Why so many guns in Leon?
 

I was looking at the page today and started counting the guns the ESU peolpe have. I counted NINE differant kinds of guns, in 3 differnat calibers (if you count the AP-74 fake M16s) There are 3 separate SiG assault rifles, and some nut is holding a scoped HK91. Is he planing on sniping from 20 feet or something? 9 kinds of guns, from 6 countries, plus the utterly ridiculous machine gun used to launch grenades. Did they run out of guns or just hand them out willy-nilly inside the gun rental's armoury? Pick-your own, get them before there're gone.:D Any ideas?

Also, I would like to thank the members of this site, as i have learned a huge amount about guns and how to tell them apart Thanks to all off you.

You think that movie has so many guns? You haven't seen Hard boiled.

And if you think movies have guns, TV shows have more

I have seen the Hard Boiled page, and it is impressive. Still, that was a bunch of gangsters and this is a bunch of SWAT. Ordinarly LEOs, i might understeand a variaty in the car trunk, but SWAT? odd.

Can't comment on the variety of guns, but from the guns they used it was obviously a European armorer.

yeah must agree the saw guys had a great deal to choose from. Like the idea about the help your self to the armoury.:)

First off, thanks for your praise. I must warn you, though, some of us are OCD about lots of stuff, so don't take it personally or anything. :D

I'm guessing the armorer who worked on the film just didn't have very many MP5s or Mini-14s (which would have been standard-issue to NYPD ESU back in 1994) in inventory when he worked on "Leon". Maybe most of them were out being used on other shows. The use of the AP-74 indicates that they probably wanted to get some M16s in the scene (weapons which an American SWAT team, though not ESU, might have been using), but couldn't.

The presence of weapons like the grenade-launching machine gun are probably just for pure action value, though. I don't think the director was thinking too much about realism, more about what looks cool.

Yeah, a lot of action films made in continental Europe tend to have a hodgepodge of different weapons, because the movie armories in those countries don't tend to be nearly as well-stocked as American or Canadian armories (so I've heard). They're also more likely to use blank replicas.

The presence of the AP-74 confuses me, because you can see at least 2 ESU officers using M16A1s with A2 handguards. I've just been too busy to finish my damn work to show it. :P