Gangsta Style

On the right is the "logical conclusion".^*It may also bring Death The Kid to mind

"Holding the hand crossbow sideways 'gangsta style' does not add to my intimidate check."

— Things Mr. Welch Is No Longer Allowed to Do in an RPG, #1033

Turning a weapon, frequently a pistol, so its grip is horizontal rather than vertical.

Showy, flashy, and generally useless as a marksmanship technique. Normally, recoil lifts the barrel against gravity. When firing in this manner recoil pulls the gun sideways instead and tends to turn the shooter around in a circle. Additionally, it makes the sights much less useful. Worse, if the pistol is turned in this manner, its ejection port faces up, and the extractor isn't designed to work directly against gravity.^note If you're holding it with your right hand, that is. Gangsta Style with the left hand will have the ejection port facing the ground Sideways recoil and improper extraction combined may make an ejected shell fly out at the wrong angle and hit you in the face, and also increases the chance (especially if you're wearing loose clothing) of getting a shell ejected into your clothes, which is actually not an unheard-of occurrence when firing normally. Bear in mind that, depending on the ammunition and load, the shell can be hot enough to cause small burns on contact with the skin. Spent cartridges are also very likely to not be thrown clear, or even fall back into the port, either of which will jam the gun. All of which may be of some concern to a person who is in the middle of a gunfight.

Visually, it emphasizes the fist of the gunner. In other words, Rule of Cool wins in fiction.

Most probably, the reason why this technique came about is for use in robbing stores. When holding a gun correctly, it is nearly impossible to keep the gun pointed at the clerk should they duck behind the counter without re-positioning your entire body. When holding the gun sideways, however, it is much easier to quickly aim downwards at a ducking clerk. As store robberies are generally carried out at close range, and the gun is more a tool to intimidate the clerk than anything, the loss of accuracy is generally considered an acceptable trade-off in order to keep the target under the gun at all times.

There also seems to be a persistent myth that doing this somehow increases the lethality of the pistol, which makes no sense for the following reasons: 1) How the heck would simply rotating the gun affect the inner working of the gun in such a drastic manner? 2) Even if it was the case, wouldn't guns therefore be designed to be held and professional soldiers trained to hold their guns in such a way?

The technique has sometimes been used with specific guns for practical reasons. For example, it saw much popularity in 1920s China in conjunction with the Mauser C96, where the technique negated the pistol's awkward upwards ejection, and allowed automatic variants to more effectively sweep rooms. Wheellock pistols were routinely held this way to reduce the chance of a misfire. It is the safest method of firing the AK and derivatives when lying prone — due to its awkwardly large magazine, holding the weapon vertically elevates the angle of the barrel upward by a good 20 degrees, which means you have to lift your head well off the ground to look down the sights, presenting a large target for any hostiles and thus defeating one of the points of firing from a prone position. Additionally, it is utilized when you need to shoot around a ballistic shield during a close-quarters forced entry operation.

Combine this one with Guns Akimbo, and you have something spectacular, but God help us all if it goes too far... More Dakka may be employed in an attempt to counter accuracy issues. To slice the Willing Suspension of Disbelief into little bits, have someone pull Offhand Backshots this way... and hit. Without suffering from a sprain and/or dislocated joint after this. A way to make Improbable Use of a Weapon. See also Reverse Grip, for edged weapons.

This trope, along with various other Hollywood gun styles such as Guns Akimbo, was examined by the MythBusters. They proved that both tropes are just as inefficient as you think.

Despite the similar name, has no relation to and is not used in Gangnam Style.

Compare with One-Handed Shotgun Pump, which is Rule of Cool similarly applied to shotguns.

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Examples:

