History Main / ATeamFiring

* In ''VideoGame/DuneII'', House Harkonnen's ultimate palace weapon is a long-range missile that may easily wipe out a decent chunk of a base, but is so horredously inaccurate that it will in all likelyhood hit a spot that isn't even on the screen. Curiously justified [[{{Literature/Dune}} by the setting]] where use of any form of computer, not to mention computer-assisted targeting, is anathema on the same level as nuking human beings, and is legally grounds for planetary-level annihilation.

* In ''VideoGame/DuneII'', House Harkonnen's ultimate palace weapon was a long-range missile that could easily wipe out a decent chunk of a base. It was also so horrendously inaccurate that targeting dead center would, in all likelihood, hit an area that wasn't even ''on the screen'' (assuming you don't move the camera after firing). This is totally unacceptable considering it's a ''fucking missile'', the kind of thing that is supposed to have computer guidance. You would think they have a pair of drunks in the control room trying to eyeball it. You had to either aim away from your target, or build more than one because the game didn't limit you, and Carpet Bomb the whole enemy town.
** This actually works for you in the final level, where the enemy can (assuming you don't play Harkonen) have ''two'' such structures pitching missiles. If they were properly accurate, the mission would be unwinnable. As well, this is ''Franchise/{{Dune}}'' - computers are forbidden on the pain of your planet getting nuked.

* ''Series/TheATeam'' [[TropeNamers made this famous]], with heroes and villains both firing ridiculous amounts of bullets at the climax of almost every episode, to practically no effect. This was due to focusing on a team of heavily-armed mercenaries using realistic firearms against similarly-armed foes, but was aimed largely at a younger audience and dealing with broadcast TV standards, meaning they couldn't actually shoot people. (Although, if you watch it with the sound muted, you'll realize that they're only shooting in semi-automatic mode. The sounds of machine gun fire were added in post-production.)
** They hit lots of glass windows, car tires, radiators, and other such things. They just never hit any people. (Website/{{Cracked}} [[http://www.cracked.com/article_16433_6-supposed-action-heroes-you-could-probably-take-in-fight.html speculated]] on "[[InferredHolocaust the hundreds of bystanders they likely gunned down with their hail of stray bullets.]]")

** They were also pretty good at hitting those amazing [[MadeOfExplodium exploding bushes]] which inevitably caused a jeep or car to flip over (without injuring the occupants, of course).

** In many cases it's intentional, the A-Team isn't shooting to kill, but to lure the enemy into a non-lethal trap, or to divert their attention.

[[folder:Anime and Manga]]

The opposite of this trope is ImprobableAimingSkills, and the bladed weapon counterpart is {{Flynning}}, in which swords clash but nobody goes for the kill. See also BloodlessCarnage and NonLethalWarfare, which often motivate this trope. Compare PowerfulButInaccurate, when the inaccuracy is canonically a property of the weapon. See also AmusinglyAwfulAim.

-->'''Ayaka:''' (''incredulously'') Where the hell'd you learn how to shoot?!\\
'''Karino:''' (''shrugs sheepishly'') [[ImperialStormtrooperMarksmanshipAcademy At the academy!]]

* Doubly subverted in ''ComicBook/LargoWinch''. When Penny reminds him that Largo ordered them to do the operation without killing, Simon tell that there is no need to worry, because he has terrible aiming skill. Then one mook is shot, and Simon explains that this proves how bad he is because he aimed at the roof.

-->Contrary old bitch, the Uzi. You won't hit jack unless you've got the weight behind it.

* In ''ComicBook/TheWalkingDead'', this is Tyreese's biggest problem. Even given lessons on a makeshift firing range, he can't hit the broad side of a barn. Good thing he's capable with [[DropTheHammer a hammer]].

** Averted in ''WesternAnimation/TheVentureBrothers''' parody of the ''G.I. Joe'' opening sequence. Not only are OSI agents shown gunning down SPHINX goons, there's also lots of blood to go around. OSI is also depicted as extremely brutal, with a couple of KickThemWhileTheyAreDown moments like shooting an ejected pilot, multiple agents ganging up on one downed goon and [[PistolWhip beating him with their rifle stocks]], etc.

** The episode "[[Recap/TheTwilightZoneS5E149TheJeopardyRoom The Jeopardy Room]]". When Kurchenko opens the door and runs out of the room, Boris (who had been earlier established as a crack shot) might as well have been firing with his eyes shut.
** The episode "[[Recap/TheTwilightZoneS3E72TheGrave The Grave]]" has eight men lying in ambush for the outlaw Pinto Sykes and fires at him when he's in the open. Despite this only one of the eight shots fired actually hit him.

