Lies, damned lies, and TV shows.

I feel like I can't trust anything I saw on TV growing up. Yes, I am really bright that way, just tumbling to the fact. But it's worse than that, because not only were TV dramas lying about life then, but they continue to do so today. 

Some of this I knew. Like, I knew that being knocked out, which happened to TV detectives about every other week, is a serious medical situation. Concussions are dangerous. And then I got one, which reinforced what I had read. Everyone kept asking if I had blacked out, because that's even more serious. If I had been a TV hero, I would have shaken my head, rubbed the spot, asked if someone'd got the number of that crosstown bus, and got back in the game. Instead, I was so dizzy I could barely move for hours, and it took me weeks to stop spinning entirely. I still sometimes feel the effects, three years later. 

And I'd read many times that there is no such thing as the little silencer that screws onto the end of a pistol and turns the loud BANG!! into a little pew! In reality they reduce the noise and flash somewhat, but that's because gunshots are really loud, so any reduction is helpful. There is a famous essay by mystery writer John Dickson Carr, "The Grandest Game in the World," that goes into some of the myths that are perpetuated to this day, including this one.

Arthur B. Reeve, who began in an earlier era – as, indeed, did most of the lady waltzers – entered the 20s with his once immense popularity fading away. Nevertheless his tales of Craig Kennedy had been read by hundreds of thousands, praised by Theodore Roosevelt, and turned into early film serials which held us petrified.

     Craig Kennedy was Professor Kennedy of, presumably, Columbia University. Like Dr. Thorndyke, he was the scientific detective. His laboratory flashed with stranger sparks, and bubbled with more weird beakers and test tubes, than the laboratory of the late Dr. Frankenstein. For each occasion he had some new gadget, guaranteed sensational, to clap on somebody’s wrist or wire underneath the chair. Square-jawed Kennedy in his high collar, whom we remember so well from the illustrations in the Harper editions, has marched into limbo with all his gadgets loaded on him. Much of his scientific knowledge, I believe, has been discredited. Nobody reads about him now. And yet…

     He was first in the field of fiction with the lie detector, with murder by electrolysis, with radium poisoning, with death from liquid air. He taught writers the use of the Maxim silencer, and neither tears nor prayers nor curses can induce them to give it up. As a final achievement among many, in a story called “The Dream Detective” and later in a novel called The Soul Scar, it was he who introduced the profession to psychoanalysis.

The Maxim silencer was a real thing, but I suppose Reeves used it the way we see in TV detective shows, as something that enables a gun to be fired in a bathroom at a volume that would barely disturb someone taking a shower. 

Now I read that an all-time crime show classic, the fast forensic ballistics examination, cannot with accuracy pinpoint the gun that fired the fatal bullet. As posted on Books, Bikes, Boomsticks, "'ballistic fingerprinting', like many other forensic techniques, relies on pattern matching and is highly subjective, despite being presented to juries as 'science'." Proprietor Tam posts reports on the much-lower-than-depicted accuracy of ballistics matching, noting "Jurors have watched plenty of police procedurals on TV and think that projectile matching is some precise science when in fact going much beyond 'Well, the octagonal polygonal rifling tells me this .45 caliber bullet was likely fired from a Glock' is educated guesswork."

Even so-called realistic crime shows like Law & Order have never been shy about the forensics expert saying things like, "That's the gun that fired the shot, no question about it." In truth, even if the gun was found still hot at the same scene as the shooting, there might still be some question about it. 

"Ballistics proved that's the gun that killed him, Your Honor!"

I might almost suspect that the FBI likes people to believe that guns can be matched to bullets this way to make us think it's more difficult to get away with murder than we might hope.

Things like that lead to what is called the CSI effect, after the TV show CSI: Crime Scene Investigation and its spinoffs. It's a somewhat disputed idea that jurors will be reluctant to convict absent powerful forensic evidence, right down to the man in the lab coat on the stand showing matching fingerprints and bullet casings and DNA samples on a projector. Whether this is a real phenomenon, and I suppose it might be to some extent, the blame can be placed not only on shows like CSI, Quincy, Bones, and Criminal Minds, but even real-life shows like Forensics Files. Sometimes crimes are solved by scientifically derived evidence, but more often by plain old detective work, and idiots found red-handed with the goods, or who break under endless hours of yakking down at HQ.

Another famous essay in the crime fiction genre is Dashiel Hammett's "24 Rules for Detective Writers," which certainly gets its heft from Hammett's personal experience as a real detective. Rules that have to do with guns are as follows: 

1. There was an automatic revolver, the Webley-Fosbery, made in England some years ago. The ordinary automatic pistol, however, is not a revolver. A pistol, to be a revolver, must have something on it that revolves.

2. The Colt’s .45 automatic pistol has no chambers. The cartridges are put in a magazine.

3. A silencer may be attached to a revolver, but the effect will be altogether negligible. I have never seen a silencer used on an automatic pistol, but am told it would still make quite a bit of noise. “Silencer” is a rather optimistic name for this device which has generally fallen into disuse.

4. When a bullet from a Colt’s .45, or any firearm of approximately the same size and power, hits you, even if not in a fatal spot, it usually knocks you over. It is quite upsetting at any reasonable range.

5. A shot or stab wound is simply felt as a blow or push at first. It is some little time before any burning or other painful sensation begins.

10. It is impossible to see anything by the flash of an ordinary gun, though it is easy to imagine you have seen things.

22.When an automatic pistol is fired the empty cartridge shell flies out the right-hand side. The empty cartridge case remains in a revolver until ejected by hand.

So there are a lot of things that crime writers, especially ones on TV shows, ought to know that have been known for a long time. 

The one Hammett rule that I can vouch for, growing up in New York, is rule #18: "'Youse' is the plural of 'you.'" Youse can take that one to the bank.