Anime & Manga

• Kiriyama, from Battle Royale, only shoots this way. This is only in the manga; in the original novel and the film adaptation he shoots normally.
• Dutch from Black Lagoon fires a pump-action shotgun Gangsta style. Considering that he is a Vietnam war vet, he should by all accounts know better, but it sure looks cool. It might be justified because of his shades, having accidentally gone into the gas mask routine from his army training, during that scene. (See Real Life examples) or, it may reflect the fact that that particular model occasionally suffers from feeding problems in real life, and that particular posture is recommended to ensure proper cycling. Played straight again when we find out that he never served in the military, or at least not in Vietnam.
• Crash B Daman had marble shooters designed specifically to look like guns of various types. The trigger grips attach to the back sideways, giving this look for practical purposes.^note Specifically, to keep the size and price of the toys close to prior B-Daman products and allow for clearance when sitting flat without needing oddly shaped parts. This also means that when the players challenge each other in the manga and anime, they look like they're about to have a ganglands shootout.
• One of hired thugs in Darker than Black, when he tried to intimidate the people present at the scene of a kidnapping attempt. He could have spared himself the trouble, though, as a successfully scared Person of Mass Destruction killed him and almost everyone around in the next 15 seconds or so.
• Mello of Death Note occasionally holds his gun like that, but since he never actually fires from this position it may count as a means of intimidation.
• You would think a well-renowned killer like Brandon Heat of Gungrave would know better than to exhibit this trope, but you'd be wrong. Notable in that he often uses two guns this way, with his arms crossed above the wrists. Imagine the potential for sprains and broken bones there... Even after dying and reanimated, he still does it—and capable of destroying enemies without even turning around to aim.
• While giving a firearms training lesson, Gunsmith Cats' Rally Vincent gives a student who uses this style a thorough explanation as to why this (followed by Guns Akimbo) is so prominent in movies and television: "The shell casings flying past the firer's face are 'a cool image', but without the sights, you can't hit anything." She does demonstrate that Gangsta Style is good for hitting targets flying through the air, as the bulk of the gun doesn't obscure the firer's vision as it moves upward or downward, by plinking a thrown can like a sporting clay - but then goes on to say that it's still a pretty useless technique, as targets on the ground move sideways, not up and down. She also mentions that using the gun that way may be good for shooting around corners, but you need to look out for flying brass.
  • She also gets chewed out by the owner of the firing range: he wanted idiots to line up and burn ammo with stupid shooting, and teaching them to shoot properly means they shoot less, and therefore buy less of his ammo.
• Nanoha of Lyrical Nanoha fires her magical staff using this style. Justified as 1: It's magic; 2: She has a long staff shaft to deal with and putting that pistol grip in a proper vertical configuration would put the staff over her shoulder like a rocket launcher (giving the wrong impression); and 3: She's not using said pistol grip to aim her shot, she's using magical targeting systems.
• The Strike Noir Gundam from Mobile Suit Gundam SEED CE.73: Stargazer fires its laser pistols in this manner. Being a Humongous Mecha with computerized targeting systems, it's quite accurate, but there are still no advantages to shooting this way... other than the Rule of Cool, of course.
  • In the video game Alliance Vs. ZAFT II, the rapid shooting is just one of many factors that makes the Noir a Game-Breaker banned from Tournament Play in Japan.
  • Gundam Nadleeh from Mobile Suit Gundam 00 can wield Virtue's Shoulder Cannons like this. However, the only time it does that is as a singular stunt where it dual-wields said cannons and fires a single offhand shot from each, killing six opponents with a single attack.
    • The season 2 finale has Lockon's Cherudim engaging Revive's Gadessa which destroys his beam pistol, blowing off the Cherudim's index and middle fingers. When Lockon finally corners his opponent, he pulls out his remaining pistol and fires it like this but upside-down, pulling the trigger with his ring finger.
• Natsuki from My Hi ME is fond of doing this with her pistols. They're very small, so they don't have much recoil to begin with, but hey...
• How Kirika in Noir occasionally holds her Beretta M1934. She fires her gun right-side up most of the time, but holds it horizontally when she runs or is going to run sideways.
• Mukuro from Samurai Champloo wields his pistols in the Gangsta style. Notable because the series takes place in feudal Japan the style is super anachronistic. Of course, the entire show is fully intended to be an Anachronism Stew.
• Death the Kid from Soul Eater takes this trope to its logical extreme, holding Guns Akimbo upside down, firing the weapons with his pinkies instead of the more conventional index fingers. He frequently uses them as bludgeons, making it visually evocative of tonfas.
• Played for laughs, surprisingly, in Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann, with Kamina pointing his pistol at a Beastman pilot in order to hijack a Gunmen of his own. Take note that he's holding the gun upside down AND pointed at himself. Luckily he never fired it. It was even funnier when before Simon assisted, he was trying to pry open the hatch doors with the same gun. AND of all the ways to use it, as a hammer, no less. The pistol promptly goes off and barely misses his groin. All of this is because Kamina didn't even know what a pistol was, but didn't want to ruin his image by admitting that when offered one for the upcoming battle.
  • Played with in the Lagann-Hen movie with the Tengen Toppa Grapearl's fight with the Anti-Spiral. After a cool, SIDEWAYS establishing shot, we are treated to dakka, dakka, reaching More Dakka with a dual wield SMG and pistol loadout, before executing a sweet flip, sticking the landing in formation with the whole team's Tengen Toppa level mechs, with a badass pose, holding BOTH Gangsta Style, then unloading in one massive skirmish line.
• Trinity Blood's second episode features Tres firing one of his guns held upside down, over his shoulder, in two directions at once, and yes, even this way. Of course, he is a combat android and can probably get away with that.