* In ''VideoGame/LikeADragonIshin'', Suzuki empties an entire revolver barrel at Okada and misses every shot (with Okada only needing to even bother dodging one of them). He then tries to charge at Okada with a katana, but Okada easily dodges that as well and kills him.

%%This page has been alphabetized. Please add new examples in the correct order. Thanks!

Perhaps this trope is employed as an alternative to the opposite extreme of GunsAreWorthless and AnnoyingArrows. A writer trying to be realistic about how dangerous both arrows and bullets are in the right hands would have to make the people firing them unable to hit the broad side of a barn in order to draw fights out for dramatic effect. In the case of the {{Trope Namer|s}}, however, the real reason was that ''Series/TheATeam'' was nominally a kid's show in prime time, and [[BloodlessCarnage killing was a network no-no]]; it was overlooked at the time due to the RuleOfCool, and in fact, the movie remake was [[TheyChangedItNowItSucks heavily criticized by fans for actually showing the heroes killing people]]. This trope can be related to instances where the goodies deliberately miss their shots because they do not wish to kill anyone, but ironically the intentionally non-lethal use of firearms tends to require the opposite trope -- ImprobableAimingSkills -- for tricks like BlastingItOutOfTheirHands or winging the bad guys in order to invoke OnlyAFleshWound. Most of the time, A-Team Firing is depicted as unintentional.

[[folder:Films -- Animated]]

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

-->'''Col. Gearhart''': It's a miracle -- A miracle of the highest order that so many bullets could miss so many people in so small an area in such a short space of time.

* Creator/StephenKing's ''Franchise/TheDarkTower: Literature/TheDrawingOfTheThree'' takes a time-out to explain exactly why a mook misses with a fully automatic weapon, in [[SurprisinglyRealisticOutcome realistic terms]].

** Another factor is that most police officers use pistols which are not the most accurate weapons in the world, comparatively speaking (a modern 9mm pistol is only good to about 50 meters, while most assault rifles used by modern militaries can reach 500 to 600). In addition, police officers tend to use ammo with poor penetration power (to prevent bullets from passing through a target and into something behind like civilians) and relatedly trained to be concerned with what's behind their intended target (to prevent missed shots from hitting something behind their target like civilians). And lastly, police officers are also trained to try and talk people down from dangerous situations first with gunplay as a last resort or defensive option (for themselves or others) - even SWAT teams, typically much more heavily-armed and armored than the regular police and sent in when the perpetrators are highly dangerous, will prefer to subdue and arrest rather than kill.

* PlayedForDrama in a famous scene from ''{{Film/Predator}}'' the heroes open fire onto the [[BigBad titular monster]] firing thousands of rounds into a jungle and only manage to tag its leg. Justified in the fact that the creature was invisible.

* Akane from ''LightNovel/{{Kampfer}}'' fits this trope perfectly. Even with superpowers complete with TransformationSequence, her expert gun handling hasn't served to hit a single target. To be fair, most of the missed bullets were dodged by her opponents at light speed.

* In most co-operative and MMO games with gunplay; this can happen to any unlucky player who dumps rounds after rounds of ammo at their target only for the last shot to be "click, click, click!" and mentally cuss themselves from the realization as they are [[BoomHeadshot domed]] from the enemy player.

* In ''LightNovel/AriaTheScarletAmmo AA'', main character Akari begins as this. She is seemingly a hopeless marksman. [[spoiler: Later at the end it's revealed she's descended from and taught in the techniques of a long line of assassins, and she can hit every lethal point on a body without even looking as she shoots. However, as Butei are supposed to capture criminals alive she desperately tries to suppress this instinctive skill and as a result winds up unable to hit anything instead.]]

* Neither the militant Library Task Force of ''LightNovel/LibraryWar'' nor their pro-censorship nemesis, the Media Cleansing Committee, ever seem to hit anything despite their constant barrages of automatic weapons fire, making it one of the most peaceful (and legal!) civil wars ever depicted.

* VideoGame/{{Doom}} wastes a lot of ammunition on ''WebVideo/{{Arenas}}''. Few shots actually hit the opponent.

* In ''WebAnimation/{{Lackadaisy}},'' a lot of bullets are spent, on both sides, of a lengthy shootout between the Lackadaisy [[{{VenturousSmuggler}}s whiskey runners]] and the Marigold HiredGuns, particularly from young Freckle's Tommygun mowing down the Marigold car, and Marigold Seraphine's indiscriminate firing of of her Browning Automatic Rifle, but nobody seems to hit anyone. Even all the dynamite thrown by Lackadaisy WildCard Rocky causes nothing but property damage. The only significant injury anyone receives is when ConsummateProfessional Mordecai grazes Freckle with a ricochet.

