Diane reads all kinds of Sherlock fic, notably Johnlock, casefic and fluff.  In some of these (probably not much in the fluff) John Watson MD, Capt. RAMC (ret’d) is also BAMF!John, as handy with a pistol as a prescription form. Usually, she tells me, he’s carrying the ex-Army SIG-Sauer P226 that he obtained by some nefarious route prior to “A Study in Pink”. It also means these stories tend to have more than the usual amount of firearms in them.

(NB - In British Army parlance the SIG is the L105 (or L106) A1, not the L9A1 as claimed by Moriarty – that was the preceding Browning Hi-Power and no amount of “are you just pleased to see me” will change one into the other. Even “in your pocket” is no excuse. This was a script or continuity slip-up. If Moriarty’s as smart as he’s being presented, then he should know the Army pistol had been changed. It’s a classic example of “if you write a character with clever, knowing dialogue, make sure the clever is correct.”)

A week or so ago she told me about a character who had just “eased the safety off” his revolver because she knows through me (oh deary me, does she ever know) that this is one of the commonest writing-about-guns errors. So she asked me to check if this particular revolver (a Korth Combat) could actually have a safety.

Well, no. It couldn’t. That it was a Korth made me smile, not merely for being something unusual, but also, had it been in BAMF!John’s possession, well in keeping with “Sherlock” John Watson’s taste for accessories that suggest he has considerably more money squirrelled away than just his Army disability pension.

But Korths, though custom-made and monstrously expensive, are like most revolvers ever made and don’t have a manual safety that can be eased off, or slipped off, or thumbed off, or released, or anything else.

That’s when some readers stop reading at once. Other readers stop trusting all other “factual information”, be it ever so carefully researched and correct, because of being Dan Browned. And some readers stop enjoying the story and just go error-hunting, because people who read fiction where guns play a role tend to know that sort of safety on a revolver just isn’t there.

Except when, on rare occasions, it is…

This started as just an illustrated answer to a question. It turned into an essay by an amateur-but-keen (and pedantic) weapons/militaria buff and published novelist/screenwriter, about why the business of revolvers with safety-catches keeps coming up, a suggestion (with pictures) about where the idea probably originates, and proof (with more pictures) that it’s not always wrong…

It’s possible that people who haven’t handled guns (lots of European writers!) or read up some background before writing about them (hmm, trying to think of an excuse for this and failing…) can’t imagine a dangerous weapon without some sort of safety device, since pretty well every other kind of firearm down to the humble farmer’s shotgun seems to have one.

(Semi)-automatic pistols have obvious external, user operated devices, usually safety-catches or decocking levers, so it seems obvious that revolvers should have something similar. However, most of them don’t. Yes, many have various blocks, disconnects, transfer bars, and in the case of the Smith & Wesson Centennial as used by James Bond in the novel Dr. No, a safety bar on the backstrap of the grip, like so…

…which disengages when the gun is held correctly.

They’re all meant to keep the gun from going BANG! except when intended, but all are “internal safeties” - none are an external catch that a character can operate in an dramatically visual/textual sort of way. Even that S&W “lemon squeezer” safety works just by nothing more obvious than gripping the gun firmly.

I have a theory about why this mistake is so common: many revolvers have an obvious slide, button or lever on the left side, usually above the grip, like so…

…and the Korth version (yes, that’s “Damascus” steel - expensive, remember?) alongside the hammer really does look like a safety device. But these aren’t safeties: all of them are cylinder latches to open the revolver for reloading, and the Webley even has a spring-loaded ejector that will flick the empties out.

Plot Point: a revolver with this sort of ejector will do it as readily to just-loaded fresh cartridges as to spent cases, causing great inconvenience to a nervous user who’s just pushed something they shouldn’t and sent six perfectly good unfired rounds all over the floor. George MacDonald Fraser did something like this to Flashman with a LeVaux revolver in The Road to Charing Cross, part 1 of Flashman and the Tiger. (Fraser called it French – it was Belgian - and also claimed it had a patent safety catch – it didn’t - but I’ll excuse both errors since first-person narrator Flashy is always a bit unreliable, and never more so than when he’s playing his usual role of cornered rat.)

Fic writers needn’t feel too bad; they’re in excellent company, because the Fraser example is just one of many. Any number of published professional crime, thriller and detective-story writers have racked up the tension with descriptions of their revolver-toting characters checking safeties on snubbies, releasing safeties on wheelguns, doing everything in fact but noticing that there isn’t one.

There are only a few revolvers with the sort of safety-catch that characters can click in an obvious and dramatic way and all are unusual, because of age, rarity or secrecy.

The Imperial German Reichsrevolver (above) is late 19^th century and getting into “why is your character armed with an antique and can they still get the proper ammunition for it or is that antique too?” territory. There’s no reason why not, perhaps it’s Great-grandad’s war trophy, but if the cartridges are as old as the gun, will they even go BANG any more?

