hand guns they grab are the old revolver style of gun. Out of curiosity, does anybody know when handguns that use ammo in clips became commercially available? The movie is from 1978, and I would think by that point they would have been, but I could be totally wrong and under-estimating how recent handguns like that are.

So... there's my question.

[Josh]

Big Boss used one in the 60's.

[Fe 26]

Considering that the black panthers formed in 1966 and their actions kicked off the first gun ban which included a few handguns with clips, yeah, I'd say they would have them around 1978

[mollipen]

So then either Romero could only afford to get whatever guns he could get his hands on, and that was mostly crappy old guns, or our beloved heroes give yet another example of their stupidity. Okay.

Big Boss used one in the 60's.

But that was military use. In Dawn of the Dead, they're getting their guns from a mall gun shop, which I'm sure wouldn't carry Army-issue stuff unless it was commercially available.

[g0zen]

The M1911 .45 was a clip fed weapon, and it wasn't restricted to civilians. Aside from that though and the Luger, there weren't many other reliable semi-automatic pistols. They just weren't popular until the mid-80s and into the 90s when the 9mm Beretta had become standard both in the military and on the mean streets. After that, police depts. began phasing out their own service revolvers for automatics.

Really, though, look at the time period Dawn was shot in. In those days the raw power of the huge revolvers was in its prime, like the big Dirty Harry .44 Mags, and I'm pretty sure in those days the .38 was considered the perfect 'home defense' weapon. So, your average gunshop would probably carry a wide assortment of revolvers, rifles, shotguns, and maybe just a couple semi-automatic pistols.

[Fe 26]

I vaguely remember seeing something about that on TV.

[VIDEODROME]

Well I figure that between national gaurds and civilians you'll them grab both the good stuff and the bad.

It is kind of interesting though that none of them seemed to go for shotguns.

[salmonax]

A clip is not the same thing as a magazine. There have been clip loaded automatic handguns since the late 1800's, like the Mauser broomhandle. IICR, the first handgun with a detachable magazine was John Browning's M1900, named for the year it was introduced.

[mollipen]

Whatever the case, going strictly by storyline, I think it was stupid of them to choose revolvers when they could have grabbed handguns that would hold more shots and could be re-loaded with a second clip far quicker, especially since the revolvers they grabbed weren't of the more powerful variety.

I also agree with VIDEODROME that, now that I think back, it's also crazy that they didn't grab shotguns.