In this topic: You name the guns you can't ever identify right.
 

M16/AR-15 series rifles - TOO MANY VARIATIONS. Unless you have clear, unfettered shots of the gun you're trying to ID, I'm about 95% wrong. Actually, more like 97%, once you factor in the Canadian models. "Oh, that's an M4A1! No? A Diemaco C7? ****."

Revolvers - kind of the same problem as above. Unless it's something really distinctive to me, like a Smith & Wesson or a Colt Python, or even one of the 19th century guns, I'm usually off.

Remington 870s and Mossberg 500s. From a distance, anyway.

Shotguns that don't have a unique appearance
Muskets
Old, foreign guns
Chinese and South American guns
M16 type rifles- too many variants

AK brands. They all look the same to me.

Revolvers mainly.

I'm way too familiar with AR-15s, AKs, and semi-auto pistols to, in most cases, not know what I'm seeing.

I can't ID old fashion guns that are associated with the Old West like Winchesters or early colt revolvers

Mostly modern stuff, espescially S&W autos and non-military AR variants. Oh, and the different variants of MP5. Just never really cared.

I don't mean to confuse you even more...but there are no Diemaco C7 rifles in any movies or TV shows. Diemaco/Colt Canada doesn't sell its rifles to anyone outside of military/LE, including film armorers. A Canadian armorer actually told me this.

The rifles that we've been identifying on IMFDB as "C7s" are actually pre-1994 Olympic Arms K4B rifles, which have the same type of receiver as the C7, but are different manufacture. The way I figured it out is because they all seem to have the OA "Stowaway' pistol grip; one of the armories in British Columbia owns them and sends them out to lots of shows.

Some day, I'm gonna have to change the M16 page, and all the movie/TV pages where we've called the guns "C7s", to reflect this new understanding. I may even have to ditch the C7 section completely.

Eh, that's alright, I think we have more than enough people who know the modern stuff. :) I think it's really important that we have more people who can distinguish between different manufacturers of older weapons. I can tell apart most AKs of different manufacture, for example, but I'd be hard-pressed to tell the differences between the various Mauser copies that are out there.

Can't tell the difference between some of the shorty M16 models like the 727s to the sporter carbines

The 727 is easy; it has the stepped barrel, like an M4.

The others, I admit I don't know them all, either. Which is why I like the AR chart.

Can someone tell me when I looked at Worldguns' website and in the M4 section, they have an M4 with a fixed carrying handle and call it an early M4. What's the difference between that an a 727?

The M16 has WAAAYYYY too many variants that all look alike, at least AK variants are abviously diferant from each other (Type 56 hooded sight, AIM/AIMS foregrip. Anyone else notive that the Yugo M70's folding stock looks to be made of rebar, rather than thin metal?)

BTW: why do the C7/C8?whatever they call them Canadian M16s have ugly green furniture? Why is Canada in love with the ELCAN scope? All there guns have it.

Yeah, way too many ar-15s. Aks I find hard. Also, glocks. All look the same unless you get a close up. Kind of like you see a subcompact, and yo cant tell 26.27,etc.

The very first shipment of M4s from Colt had fixed carry handles, though right off hand I don't recall how it differed from the 727.

Probably the same reason US troops are in love with the ACOG. ;)

The Model 727 fires either semi or full-auto, while the Model 777 (the earliest M4) fires semi or burst. Other than that, they're the same gun.

Pump Action Shotguns.
The page about telling them apart helps a bunch, but it causes the problem where I'm checking the page for the right gun, and it wasn't one of the big three.

Revolvers also, especially when one shows up that has abnormal grips that lead me to ID it wrong.

And M16A1/A2. I can't tell when an A1 has A2 handguards. I really can't.

The C7A2 and some C8A2s have the green furniture. It's to partially break up the outline of the weapon in foliage. Same reason we now issue camoflage gloves, and are supposed to be getting camoflage boots (they've been "coming" for about 10 years now and I've only ever seen logisitcs officers wearing them - then again it was the same story with the new rucksack and I finally got mine last year). I don't necessarily think the green furniture is super effective, but it doesn't hurt.

And I wouldn't say we love the Elcan - in fact alot of those that remember the first generation mounts still don't completely trust it. But it's a good solid combat optic, and it's made in Canada so of course the DND insists we use it. That said, you see more and more C8s with Eotech 552s.