Comic Books

• The page illustration is from the Gen¹³ arc "Grunge: The Movie", where writer/artist Adam Warren parodies the tropes of Hong Kong wuxia and Heroic Bloodshed through Grunge's fantasy movie script, featuring other Wildstorm characters in supporting roles (like Grifter there).
  • Not shown◊ is the character who's holding the gun upright as normal, but attempting to pull the trigger with his "Gene Simmons-like tongue".
• In "Up is Down and Black is White", a Story Arc in The Punisher MAX, Frank Castle (the titular crimefighter) is fired upon by a hoodlum in true Gangsta Style — and each shot misses him by a mile. Once the criminal's magazine is exhausted, Frank calmly walks up to him, says "They put the sights on the top for a reason", and shoots him in the head. The hoodlum otherwise said "screw Mook Chivalry" and told his gang to all go after Frank at once, but they ruined the plan by their failure to aim.◊
• A dime-store crook tries this in Ultimate Spider-Man. He misses completely despite being mere feet from Spidey, who actually complains that he didn't get the chance to show off by dodging.

Films — Animated

• Roxanne Ritchie invokes this trope in Megamind, when dealing with the threat of Titan:
  I say we go back to the evil lair, grab some ray guns, hold 'em sideways and just go all gangsta on him.
• Vincent from the Cowboy Bebop movie often holds his gun diagonally.

