History Main / ThrowawayGuns

** The 3D-printed [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liberator_(gun) Liberator]] pistol, by Texas-based open source software firm Defense Distributed, takes its namesake from the FP-45 liberator. It is made of the same plastic as Lego bricks (and therefore would not be useful after a small number of shots), and can only fire one .380 ACP round. Its designer, an anarchist named Cody Wilson, developed it not as a practical firearm, but to illustrate that technology can and will one day render gun control laws useless.

* Some missile launchers and recoilless rifles are designed to be discarded after firing, like the [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Panzerfaust Panzerfaust]], M72 LAW, AT-4, FGM-148 Javelin[[note]]The Javelin is actually half this trope and half a regular, reloadable weapon; contrary to how it works in a lot of games, the launch tube is thrown away, but the Command Launch Unit it attaches to is not[[/note]], Miniman, Apilas, and FIM-92 Stinger[[note]]another odd example in that it ''can'' actually be reloaded, but it's primarily designed to just be thrown away after use[[/note]].

* ''Magazine/{{MAD}}'' did a ''ComicStrip/{{Peanuts}}'' parody of sorts telling about the RedBaron's encounters with Snoopy from the Baron's viewpoint. He came back from one flight grumbling that he'd emptied his plane's machine guns at "the Beagelhund" (yes, it's not correct German), then emptied his pistol, then threw the pistol. "He '''fetched''' it!"

[[folder:Films — Animation]]
* In ''WesternAnimation/WreckItRalph'', Calhoun throws her guns at some approaching Cy-Bugs after she runs out of ammo.
[[/folder]]

** Happens a few other times too. A running gag is that any pulse pistol Crichton uses other than the one he keeps and maintains as his sidearm, which he calls "Winonna" will always jam or run out of oil during a fight, causing him to toss it and complain that Winonna is the only pistol he ever comes across that he can rely on.

* In the cinematic trailer to ''{{VideoGame/Brink}}'', a Resistance heavy empties an assault rifle and just lets it fall out of his hand before reaching for a shotgun [[SticksToBack stuck to his back]].

[[folder:Web Animation]]
* Hank in ''WebAnimation/MadnessCombat'' tends to go through guns and ammo at an amazing rate. This never holds him up too badly, though, since he resupplies himself from slain {{Mooks}}. For [[RuleOfCool some reason]], he prefers to take the least-sensible weapons available - given one dead mook with an axe and another with a never-fired AK-47, he'll take the ''axe''.
** Why does he not take the gun when given the choice between that and an axe? Because he's a badass, that's why.
[[/folder]]

* ''Film/{{Apache}}'': During his final confrontation with the Army, Massai empties his Peacemaker at a group of scouts, then throw the empty gun at them, and then launches himself at the group. Justified because Massai is a DeathSeeker at this point and isn't expecting to survive the confrontation.

* In the infamous 1997 North Hollywood shootout, bank robber Larry Eugene Phillips Jr, fired at the police with a fully automatic rifle until his rifle suffered a "stove pipe" jam. The jam would have been easy to clear, but Phillips ditched his rifle, a shot to the hand earlier rendering him unable to clear the jam, and fired at the police with a Beretta pistol (ironically a 92FS, the same type issued to the LAPD officers he was shooting at) until took another round [[BlastingItOutOfTheirHands to his firing hand]], at which point he picked his gun back up and shot himself with it.[[note]]Most sources go with this version, at least; some say the suicide was an accident, a result of trying to pull the slide back with his chin during an attempt at reloading. For what little it ended up being worth, Wikipedia also claims he took a hit from one of the police, which severed his spine, at the exact moment he shot himself - and even if that wouldn't have killed him, the police apparently continued firing on his body for several seconds after he stopped moving.[[/note]]

* H&K very briefly experimented with this as far as magazines went in the early 1960s, designing cheap and lightweight plastic magazines that were to be disposed of after they were emptied. The idea never got further than a few prototypes, since the existing, reusable aluminum magazines were just as light and easier to produce.

* In ''Film/{{Skyfall}}'', Bond uses an Anderson Wheeler double rifle for most of the attack on the eponymous estate, but upon running out of ammunition promptly discards the weapon. His contentious relationship with his parents may be part of his reasoning. He also discards his service weapon, a Walther PPK, in the opening scene of the movie, despite having time to reholster it, as seen here. https://youtu.be/mBCN8qf_kMk?t=40 This is especially irresponsible as the weapon's serial is most likely registered to him through MI6.

