8 Firearms Myths Hollywood Still Can't Get Enough Of

Here is a myth so heavily entrenched in the minds of audiences that when Mythbusters debunked it, fans still argued despite all the physical evidence presented. Small wonder then that in action movies people are still thrown back by bullet impacts or, at the very least, jerk around like they’re being pummeled by Brock Lesnar.

Simple physics explains why having a bullet throw a human across a room is impossible: the force imparted to the target can never be greater than the recoil absorbed by the shooter, else the shooter would themselves also be flung back. Tests conducted using a 7.62 mm NATO round fired at close range into a bullet-resistant vest did not knock the wearer over, even when they were standing on one leg. Likewise, on Mythbusters a shotgun round fired point-blank into an accurately weighted dummy moved it all of a few centimeters.

The effect is akin to shooting a sack of sand: the target is simply too heavy for something as small as a bullet, designed to concentrate all of its force on a tiny point, to throw a large mass any distance at all. Any jerk on the part of a person is normally due to a psychological rather than physical response.

One might say that the audience needs to know who has been shot. And yet, the early Hollywood westerns did not hurl actors around: instead they shot simply clutched their chests and keeled over. With audiences demanding ever greater authenticity now is a good time to look to the past.