Films — Live-Action

• Jim Harris in Across 110th Street holds his Smith & Wesson M76 this way while having it pointed at multiple mobsters during the opening robbery. When one of them foolishly makes a grab for a handgun, Jim points the gun at the left-most mobster and fires, the gun's recoil allowing it to effortlessly sweep along the row of targets.
• Ironically, the only character in American History X to do this is Seth, a white supremacist. Its impracticality is shown in that Derek is able to disarm him with relative ease.
• Battlefield Earth's villains use guns that are apparently designed to be shot this way. Not surprisingly, they're all terrible shots.
• Blade in the Blade Trilogy and the short-lived TV series does this.
• In The Bourne Identity, Jason manages to disarm a mook by flipping the gun towards him (which would be a forward flip away from the mook), and then, without bothering to correct it, he sticks his pinky in the trigger guard and shoots the mook. He then comes under attack before he's able to correct the grip, and dual guns the other mook down.
• In Bring Me the Head of the Machine Gun Woman, the Machine Gun Woman holds her automatic like this when she is interrogating Santiago. Tellingly, she never holds her guns like this when she is actually killing someone, so Santiago was probably never in any real danger from her and she was just holding the gun like this to scare him.
• In Brotherhood of the Wolf, Fronsac fires two flintlock pistols this way during a target practice sequence. Hilarious in Hindsight if you know anything about flintlock weapons: not only would aiming them that way make an already-inaccurate weapon even more so, but they simply wouldn't be able to fire in that position.
• Madison Lee in Charlie's Angels: Full Throttle. With a Desert Eagle .50 AE. And she hits.
• Copycat: Detective MJ Monahan does this at one point during a training exercise, despite being a trained and experienced police officer who would know full well what a bad idea this is. This is not two seconds after advising her partner on how to aim for a perp's shoulder instead of the torso so as to merely wound instead of kill him, something else someone in her position would know is implausible.
• In The Dark Knight Rises, when Stryver is attempting to kill Selina Kyle at the bar, he holds his pistol in this manner as a way to threaten her.
• In Date Night, Phil, already panicking at being held at gunpoint, really freaks out when it's turned on its side: "He's turning it sideways! Kill shot! That's a kill shot!"
• Deadpool (2016): Deadpool manages to fire his Desert Eagle this way at least once, most memorably when he shoots a hand grenade from the hand of the goon who is about to throw it.
• Subverted in Death Note (2006). Naomi Misora fires her gun sideways at Shiori and manages to hit her (much to her shock and surprise). Shortly after, its revealed that Naomi had been shooting with the intent to miss, and had only been successful because Light had dictated with the Death Note that Shiori would die of being shot, and that Naomi would fire warning shots and commit suicide out of horror for having killed someone.
• In Death Ring, Matt, who is supposed to be an ex-Green Beret One-Man Army, holds an AK-47 like this when he fires on full auto at the guards at Vachs' mansion. Somehow, he still manages to be accuracte.
• In Eagle Eye, after the protagonists are forced to rob an armored van, the Feds question the guards. One of them picks up a shotgun and asks if the robbers held it like they do in rap videos. The guard replies that they looked like they knew how to handle firearms.
• Korben Dallas (Bruce Willis) in The Fifth Element holds his gun/blaster sideways when a mugger meets him at the front door. Since he's at point blank range, his accuracy isn't going to suffer, and he's just trying to scare the mugger off anyway. Intimidation factor of it all.
• Craig Jones (Ice Cube) in Friday holds his gun this way in two separate scenes.
• In an early example from The Western film The Good, the Bad and the Ugly, Tuco finishes off a bounty hunter using this technique, during the famous "When you have to shoot, shoot, don't talk!" scene.
• In The Great White Hype, Shaabazz, Hassan and two Mooks ambush Sultan and co at Sultan's mansion brandishing guns horizontally. Cue lots and lots of pretty red lights focusing on Hassan. Even some of the trained bodyguards are guilty of this:
  Hassan: See this is what happens see when you been living lavish, you know, sippin' wine an' everything then we come in here Neno Brown Style. Huh-yeah!
• Invoked in The Green Hornet with an actual gangster, played by Christoph Waltz, who has his custom double-barreled gun upside down when he "punishes" a minion.
• In The Immortals, Deke holds his revolver like this when threatening Gina. Justified because Deke, like most of the crew, knows nothing about guns and is a loudmouth fool who thinks he is 'ghetto', so he undoutedly thinks it looks cool.
• Actually used correctly in John Wick and its sequels. John uses the Center Axis Relock style of shooting, which is explained in the Real Life section below. You can see it during the fight at the bathhouse - he tilts his gun about 45 degrees to the side.
• Spoofed in Kick-Ass 2, when The Motherfucker tries to hold a gun like this and is warned (by the old man he was trying to menace, no less) that he's holding it improperly. He disregards the warning and tries to fire the gun in this position anyways. It doesn't work out too well for him.
• In Layer Cake, some of the Duke's bodyguards have a habit of doing this with Guns Akimbo. Notably, that whole group is comprised of stupid wannabe gangsters.
• In Machete Kills, La Chameleón offers to Mercy Kill a dying cartel member "straight up" (holding the pistol properly) "or flair" (holding the gun gangsta style). He replies, "Whatever is more interesting". So she turns the gun upside down and fires it with her pinky.
• Near the climax of Malibu's Most Wanted, Brad fires a pair of machine pistols like this at a bunch of South Central street thugs. He doesn't succeed in actually hitting anybody, but he does send them running for cover. When asked how he learned to do that, he replies "Grand Theft Auto".
• In The Mask, when the Mafioso and one of his mooks fire shot after shot at Ipkiss as The Mask, the mook holds his gun gangsta style while his boss holds it in traditional style. It doesn't make much difference, because the closest either of them gets to hitting him is grazing his pajamas. Notably the Cool But Inefficientness of this shooting style is subtly Lampshaded when, after failing to hit him with the first few shots, the mook switches to a proper two-handed shooting style to improve his aim (albeit to no avail).
• Apoc from The Matrix takes out several policemen in a shootout, with his Uzi turning sideways as he fires at them from left to right. This might make a bit of sense considering that the recoil would be pushing his gun across rather than above his targets' heads.
• Russell Crowe is about to shoot you on the poster◊ of No Way Back.
• The police in RoboCop (1987), when shooting the eponymous hero after his brawl with ED-209. This was done (with sighted weapons, to be precise) in order to prevent hot brass cartridges from flying at the actors.
• Chris-R does this in The Room (2003), like any stereotypical Gangster.
• Species II: For some reason Preston holds his gun sideways when he arrests Patrick, despite being both a supposed counter-terrorism expert with firearms training and aware that his target is a highly dangerous alien masquerading as a human.
• Subverted in Star Trek: Generations: Dr. Tolian Soran fired his energy pistol with the grip in a sideways position, but the gun itself and its sights automatically aligned itself to an upright position. Also, it was an energy weapon, so no recoil, and no curved trajectory.
• Suicide Squad (2016): Deadshot is seen firing pistols like this a few times. Justified, kinda, in that he usually has pistols mounted on the arms of his outfit, which automatically puts them in that position; when he needs to fire by hand, he'll be more familiar firing that way.
• McLovin in Superbad, played for laughs.
  Break yo self, foo!
• Alonzo Harris (Denzel Washington) in Training Day holds his off-hand gun in this fashion while spraying some gangsters with Guns Akimbo. This could be to prevent the left-hand gun from ejecting hot shells onto his right arm.
• We see Keyzer Soze hold his gun in this way at the beginning of The Usual Suspects. This acts as a Red Herring later when we see Hockney hold his gun in this fashion later in the film. The filmmakers jokingly referred to this grip as "Nineties Style."
• The trailer for Vampires Suck has Edward declaring "I'm a killer!" like in Twilight, then goes on to emphasise this by shooting Alice. With the gun held sideways for emphasis.
• The Fraternity assassins in Wanted fire their guns gangsta style combined with some fancy Gun Fu to "curve" the path of their bullets, like baseballs. In the climactic shootout, Wesley even fires Guns Akimbo upside-down, having snatched them out of the air from a couple of killed Mooks.