This can be a Plot Point, like the risk of the old, worn safety catch not catching and being safe any more, though NB that this can also happen to modern weapons, which is why instructors insist on “trust safe gun handling first, and safety devices second.”

The post-WW1 German Arminius (above) had a similar safety to the Reichsrevolver - maybe appealing to ex-Army customers? - and were popular personal weapons, but not well-known enough to turn up in any “revolvers with safeties” list I’ve ever seen before. (NB “Arminius HW” revolvers are post-war, have no safety, and share only the name.)

The regular Webley revolver only ever had a safety - the square silver button above the name - installed on the Singapore Police version, the Webley Hammerless had a sliding button that revealed the comforting word SAFE, and the Webley-Fosbery Automatic Revolver (yes, really, an Automatic Revolver) was just weird, though that didn’t stop it appearing in Zardoz as one more weirdness among many, and as a murder weapon in The Maltese Falcon.

Another Plot point – the second Arminius, the Webley Hammerless and the Smith & Wesson Centennial can all be fired repeatedly without taking them out of a pocket, purse or bag – there’s no hammer to snag on things, and I’ve never read about problems with the cylinder rotation. However your character might discover that the muzzle-flash has set their coat or purse on fire, which may well cause comment and problems.

This happens impressively in “The Godfather Part 2″ when Vito Corleone muffles his revolver in a towel before murdering Don Fanucci – the little bonfire accurately shows what can happen.

Now imagine that’s your character’s clothing. Not such a cool assassin any more, eh…?

I’ve probably missed a few examples (there was a Belgian style of safety that actually put a wedge into one of the chambers to stop the cylinder revolving) but not many, because revolvers with safety-catches are just that rare and mostly out of date.

But then there’s this…

The OTs-38 Silent Revolver is a lot more modern than most since it was built in 2002. It doesn’t use a silencer (another thing you can’t put on most revolvers except for the 1895 Nagant) but fires very peculiar, almost-impossible-to-find ammunition, and it doesn’t take much effort to guess what sort of organisation would want a noiseless weapon that won’t eject spent brass needing policed.

Writer advice: unless your character needs to carry a revolver rather than just a vaguely-generic “handgun”, and unless the presence of a safety catch on that revolver plays some important part in the plot, then don’t mention safety + revolver at all. If hard detail is unimportant, vague is better and less prone to error.

Unless you’re being deliberately silly, like this…

“He was driving a 2014 Maserati Moltolento Senzaporte, powered by their latest menthol-boosted triple-carb VC-10 engine.”

It sounds impressive, the way Ian Fleming liked to describe cars in his original James Bond novels, but that tech-heavy description is a (rather ponderous) joke.

Yes, a Maserati is a real car (the pic is of the planned Alfieri) but “molto lento” means “very slow” and “senza porte” means “no doors”.  “Menthol” is a medicinal additive (think Vicks Vaporub), it’s “methanol” that’s the engine performance-booster. “VC-10″ was an airliner, it’s “V-10″ that’s the car engine configuration. Finally, there wouldn’t be triple-carb(urettors) in any modern car whether high performance or family runabout; they all have fuel injection now.

Getting things wrong by accident is annoying. Seeing someone getting paid while getting things wrong is infuriating, especially when they’re getting it wrong in something being sold as a guide to getting it right.

My current classic example is “Armed and Dangerous” by Michael Newton.

I was a bit more complimentary about it in an earlier post, but I’ve had a long, careful look since then and I’d now say this:

Writer advice - Do Not Buy This Book.

My copy is from the Howdunit series, and though it claims to be “a writer’s guide to weapons” there are no weapons other than firearms and some explosives, so it’s wrong from the title in. It’s also badly, boringly written, and so littered with fleabite errors that it’s frankly rubbish - the Amazon.com reviews go into great rivet-counting detail about how rubbish it is, and that’s just the deeply technical stuff.

There are too many thoughtless broad-brush blunders as well, and here’s the problem summarised in a pictorial nutshell. If a Writer’s Guide is so sloppy about its subject in both writing and editing that it “shows the parts” of a single-action revolver using a photo of a double-action revolver (i.e. describing a pushbike using a photo of a motorbike) then potential buyers of that “writers’ guide” are right to doubt it fulfils its advertised purpose.

Writer advice: if your character is carrying one of the few revolvers that do have safeties, then mention that revolver by name to prove you know what you’re doing,. Spend a little time elaborating on how it came into their possession and why they’re using something so unusual.

Plot Point:…heck, Entire Sub-Plot! If your character is carrying a Russian OTs-38, then how your character got it, what they need it for, where they’ll find refills, and local Law Enforcement’s response to some very peculiar ballistic reports while the character tries to keep one step ahead of the original Spetsnaz owners is a story all by itself. (You’re welcome.)

EDT: Three incorrect uses of “bullets” changed to “rounds”, “ammunition” and “cartridges” respectively. Thanks to danceacrossmymemory for catching it.

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