* In ''[[Videogame/AssassinsCreedIVBlackFlag Assassin's Creed IV: Black Flag]]'' Edward Kenway does this with his pistols in the cinematic trailers. Justified by the type of pistol (single-shot muzzle-loaders), so it's easier to just toss them. It's impossible to actually do this in-game, however, since you can't discard any of your pistols. It is, however, possible to throw away any of the muskets he can pick up.
** Other player characters in ''Assassin's Creed'' can also ditch muskets that they pick up, starting with [[VideoGame/AssassinsCreedIII Connor]] in the previous game to ''Black Flag''. If it counts, in earlier games it was possible for [[VideoGame/AssassinsCreedII Ezio]] to pick up and use enemy weapons like spears that he can't normally keep on-hand and then drop them after the fight.

* You can do this with any gun-type items in the ''VideoGame/SuperSmashBros'' games, and in fact have to once they're empty since there's no way to reload (and they will, notably, immediately disappear on contact with the ground when thrown after being emptied, whereas a still-full gun can be tossed several times).

* By the 1980s, the German [=P38/P1=] (same pistol, redesignated post [=WW2=]) and American [=M1911=] were badly worn by a combination of age, hard use, and poor maintenance. The joke thus went that the pistols were sometimes said to be good for seven or eight warning shots and a well-aimed throw.

* In ''Film/{{Skyfall}}'', Bond uses an Anderson Wheeler double rifle for most of the attack on the eponymous estate, but upon running out of ammunition promptly discards the weapon. His contentious relationship with his parents may be part of his reasoning.

The habit of characters in action shows to simply throw away guns when they run out of ammunition during a gunfight. Even the poorest of combatants will dispose of a gun by dumping it as soon as it goes dry. The logic seems to be that it is more important to maintain a steady rate of fire than it is to conserve resources such as weapons.

* ''WesternAnimation/StarWarsTheCloneWars'': In [[Recap/StarWarsTheCloneWarsS2E7LegacyOfTerror "Legacy of Terror"]], while bringing up the rear during the escape from the catacombs beneath the Progate Temple while being pursued by [[OurZombiesAreDifferent undead Geonosians]], Commander Cody eventually discards his blaster by throwing it at the zombies because he needs both his hands free for climbing up the exit shaft.

[[folder:Films -- Animation]]
* In ''Disney/WreckItRalph'', Calhoun throws her guns at some approaching Cy-Bugs after she runs out of ammo.

[[folder:Films -- Live-Action]]

[[folder:Web Comics]]

* ''Film/{{Posse}}'' has a scene where the two combatants advance slowly in a ShowdownAtHighNoon, attacking with ThrowAwayGuns.

* In Joss Whedon's original script for ''Film/AlienResurrection'', one of the smugglers was supposed to carry plastic guns that were made to be disposable. In his final LastStand, he was supposed to eject a number of pistols from his [[NothingUpMySleeve sleeves]] and discard them as they ran out of ammo. This aspect didn't make it into the final film (presumably because someone on the writing team realized the oddity of designing a gun to safely fire only one time) and the guy's sleeve pistols are presumably as reloadable as any other guns.

* By the 1980s, the German [=P38/P1=] (same pistol, redesingated post [=WW2=]) and American [=M1911=] were badly worn by a combination of age, hard use, and poor maintenance. The joke thus went that the pistols were sometimes said to be good for seven or eight warning shots and a well-aimed throw.

** The 3D-printed [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liberator_(gun) Liberator]] pistol, by Texas-based open source software film Defense Distributed, takes its namesake from the FP-45 liberator. It is made of the same plastic as Lego bricks (and therefore would not be useful after a small number of shots), and can only fire one .380 ACP round. Its designer, an anarchist named Cody Wilson, developed it not as a practical firearm, but to illustrate that technology can and will one day render gun control laws useless.

* By the 1980s, the German [=P38/P1=] (same pistol, redesingated post [=WW2=] and American [=M1911=] were badly worn by a combination of age, hard use, and poor maintenance. The joke thus went that the pistols were sometimes said to be good for seven or eight warning shots and a well-aimed throw.