Literature

• In 1636: A Parcel of Rogues, Daryl McCarthy indulges in gangsta style firing at the people pursuing him, something he's always wanted to do. He was intentionally missing to bait on his pursuers, though, so the inaccuracy of the method wasn't an issue.
  Sure, you can't hit shit that way, but if you don't want to, it surely is fun.
• Aeon 14: Protagonist Tanis Richards holds a pistol this way in the Sean Connery Is About to Shoot You version of the cover◊ for Outsystem. As pointed out by the author, Tanis doesn't have the usual problems with this trope due to her body being heavily cyborgized: she can't be injured by the recoil (assuming it's meant to be a slugthrower in the first place and not a pulse pistol), and she doesn't aim with the sights but rather with an in-head HUD.
• Alas, the Andre Norton book Firehand had the time travel project's weapons trainer, no less, use this technique (in a flashback) — in fact, it was presented as one of the clues telling the main character early on that this trainer knew her stuff. Ouch.
• In Roberto Saviano's non-fiction book Gomorrah, about the businesses, influence and actions of Camorra (a mafia-like organization active in southern Italy and particularly powerful in Naples) the author explains that one reason for the awkward length of some gang gunfighting throughout the city is that gang members, imitating movies, hold the guns sideways, resulting in poor aim (which combined with fighting behind cover results in nobody hitting each other for a quite long time).
• According to Nobody Lives for Ever, Stechkin machine pistols tend to pull upwards when fired in automatic, so James Bond turns it sideways as he shoots three mooks.
• A character in Christopher Farnsworth's The President's Vampire turns his gun sideways, counter to what his instructor told him again and again, and the hot casing is ejected into his eye.
• A street thug employs this style when threatening Jack in one of F. Paul Wilson's Repairman Jack books. Jack informs him that it's not a very secure grip ... and proceeds to prove it to the hapless lowlife.
• Time to Murder and Create by Lawrence Block has a knife variant. A thug comes at private investigator Matthew Scudder with a knife, and begins switching it from hand to hand. Scudder's narration says that this is the kind of thing that looks cool in movies, but pegs this guy as an amateur. Since the guy had the knife in his right hand during the initial rush, Scudder knows that he'll attack that way again, so Scudder can relax a little whenever the guy has it in his left hand.