* In ''WebAnimation/{{Lackadaisy}}'' A lot of bullets are spent, on both sides, of a lengthy shootout between the Lackadaisy [[{{VenturousSmuggler}}s whiskey runners]] and the Marigold HiredGuns, particularly from young Freckle's Tommygun mowing down the Marigold car, and Marigold Seraphine's indiscriminate firing of of her Browning Automatic Rifle, but nobody seems to hit anyone. Even all the dynamite thrown by Lackadaisy WildCard Rocky causes nothing but property damage. The only significant injury anyone receives is when ConsummateProfessional Mordecai grazes Freckle with a ricochet.

* ''Series/MindOfMencia'': Carlos Mencia once addressed the way [[GangstaStyle gangstas stereotypically hold their guns]] (sideways, for no readily apparent reason). When taxed, one of them responded that he holds his gun like that when he shoots because it makes him look cool. He's astonished to find that the aiming guide on top of the gun lines up with his target when held the right way up. Then Mencia makes some remark about how only porn stars should look cool when they shoot.

** Contrast this with the [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1986_FBI_Miami_shootout 1986 FBI Miami shootout]], with less than a hundred rounds fired by the robbers and the agents combined, which saw both robbers dead as well as two agents, plus all but one of the agents wounded to some degree. The perps, Michael Platt and William Matix, were ex-military, unlike the simple range enthusiasts that Larry Phillips Jr. and Emil Mătăsăreanu were, and were actually using the tactics they learned from their service instead of spraying and praying like the former two did.

* The M247 Sergeant York self-propelled anti-aircraft gun is infamous for its habit of only being able to hit things it ''wasn't'' intentionally targeting. Even when presented with a target floating stationary at point-blank range or drones with radar reflectors on them[[note]]these make the radar signature bigger[[/note]], it ''still'' [[EpicFail managed to miss.]] This is likely because of issues with the electronic hardware (including the targeting computer and its radar interface) not being moisture-resistant and having been adapted from the hardware used in the [[CoolPlane F-16]] fighter. The resulting scandal that came out of the military establishment not performing effective research caused the Army to scrap the M247 altogether. The Bofors 40mm L/70 autocannon is known to be highly accurate and is widely used for other nations' anti-aircraft batteries. But those other systems that use the gun actually have ''functional'' targeting control radars and computers.

* [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_Hollywood_shootout The North Hollywood Shootout in 1997]] was considered the greatest shootout in Californian history between the police and two heavily armed and armored bank robbers, with hundreds of rounds shot during a 44-minute period. Although about a dozen people were injured, NOBODY was killed except for the two robbers, one of them actually committing suicide after he was shot and surrounded, though he reportedly received a potentially fatal hit at the same time he shot himself.

* In the infamous [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1986_FBI_Miami_shootout Miami-Dade]] and [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_Hollywood_shootout North Hollywood]] shootouts ''thousands'' of shots were fired by both the perps and officers/agents,[[note]]In both cases, both sides were trained shooters, Plant and Matix being the ex-soldiers, and Phillips/Mătăsăreanu a seasoned weekend warrior.[[/note]] with only about dozens connecting in both cases, neatly fitting in the common ~1% hit rate of modern gun battles. The North Hollywood shootout also averted ArmorIsUseless, as both robbers wore body armor and shrugged off several otherwise incapacitating hits.

MoreDakka is claimed by many to be the most reliable way of killing something, but strangely there are a lot of shootouts on TV where the number of bullets fired seems inversely proportional to their likelihood of killing or even wounding anyone. Heroes and villains can expend enormous amounts of ammo shooting at each other, often with automatic weapons and/or at very close range, yet everybody important is protected by PlotArmor. Only a {{mook|s}} or a RedShirt has anything to worry about, and sometimes even they will be defeated or driven off non-lethally. It's not that the bullets aren't potentially lethal, but everyone's accuracy is so horrible that they seem to hit everything ''except'' their foe, even in situations where they have a clear line of fire and you'd think it would be almost impossible to miss. When the fight's over, all the property and vehicles in the area will be chewed up with bullet holes, yet there will be no perforated corpses to match. This trope differs from ImperialStormtrooperMarksmanshipAcademy in that instead of just the bad guy's {{mooks}} being unable to hit the hero as he slaughters them with his own ImprobableAimingSkills, A-Team Firing makes everybody on ''both'' sides keep missing.