I thought it was made of rebar...? :confused:

You know, it might be rebar, just made square instead of round.

Okay, a new one.
Glock 17 versus Glock 19.
The angles guns are usually shown at(ie, nearly head on) in most TV shows makes it hard to determine slide length.

I think the Fringe page may have some mis-identified Glocks 'cause of that.

It's really easy; just look at the receiver and the barrel. The A2 receiver has the adjustable rear sight and brass deflector, which the A1 doesn't have. Also, the A2 barrel is much thicker and heavier. Compare our pictures side-by-side:

http://www.imfdb.org/images/c/cd/M16A1wA2Handguards.jpg
http://www.imfdb.org/images/b/b5/M16A2.jpg

The 3rd Gen models are easier; on the G19, the distance between the little horizontal cut on the frame (which is part of the accessory rail) and the muzzle is shorter than the G17. But admittedly, it's harder with 2nd Gen Glocks (which are still the most common models seen in Hollywood).

I have a hard time telling on Glock to another, unless I get a good look at them, which usually we don't get them

Yeah, sometimes I still confuse them myself, but overall, I usually find Glocks pretty easy to tell apart. Or at least, I find it pretty easy to tell full-size Glocks from compacts and sub-compacts. Or a G17L from a G34.

What I can't do - and what is really hard - is telling calibers. Generally, I assume a Glock in a movie is a 9mm (unless I have inside information on the particular show), but there are some Glocks that look like .40-caliber models and I have difficulty being sure.

a few members identifies glock 20s, which seems strange theyd actually be in a show. 10 mil and all.

I think they're probably wrong. I might be wrong myself, but I'd really be surprised if there are any Glocks in 10mm in any prop houses' inventories. Probably 95% of the Glocks they have in their armories (and that you've seen in your favorite movies and TV shows) are 9x19mm models, with maybe a handful of .40-caliber and .45 ACP models.

10 bucks says more glocks in 10mil than .45 GAP though.

If R Lee Ermy is advertising people to buy the .45 GAP, I'd say more people have bought the GAP

45 GAP....now is that an awful idea or what. What was the purpose again?

The g20 is actually somewhat popular. But hey, just because a guns popular doesn't mean it will be in movies. I see on the cz-75 page its been in a grand total of 8 movies. That is a popular gun. Then you see common gangsta thugs pulling out a new m92 fs when they should be drawing a hi point or lorcin.

The issue is how reliable the gun is when blanked. It took armorers decades to figure out how to make .45 ACP 1911s work reliably with blanks, which is why 9mm copies (like the Star Model B and Colt Mark IV Series 70) were often used as stand-ins whenever the guns were actually fired.

Not sure how reliable 10mm is when blanked, but remember that Don Johnson's Bren Tens used in Miami Vice were all re-chambered to shoot .45 ACP blanks, both because 10mm blanks were non-existent and because it would have been difficult to make them work. I would guess the same problem applies to the Glock 20, which is why I wouldn't expect to see any of them in movies.

Without disparaging the site...looking at IMFDB's gun pages is a poor way to tell. Especially since our gun pages are often incomplete due to the lack of cross-indexing (an issue that MPM has drawn our attention to). Click on the various pictures of CZ-75s that we have, and see how many pages they appear on. That's at least a better way to get an idea of how many movies a gun might have been in. But even then, far from complete.

I imagine the CZ-75 is much more common in movies made in Eastern Europe because the armorers in those countries would have more of them in inventory (I've seen a handful of war movies filmed in the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Bulgaria, and Hungary that use them).

Its more a datapoint, you look at m92fs and see all the movies its in, and thats not even a complete list. Im still waiting for a thug to pull a hipoint c9 though.

In a spiritual sense, the CZ-75 is in a lot of things, because so much stuff is based on it.
I'd count every single Jericho as a half-CZ-75!

I meant more blank firing 10mils than blank firing 45 GAPs.

R Lee Ermey probably doesn't win over that many people. Those who know of and respect him, are probably well informed enough to not really need a 45 GAP. And those that don't, probably don't care.

I remember a few months ago I was at a gunstore near my school with my father trying to buy some .45 ammo and the guy behind the counter kept on trying to sell us .45 GAP and wouldn't stop trying to get us to buy it no matter how much we explained that .45 ACP and .45 GAP are different bullets

In the future when i get a savage 1907 ill be a dick and ask for 7.65 browning.