Live-Action TV

• The leader of the short-lived series Acapulco Heat had a variation on this. He held two pistols at once, but fired one normally and the other horizontally, lining them both up at once at a 90-degree angle. This is probably very unwieldy and not at all recommended for use in real life, but it's also the only way you could conceivably try to aim down both sights of two pistols at once while dual-wielding.
• Brooklyn Nine-Nine: Scully proposes holding the guns upside down and firing with your pinkies (the "logical conclusion" seen in the trope picture), calling it "upsie donwsies". Jake immediately dismisses the idea. He actually uses in when he fakes a surrender in a paintball game against the other precincts, winning the game for the 99th precinct and telling Scully to never talk about it.
• In an episode of Burn Notice, Michael tries to get on a gang leader's sidekick's good side in order to put the leader away and get a cop off his back. When Michael is given a gun in order to rob a dry cleaners, his associate corrects his handling of it, turning the gun sideways. Michael, who is certified on pretty much every firearm known to man, winces appreciably.
• In the Community episode "Modern Warfare" a continuity goof has Britta holding a gun this way whenever the camera's on her and right way up when it's Over the Shoulder.
• In an episode of CSI, Catherine Willows tells a smug gangster that this amateurish way of shooting caused a suspicious burn on the gangster's neck from the hot ejected shell casing, as well as leaving traces of the shooter's DNA on the shell casing.
• Played with in an episode of Diagnosis: Murder. Dick Van Dyke's character Mark Sloan is at a gun range being shown how to use a pistol. He fires off a few rounds normally (with realistic loudness and recoil) and then asks the man who was showing him whether he could fire it sideways "like on TV", twisting it to the side to show him what he meant. While the instructor starts saying why it's a bad idea, Mark fires the gun anyway by accident and the recoil flings it out of his hand with great ease and force - which creates a big enough diversion for another character to sneak past.
• In the Polish series Father Mateusz a teenager falls in with a gang of gangster wannabes. They manage to obtain a pistol and start shooting bottles with in an abandoned warehouse. They insist on holding the gun sideways which illustrates that they are mostly just posers and probably not responsible for the brutal crime currently investigated by the police.
• Kamen Rider:
  • Ryutaros/Gun Form from Kamen Rider Den-O sometimes uses this. Perhaps because this is his preferred style, his aim is terrible. Considering his Chinese Dragon motif, this may actually be a reference to the Chinese example above, rather than Gangstas.
  • Daiki Kaito/Kamen Rider Diend from Kamen Rider Decade shoots gangsta style just as frequently as he shoots properly (though only out of suit)—his aim is impeccable, either way.

