History Main / ArtisticLicenseGunSafety

*** Obi-Wan Kenobi hands a Luke a weapon without first explaining how it works. A weapon that will instantly kill or maim you and/or anything and everything else in the room if you even ''slightly'' mishandle it. Luke immediately points it at his own face and stares down the business end. And an instant later ignites the thing, very nearly putting it through both his and Obi-Wan's head.

* Subverted in ''Literature/TheQueensThief''. Eugenides is held in contempt by the Attolian soldiers for treating his wooden sword carelessly; like the ''Literature/StarshipTroopers'' example, they believe that even a "non-dangerous" weapon should be treated with caution, so no mistakes are made later. Eugenides casually replies "In Eddis, we're taught to keep track of the weapon we have in our hands." [[spoiler:He then snatches the sword out of the air with his bare hands and uses it to beat up the soldier trying to kill him. ''Further subverted'' when the other soldiers point out that he couldn't have done so with a real sword, and therefore he technically lost the duel. Eugenides reveals that he had, in fact, used the same move on an assassin earlier in the book.]]

* ''Webcomic/ElGoonishShive'': Averted, Dan specifically researched shotgun safety before creating [[http://www.egscomics.com/?date=2012-01-23 this strip.]]

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* Averted in ''Literature/TheJournalEntries''. One story even has a rather lengthy lesson on gun safety (for a character from Earth, where there aren't supposed to be any guns).
* ''Literature/WhateleyUniverse'' Frequently averted: The Range staff are very, very hot on gun safety, understandably given that they work at a ''school''. A couple of the writers appear to be gun enthusiasts and/or soldiers of one stripe or another. Big deals are made in-universe of the times when people don't follow the rules -- while several students ''do'' behave recklessly with firearms (Tinkertrain and Flashbang come to mind, as does Buck Swift), the school authorities invariably land on them like an [[{{Anvilicious}} anvil]] if they catch them at it.
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* Creator/FPSRussia was notorious for prioritizing RuleOfCool over safety, especially when it came to his love for filling things with Tannerite and blowing them up from a few meters away. Miraculously he was never injured (though he came very, very close), but a cameraman had to go to the hospital after taking shrapnel from a refrigerator to the leg. [[https://youtu.be/hT44eYyArS4?si=0A2q3Zv1ZT4sPHKZ See here for some highlights]]. These shenanigans plus his [[WallOfWeapons "unprecedented arsenal"]] made him a constant target for raids by the federal government, until they eventually found some weed in his house and had their excuse to confiscate everything.
** It's worth noting that he was fully aware of how dangerous this was and usually had a medical team standing around off-camera. In one podcast where the conversation was about a man who got his leg lopped off shooting at an explosive-filled lawnmower at close range, FPSRussia pointed out that while he did similarly stupid stuff he was getting ''paid'' for it, and would never do such insanely dangerous stunts just for fun.

* Somehow, ''WesternAnimation/TheTransformers'' got one in ''[[https://tfwiki.net/wiki/The_Burden_Hardest_to_Bear The Burden Hardest to Bear]]'', where Galvatron captures the Matrix and sticks it in his cannon, hoping for some sort of Matrix laser. Instead, it fails to fire, and Galvatron [[https://tfwiki.net/wiki/File:Burden-hardest-to-bear-galvatron-cannon.jpg stares bemusedly down the barrel of his own cannon]] attempting to understand why. For the record, this is the same cannon that [[ReducedToDust reduced Starscream to a pile of smoldering ashes atop a pair of feet]] in a single blast, and Galvatron stares into the business end when it malfunctions. To be fair, he ''is'' [[AxCrazy violently insane]]...

** It's worth noting that he was fully aware of how dangerous this was and usually had a medical team standing around off-camera. In one podcast where the conversation was about a man who got his leg lopped off shooting at an explosive-filled lawnmower, FPSRussia pointed out that while he did similarly stupid stuff he was getting ''paid'' for it, and would never do such insanely dangerous stunts just for fun.

'''Trigger:''' ''[while patting the crossbow]'' [[TooDumbToLive You bet it is, sheriff]].\\

* ''Manga/BlackLagoon''. Oh so very much. RuleOfCool aside, the characters ignore every common sense in using guns. Revy would be completely deaf courtesy of dual-wielding and close-quarter gunfights.

* ''Manga/GunsmithCats''. An off-duty cop comes in to have some work done on his private firearm, and Rally chews him out for handing her the gun without properly clearing it yet (she even helpfully points [[ShownTheirWork to the indicator that Berettas have]] in RealLife to show that there is a round chambered).

* ''ComicBook/NickFuryAgentOfSHIELD1968'': A downplayed example, but the actors and crew who aid Nick Fury against the viillainous Centurius apparently had live ammunition on their movie set. They use the film's guns to fight and defeat Centurius's servants and monstrous creatures.

** Later, in ''Film/IndianaJonesAndTheLastCrusade'' a female SS officer orders her [[ThoseWackyNazis fellow Nazis]] to go take care of the Jones boys, waving her gun around in the air, and of course pointing it at her fellow SS officers in the process.

