History Main / PistolWhipping

* As one article pointed out this happened a lot to the original ''BlackCanary''.

If you do this in Real Life -- with enough force -- you can actually kill the victim by cracking their skull. Also, even the butt of a gun has quite a few pointy parts, which, if whacked against your face, will cause a lot of bleeding and probably leave a large and permanent scar. Pistol whipping itself is a outdated way of striking somebody with your weapon, along with butt stroking somebody, the proper way is to thrust your barrel in a forward motion into the target. Smashing the barrel and slide of your handgun into somebody is a good way to lose zero and possibly damage your gun; it doesn't work as well with lightweight modern polymer guns. Muzzle strikes to the head are considered a lethal strike. Barrel strikes are typically used to put down a person who isn't considered a lethal threat, the point is to keep the ability to shoot at all times. Butt stroking or pistol whipping sweeps yourself or buddies in the line of fire. A proper non lethal weapon strike can be seen in ''{{Safehouse}}'' by Denzel's character to Ryan Reynolds' character in the soccer stadium, though a strike of that nature would typically break the sternum.

A rare case of the EvilOverlordList ''not'' reflecting common sense, as nearly all modern militaries train their troops in how to fight using their rifle as a melee weapon (although it might be that the Evil Overlord thought that it can damage the gun or not deadly to the hero). This was also fairly common during the time periods where firearms were not very advanced and required a lot of time and effort to reload which meant that sometimes it was more prudent to use your gun as a melee weapon rather than trying to reload it in the middle of battle.

If you do this in Real Life -- with enough force -- you can actually kill the victim by cracking their skull. Also, even the butt of a gun has quite a few pointy parts, which, if whacked against your face, will cause a lot of bleeding and probably leave a large and permanent scar. Pistol whipping itself is a outdated way of striking somebody with your weapon, along with butt stroking somebody, the proper way is to thrust your barrel in a forward motion into the target. Smashing the barrel and slide of your handgun into somebody is a good way to lose zero and possible damage your gun; it doesn't work as well with lightweight modern polymer guns. Muzzle strikes to the head are considered a lethal strike. Barrel strikes are typically used to put down a person who isn't considered a lethal threat, the point is to keep the ability to shoot at all times. Butt stroking or pistol whipping sweeps yourself or buddies in the line of fire. A proper non lethal weapon strike can be seen in ''{{Safehouse}}'' by Denzel's character to Ryan Reynolds' character in the soccer stadium, though a strike of that nature would typically break the sternum.

* John Preston in ''{{Equilibrium}}'' does away with a number of FacelessGoons using the pistol-assisted melee techniques of the GunKata in one scene. His guns have small retractable metal studs that come out of the grips for better use against helmets, allowing it to be welding like a hammer.

A rare case of the EvilOverlordList ''not'' reflecting common sense, as nearly all modern militaries train their troops in how to fight using their rifle as a melee weapon (although it might be that the Evil Overlord just hates it when henchmen Pistol Whip the Hero ''rather'' than shoot him). This was also fairly common during the time periods where firearms were not very advanced and required a lot of time and effort to reload which meant that sometimes it was more prudent to use your gun as a melee weapon rather than trying to reload it in the middle of battle.

* In Sam Fuller's Pickup On South Street, the villain does this to a cop blocking his escape route. The cop dies of the head wound, while the woman he actually shot with the pistol earlier survives the shooting.

* In the 1999 TV Series of ''OliverTwist'', Bill Sikes used this technique to land two very bloody blows on [[spoiler:Nancy, before he finished her off with a club]].

* Extremely subverted in ''SledgeHammer'' when in one episode Sledge sneaks behind a bad guy and pistol whips him on the head with his revolver and the bad guy just grabs his head and starts shouting in pain, Sledge follows it up with a bottle to the head and the bad guy still doesn't go down. Then Sledge jumps on the bad guy's back, piggy-backs him, gets him in a headlock, rams his head into a wall and yup, he's still conscious.

* Used repeatedly in ''{{Firefly}}'', often with ''very'' satisfying results.

* In ''KamenRiderDecade'', Kaito does this to Yuusuke in the Agito's World episodes to get the G3 Chip from him, though Yuusuke isn't badly injured.
** ''{{Kamen Rider Den-O}}'' Gun Form is usually TheGunslinger, but he isn't above using his firearms as melee weapons.

** The original ''VideoGame/{{Mass Effect|1}}'' allows you to hit a Wrex with the butt of a shotgun. This is pistol-whipping a ten-foot warlord which most people would take down with a ''rocket launcher''.
*** It works.

* MMCMAP, teaches how to use the but of the gun as an extension of an elbow strike.

* When the Heavyarms Gundam from GundamWing is forced into melee combat, the pilot can resort to [[UpToEleven gatling gun whipping]] the enemy with its arm mounted gatling cannon.

* In the first episode of {{SherlockHound}} Professor Moriarty does this to his henchman George after the gun he had given to him was out of bullets.

* ''Film/DieHard''. Towards the end of the film the hero, John [=McClane=] uses the butt of his machine gun to knock out one of the terrorists.

* SelfDemonstrating/TheJoker does this to Jason Todd in the ''{{Batman}}'' story arc "{{A Death in the Family}}" as the beginning of his NoHoldsBarredBeatdown. It goes FromBadToWorse, culminating in the infamous "crowbar scene".

->''"If you get a customer, or an employee, who thinks he's CharlesBronson, take the butt of your gun and smash their nose in. Everybody jumps. He falls down screaming, blood squirts out of his nose, nobody says fucking shit after that."''

* In ''[[TombRaider Tomb Raider: Legend]]'' after the final battle, Lara confronts her former friend-turned-arch nemesis Amanda about her being responsible for the loss of Lara's mother. After [[PunctuatedPounding punctuating her words with bullets]] Amanda gives in and tells her that her mother was sent to Avalon. Lara appears to have calmed down but delivers a wicked backhanded Pistol Whip, knocking Amanda out instantly.

-->-- '''Mr. White''', ''ReservoirDogs''

* Before the advent of bayonets in the late 1600s, formations of musket-wielding soldiers had no other option if they were forced into close combat. Which they were fairly often in war, because their guns had very short range and lousy accuracy, and they took a minute or more to reload, so musketeers would get only one shot when the enemy was already nearly on top of them. Even after the invention of bayonets, this was still not unheard of as late as the Napoleonic Wars or even later, as a musket was easily heavy enough to kill, and bayonets, which were basically designed to turn the gun into a spear for use against cavalry, had to be yanked out of an enemy footsoldier's corpse.

* {{Bayonetta}} can melee with her guns like this. She also likes to slap mooks around with her pistols in cutscenes.

* {{Eminem}} was accused of pistol whipping a man he claims he saw kissing his wife

[[quoteright:341:[[StrontiumDog http://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/StrontiumDogPistolWhip.jpg]]]]

* In a sickening scene in the movie ''[[EightMM 8mm]]'', Nicholas Cage's character beats James Gandolfini's character ''to death'' with a pistol butt. Gandolfini's character so dearly asked for it.