• Law & Order: Criminal Intent mocked this, when the detectives are instantly able to identify a murderer as being an amateur - because the location of fired bullets demonstrate that when he tried to hold his gun sideways, he quickly lost control and started shooting everywhere but his target. The cops even point out that this was foolishly done in imitation of "gangsta flicks."
• Used in a sketch on Mind of Mencia, wherein Carlos taught gang members to be more effective. After being corrected one remarks "Wow, it lines up and everything!"
• When MythBusters tested the "Blown Away" myth, the intro video showed a stereotypical hunt-the-fugitive scene, complete with Adam taking aim at fugitive-Tory gangsta style. But when you're not actually pulling the trigger ^note (Tory went flying courtesy of a special harness, a rope, and the rest of the team), it doesn't matter that this method is inaccurate. They visited it again when testing how effective various firing stances are, with Adam remarking that he "always wanted to hold a gun like this!" It didn't hold up all that well, greatly reducing accuracy.
• In The Newsroom, Will discovers that his date carries a pistol in her purse. After he removes the bullets, she points it at him to demonstrate what would happen to an attacker. He deftly disarms her and points her own gun back at her gangsta style, saying that this is more likely to happen.
• One episode of NUMB3RS showed two gangsters firing their guns like this. They missed.
• All of the blasters in Otherworld are meant to be held upside-down. This means that guns are all impossible to aim, but maybe that justified the Imperial Stormtrooper Marksmanship.
• On Party Down, Kyle tries to hold a gun sideways and Roman immediately tells him "no one holds a gun like that".
• Deconstructed and lampshaded in the pilot of Person of Interest. The protagonist John Reese walks in on a gun buy (to acquire weapons), and asks the people involved if they've taken a firearms safety course. And then demonstrates it to them as he wipes the floor with the entire group.
  Reese: Take you, for instance. You're holding that thing sideways. You can't aim it, and two: it'll eject a shell casing right into your face. See? (grabs gun and demonstrates, with a slow-mo shot of the casing bouncing squarely off the schmuck's nose)
  • Given a Call-Back in the season 4 premiere, "Panopticon". A pair of goons come in holding guns on him like this. He starts to explain the cartridge-ejection thing and then goes, "Ah, screw it," and beats the crap out of them just like before.
  • It is justified in one instance when Reese ends up firing his gun like this. He has to hold the gun below waist level out-of-sight, and it is very difficult to fire a gun normally from that position. Twisting his wrist to hold the gun sideways allows him to fire it perpendicular to his body. It is also clear that he was not actually trying to hit anything and was shooting simply to scare off the bad guys.
• Ethan in Power Rangers: Dino Thunder often does this, but no point is ever made of it.
• In The Shield, the Strike Team robs an evidence van with bandannas over their faces and fake gang tattoos, and with their guns held gangsta style to reinforce the notion that the van was hit by a street gang.
• The Sopranos: In "46 Long", Brendan berates Special K for holding his gun this way during a truck hijacking. The idiot immediately goes back to holding his gun this way afterwards. This is primarily to show them to be Stupid Crooks; the hijacking inevitably goes bad and they end up dead as a result when word gets back to the boss. None of the actual soldiers or hitmen of The Mafia are shown doing this.
• Strike Back. While it's somewhat understandable that the bad guys would do this, it's inexcusable that the members of S20 would occasionally do it, being trained and experienced military personnel who would know full well what a bad idea it is.
• Jimmy attempts this in The Walking Dead (2010), causing T-Dog to tell him to "cut out that gangsta shit." Jimmy stops missing his target after he turns the pistol the right way.
  • A few episodes later, Sean, one of the members of Dave's group, shoots his pistol this way. It prevents him from hitting Glenn and causes him to get shot by Hershel.
• Sometimes done on The Wire, but anyone (cop or criminal) who actually knows how to use a gun will fire it properly, image be damned. Deconstructed in one scene where an inexperienced drug soldier suggests using a Gangland Drive-By to attack a rival crew's corner ("yo, let's go all West Coast with this") because it looked cool in Boyz n the Hood. After they fail to hit a single rival dealer, one of his more experienced comrades steps out the car, calmly sights her fleeing target, and shoots him in the back of the head.
  "Fuck them West Coast niggas, 'cause in B-more, we aim and hit a nigga, you heard."

Miscellaneous

• This◊ bit of Stephen Colbert fanart (from this story). Given Stephen's obsession with doing what feels good rather than what makes sense, it's not surprising that when he snaps and decides to shoot up the set, he's going to do it Gangsta Style.
• On a weaponry-themed Image Board, some anonymous posters had possibly Truth in Television pictures of gangsters in an African town shooting in all sorts of "gangsta" styles; it was mentioned that they followed a spray and pray principle and did it as macho posturing.
• Birdman HoMeBoy Night Sights. "...have your Glock modernized with side-shooting capability!"
• When LEGO first released their Star Wars line of toys, the battle droids had arms with only sideways hands, which caused them all to be holding their guns in gangsta style. It wasn't until the release of Revenge of the Sith that LEGO finally corrected this, but seeing a literal army of "gangsta" battle droids was pretty amusing.

Tabletop Games

• GURPS addresses this in GURPS: Tactical Shooting under "Things not to do". Specifically, all attacks are treated as "Unsighted Shooting" with all the usual benefits and drawbacks thereof. However, the stance encourages limp-wristing (penalty to Guns) and, if used with an automatic, increases the likelihood that the weapon will malfunction.
• In Hero System's combat handbook, holding a gun sideways incurs a penalty on attack rolls but adds a bonus to Presence when attempting to impress people.
• A now-discontinued Infinity model, one of Yu Jing's Yan Huo Invincibles, was doing this with a unique spin◊: instead of behing handheld, the gun is a Shoulder Cannon, being tilted over by a handheld control unit.
• The New World of Darkness supplement Armory talks briefly about this trope, noting that it incurs massive penalties but could impress/intimidate people.
• Vampire: The Masquerade has "Gangsta Style" as a special attack. It has two drawbacks: reducing your accuracy and increasing the chance of a misfire, and provides absolutely no benefit whatsoever.