* In ''Film/TheKiller1989'', Ah Jong angrily throws his (presumably loaded; this is Creator/JohnWoo [[MoreDakka we're talking about]] here) gun into the back of the Jeep he's stolen after missing his chance to kill the gangster who put a hit out on him. Fortunately, it doesn't go off.

* ''Film/MonkeyBusiness''. A gangster hands revolvers to both [[Creator/MarxBrothers Groucho and Zeppo]] on two separate occasions. Both times he does so he immediately realizes that they are absentmindedly pointing them right at him, and grabs their hands to turn the guns aside. Don't hand weapons to people who don't know proper gun safety, somebody will get [[IJustShotMarvinInTheFace shot in the face.]] Another gangster in the same film gives guns to [[Creator/MarxBrothers Chico and Harpo]].

* In the climax of ''Film/ThePeacemaker'', Dr. Kelly uses [=DeVoe=]'s pistol as a hammer. Of course, under the circumstances [[spoiler:(She had thirty seconds to damage the detonator on an atomic bomb so that it would be reduced from a city-destroying explosion to merely a building-destroying explosion)]], the possibility that the gun might go off and shoot herself or [=DeVoe=] was a secondary problem.

* Original Pink Panther series

** In ''Film/ANewHope'':

* ''Film/TotalRecall1990'': The security team that ambushes Quaid in the Martian reactor surround him in a circle and all start blazing away with fully automatic weapons and ''shotguns''. Which is remarkably stupid, even before the subsequent reveal that it was just a hologram of Quaid and so they all should have killed one another anyway.

* ''Literature/MirrorDance'': Miles has amnesia, but when asked to reassemble a number of weapons from component parts, he does so without ever letting the guns point at a person, [[AmnesiacResonance a big hint]] that he used to be a soldier.
** Earlier, in ''Literature/TheWarriorsApprentice'', Miles does some extremely unsafe handling of a weapon - arguably, to prove how sloppy his captured mercenary forces are about gun safety, since they're storing their weapons loaded, but even so, he ends up firing from the hip in the general direction of the sloppy mercs' Captain. This is admittedly ''before'' he goes through his training at the Barrayaran Service Academy, but it's still a very dangerous way to make a point!

** Series/StarTrekTheNextGeneration: {{Defied}} in the "Star Trek: The Next Generation Technical Manual." The manual states that the ship's main computer is in continual contact with all shipboard weapons and prevent unauthorized use. This includes preventing the weapons being used at higher settings or by unauthorized personnel. This was seen in the episode "[[Recap/StarTrekTheNextGenerationS5E9AMatterOfTime A Matter of Time]]" as the ''Enterprise'' computer deactivates a stolen hand phaser once it regains contact with the weapon.

* In ''Film/ShaunOfTheDead'', the [[ChekhovsGun Winchester rifle]] of the Winchester bar is on display where anybody can get their hands on it, an active weapon [[RecklessGunUsage with a round on the chamber]]. It's such a blatant disregard for British gun laws that Shawn and Ed [[DiscussedTrope argue about whether or not it's deactivated]] (and [[TheLegendOfChekhov Ed says the urban legend that it is not]]) at the beginning of the movie.

* In ''Film/ShaunOfTheDead'', the [[ChekhovsGun Winchester rifle]] of the Winchester bar is on display where anybody can get their hands on it, an active weapon [[RecklessGunUsage with a round on the chamber]]. It's such a blatant disregard for British gun laws that Shawn and Ed [[DiscussedTrope argue about whether or not it's deactivated]] (and [[TheLegendOfChekhov Ed says the urban legend that it is]]) at the beginning of the movie.

# Never point a gun at something you do not ''intend'' to shoot and ''destroy'' [[note]]Or at any living creature that you don't '''really''' want to stop living.[[/note]].

* ''Film/{{The Punisher|2004}}'': Aversion; each and every time Frank Castle racks the slide to load one of his [[CoolGuns custom .45 autos]] he always carefully eases the slide open a quarter-inch afterwards to confirm a round was indeed chambered using the grooves on the front of the slide, which is exactly what they were put there for.

** In ''Film/ANewHope'', Obi-Wan Kenobi hands a Luke a weapon without first explaining how it works. A weapon that will instantly kill or maim you and/or anything and everything else in the room if you even ''slightly'' mishandle it. Luke immediately points it at his own face and stares down the business end. And an instant later ignites the thing, very nearly putting it through both his and Obi-Wan's head.
** Later, Obi-Wan has Luke being shot at by a little droid (which makes Luke flinch in pain every time he is hit) then intentionally puts a blinding face mask on him, even though Luke is only standing a couple feet away from Chewy while holding a plasma sword of death. Even worse is that most expanded universe material and a scene from ''Film/AttackOfTheClones'' indicates ''this is how the entire Jedi Order trained their '''youngest''' apprentices'' back before the time of the original films — though at least then they have [[WeaponJr lower-powered "training" sabers]] so the kids can't accidentally maim themselves and/or everyone nearby.