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"There's a scene in Young Guns," Jerry says, "where a guy files down his front site so he gets an 'eighth of a second drop' on the bad guy. An eighth of a second? Are you fucking kidding me? Maybe, if you pull off a perfect shot right to the apricot [the medulla oblongata, a part of the brain] that might -- might -- matter. But in real life, getting shot is almost never immediately fatal. I've seen people do all kinds of stuff after they get shot, including stay in the fight for hours."

Another thing you see in movie firefights is that dramatic moment where the hero shoots until he hears a dry "click" of the trigger, then has to dive behind cover to reload. In reality, that's the equivalent of driving your car until the tank is completely empty, knowing it will leave you stranded in bear country. "Any time you get a chance, you top-off," Matt says. "And if the mag still has rounds in it, you dump it into your drop bag, a loose-carry pouch, so you can keep those bullets for later. Running your gun empty is a sign you've done something really wrong."

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To learn that, watch less movies and play more video games.

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Cartel gunmen may be the foot soldiers of an unspeakably evil crime syndicate, they were kids once and they watched exactly as much Jean-Claude Van Damme and Sylvester Stallone as you did. This has gotten some of them killed, according to Jerry. "Working in South America, so many of the bad guys would just stand there shooting until they're empty -- and then have no idea what to do. To be entirely honest, I saw the last frame in a bunch of people's reels be them just standing there, looking down at their own weapon in confusion and disbelief because the gun ran dry. Apparently the idea that they'd be fucked when the bullets ran out had never occurred to them."