* Staff Sgt Nantz in ''Film/BattleLosAngeles'' runs out of ammunition for his assault rifle while [[spoiler:chasing retreating aliens]] and reflexively lets go, draws his pistol and keeps on firing.

* Stock in trade for the ''VideoGame/Borderlands'' gun maker Tediore. The player throws the gun rather than reloading it, which explodes for damage depending on how much ammo was left, and a new one is digitized in the players' hands by instant 3d printing.

* This practice in real-life is known as the New York Reload, which involves a person switching to a secondary firearm, rather than spending the time to reload or clear a malfunctioning firearm. It's named for policemen in and around New York, who in the days when police used revolvers would carry two or more on their person, and in a shootout would drop or otherwise put away their first gun when it was empty and pulling out their second one to keep shooting. This largely fell out of use after police forces started updating to 9mm automatics like their respective militaries, since on top of the doubled to tripled capacity of a revolver, an automatic could be reloaded about as quickly and easily as one could toss a revolver and draw another one.
* Pistols manufactured by Hi-Point have the stigma of being of very low quality in most firearms circles, due to the fact they cost less than most other polymer framed guns made by bigger names like Glock or HK and are largely made of softer, inferior metals and cheaper steel (compensated by using a ''lot'' of it in their construction, resulting in a very chunky, brick-like profile). Naturally a joke exists in these same circles that the "proper" way to reload one is to throw the gun in the general direction of the attacker.

** the Liberator assault gun, which is an automatic shotgun meant for trading to warlords with untrained armies and has a sealed mechanism that is impossible to reload, so you may as well throw it away when empty (it doesn't even make a very good club)
** a self-assembling rifle, which is made of matter retrieved from another universe by nanomachines and, when empty, begins to degrade quickly
** a whole section on "idiot Guns", another invention for warlords with expendable, ignorant troops [[note]]the "guns" are little more than an evolved claymore mine that one holds in hand and points roughly toward one's enemy, discharges, and then tosses, leaving behind a husk known as a "chechnyan rose"[[/note]]
** another section full of, effectively, 3d-printed or otherwise solid-plastic objects which have various parts of the plastic endowed with different qualites, from electrical properties to explosive, allowing automatic shotguns, pistols, derringers, machine-pistols, laser pistols, particle-beam rifles, and various kinds of grenade and rocket launcher (the mortar is mentioned in another section) which, upon emptying, will immediately proceed to dissemble themselves into a mess of environmentally-friendly organic chemicals of various appearance, consistency and smell (except the single-shot grenade pistol; that still ends up as a lump of molten plastic you need to dispose of.)

* ''VideoGame/CondemnedCriminalOrigins'' takes it one notch further: it's an FPS that ''doesn't have a reload key''. Even though you may wind up with one gun with 4 bullets in it in your inventory and another one with 3 on the ground, there is no way to top the first off with the ammo from the second (especially weird considering you ''can'' take the magazine out to visually note how many more bullets are in it). You can keep ahold of the gun to use as a club, but they're hardly effective at the role, dealing the least damage and breaking after a dozen or so hits. Thus, the CSI protagonist mostly relies on braining people with 2x4s, rebars, and lead pipes. The [[VideoGame/Condemned2Bloodshot sequel]] allows you to reload your current gun with the ammunition from a weapon on the ground and in safes, or from one in your holster after the point in the game where you unlock that.

* ''Magazine/{{MAD}}'' did a ''{{Peanuts}}'' parody of sorts telling about the RedBaron's encounters with Snoopy from the Baron's viewpoint. He came back from one flight grumbling that he'd emptied his plane's machine guns at "the Beagelhund" (yes, it's not correct German), then emptied his pistol, then threw the pistol. "He '''fetched''' it!"

* Pistols manufactured by Hi-Point have the stigma of being of very low quality in most firearms circles, due to the fact they cost less than most other polymer framed guns made by bigger names like Glock or HK and are largely made of softer, inferior metals (compensated by using a ''lot'' of it in their construction, resulting in a very large, brick-like profile). Naturally a joke exists in these same circles that the "proper" way to reload one is to throw the gun in the general direction of the attacker.

* Pistols manufactured by HiPoint have the stigma of being of very low quality in most firearms circles (due to the fact they cost less than most other polymer framed guns made by bigger names like Glock or HK). Naturally a joke exists in these same circles that the "proper" way to reload one is to throw the gun in the general direction of the attacker.