Perhaps this trope is employed as an alternative to the opposite extreme of GunsAreWorthless and AnnoyingArrows. A writer trying to be realistic about how dangerous both arrows and bullets are in the right hands would have to make the people firing them unable to hit the broad side of a barn in order to draw fights out for dramatic effect. In the case of the {{Trope Namer|s}}, however, the real reason was that ''Series/TheATeam'' was nominally a kid's show in prime time, and [[BloodlessCarnage killing was a network no-no]]; it was overlooked at the time due to the RuleOfCool, and in fact, the movie remake was [[TheyChangedItNowItSucks heavily criticized by fans for actually showing the heroes killing people]]. This trope can be related to instances where the goodies deliberately miss their shots because they do not wish to kill anyone, but ironically the intentionally non-lethal use of firearms tends to require the opposite trope -- ImprobableAimingSkills -- for tricks like BlastingItOutOfTheirHands or winging the bad guys in order to invoke OnlyAFleshWound. Most of the time, A-Team firing is depicted as unintentional.

This trope is often TruthInTelevision. Any sustained automatic fire from a handheld weapon will require divine intervention to actually hit its target because the recoil from each successive shot will force the weapon's muzzle to [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Muzzle_climb rise up]] until all of the rounds are passing harmlessly over it. That's why reckless automatic fire is nicknamed "[[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spray_and_pray spray and pray]]". As for non-automatic weapons, handguns are known for only having an effective range of about ''30 feet'' for most non-professional users, since they have a shorter sight radius to aim with, as well as less weight and fewer anchor points (i.e. buttstock and foregrip) to help control recoil. So under most conditions, this trope could be interpreted not as "all shots have bad luck" but as "no shot gets better than average results (i.e. a miss) no matter how many shots are fired."

In past centuries of gunpowder warfare, firearms technology and the quality of training put considerable limits on accuracy. In the old days, every soldier's weapon was muzzle-loaded and single shot. Barrel rifling and tight-fitting lead ball ammunition made a gun more accurate, but they also made it slower and more difficult to reload as powder residue fouled the barrel more with each shot. Since the steps of reloading took a long time to begin with, making it even slower was a big disadvantage while under fire. Therefore, most regular infantry used smoothbore muskets while rifles were more often limited to hunters, sharpshooters, and skirmishers. It was also easier to reload a musket quickly using under-size balls, even though the loose fit and random spin imparted to the bullet tended to send it off target upon leaving the barrel. Admittedly, even an unrifled musket in competent hands could be used to hit an individual 100 yards away, but the average recruit's target-hitting ability was very poor, and most armies didn't want to spend large amounts of expensive powder and ammunition by giving everyone extensive target practice.

Especially in the 18th century, military leaders believed that collective volume of fire was more important than individual accuracy for inflicting casualties. To achieve this they trained their troops to load and fire as rapidly as possible in volleys, directing their fire at the whole enemy formation rather than picking individual targets. Even if most of the bullets in a given volley missed the enemy, sheer numbers would ensure that some would hit, and rapid firing would make that damage keep adding up. What's more, the shooting was often merely intended to soften up the enemy before a decisive bayonet charge. The ability to pick off individuals at range was of limited use in a massed battle anyway, because black powder guns produced huge amounts of smoke: the battlefield would be shrouded in an impenetrable fog after a few volleys, rendering one's aiming skills rather moot.

The effect of firearms with higher potential accuracy and rate of fire has been to change tactics, ironically leading to similarly low rates of accuracy for different reasons. Targets that move quickly and stay behind cover instead of lining up in the open are naturally harder to hit, and when they are returning fire one's own ability to concentrate, aim and shoot will be seriously impacted. Furthermore, a lot of bullets are fired for reasons other than directly killing the enemy. Modern small arms tactics revolve around [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Suppressive_fire suppressive fire]] and maneuver, in which one part of a military force puts out sustained fire towards the enemy not so much to inflict casualties as to pin them down behind cover and restrict their ability to move or fire back. While the enemy is being suppressed, other elements can maneuver in close and go for the kill. Another ammo-intensive technique is Reconnaissance by Fire, in which a force that doesn’t know exactly where the enemy is hiding will shoot preemptively at potential enemy hiding places to cover their advance. The amount of ammo used in warfare today is staggering. Although ammo expenditure and enemy kill figures are notoriously unreliable, John Pike of [=GlobalSecurity.org=] [[https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/us-forced-to-import-bullets-from-israel-as-troops-use-250000-for-every-rebel-killed-314944.html estimated]] that U.S. forces fired something like 250,000 bullets (including large numbers fired in practice) for each enemy combatant killed between 2002 and 2005.

* ''Series/TheTwilightZone1959'' episode "[[Recap/TheTwilightZoneS5E149TheJeopardyRoom The Jeopardy Room]]". When Kurchenko opens the door and runs out of the room, Boris (who had been earlier established as a crack shot) might as well have been firing with his eyes shut.