Video Games

• Generally (and surprisingly) averted in the 50 Cent game series. Mr. Jackson and his cohorts fire their armament in the standard manner, though foes will occasionally cant their guns the ninety degrees required of this trope. In 50 Cent: Blood on the Sand, Fiddy will only hold guns like this if he's pairing them up in gameplay.
• The Gold Edition of Aliens vs. Predator gives the Marine new (and mostly useless) pistols as a weapon. When alternate fire is used with a pair of them, he turns them sideways.
• In Blood II: The Chosen the alternate fire for the single pistol fires the gun this way and increases the rate of fire. It's apparently an emergency mode to quickly empty the pistol into a close-range attacker. Notice how Caleb points the barrel downwards as he shoots.
• It's possible to fire some weapons (such as Mini Uzi) this way in the Wii version of Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare.
  • The special sniper rifle from Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3's "Eye of the Storm" mission can be fired in this manner if the player switches to using the red dot sight on it. Said sight is mounted 45 degrees on the left side of the barrel, though, so the gun is tilted in the opposite direction you'd expect, and not to the full 90 degrees either.
  • In Call of Duty: Modern Warfare (2019), in addition to expanding on offset optics, the player character will tilt his rifle 45 degrees instead of looking down the gun's optics during night-time operations, aiming instead with the mounted IR laser as most optical attachments are not compatible with NVGs (either the goggles are too bulky to line up properly and/or the reticule blooms too heavily under night vision to aim with). Its two sequels expand on this to various degrees: Modern Warfare II offers specific Laser Sight options that are aimed like this in place of the standard sights even in daylight, and Modern Warfare III makes this an inherent game mechanic with "Tac Stance", an option when using any non-hybrid sight that acts as an inbetween - faster than proper aiming and more precise than hipfire, but without the zoom of aiming or the faster speed of hipfire.
• City of Villains, Troperiffic as ever, has the Thugs summoned by Masterminds (and the Masterminds themselves) use dual pistols like this. One of the reasons the players have been begging for years for a fully fleshed-out powerset to be given to the ranged combat classes.
  • And now those who have pre-ordered 'Going Rogue' have access to the Dual Pistols power sets for Blaster, Defenders and Corruptors that employs Gunfu with liberal amounts of sideways shooting.
• In Deadhunt, you hold your Uzi sideways when wasting through hordes and hordes of zombies, knights, and enemies. Incidentally this is averted with the pistol which you hold the normal way.
• In Dead Rising 2, Tyrone "TK" King holds his gun this way. Due to an animation goof, his finger isn't even on the trigger when he fires, and the gun shows no recoil.
• Dead Space: The alternate fire mode for the Plasma Cutter rotates the entire barrel 90 degrees (making the gun resemble a crossbow). Depending on the angel of the target, this may be a significantly more accurate way to shoot.
• Dante in Devil May Cry fires his twin pistols this way when firing while sidestepping. In addition, in the third game, he often turns one pistol or the other sideways if firing at separate targets in his Gunslinger fighting style. Also, in cutscenes, or if using gunslinger mode to fire at a single target, Dante will hold both guns sideways and hold his arms across each other, left gun on the right side, right gun on the left side. First done in the series at the end of the first game, coupled with Dante's Catchphrase: "Jackpot!". Vergil - who usually doesn't use guns - does this when he and Dante momentarily team up to finish off Arkham in Devil May Cry 3: Dante's Awakening.
• Dungeon Fighter Online has a gunner class. Most of their shots are normal, but Multi-headshot and Moving Shot skills turn sideways like Dante.
• In Escape from Tarkov, small offset sights exist that can be mounted to a player's gun, which causes it to be tilted 45 degrees when aiming with it. While the idea is to allow a gun to accommodate a second sight system in case the primary one is a magnified scope, they can still be mounted standalone, meaning players could — and have — run around with guns they have to tilt to aim, just because.
• Male Elvaan from Final Fantasy XI tend to hold guns and crossbows in this fashion, as well as firing bows in an awkward diagonal position. Now it makes sense why their DEX is so crappy. Female Elvaan, however, seem to know what they're doing.
• Pico's ending in Fzero GX shows him shooting targets in various styles with his dual pistols and one of said styles is firing his gun sideways. He doesn't miss a single shot.
• Naturally, this affects the gangstas in Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas. You even see CJ using it with Guns Akimbo - he even fires a pair of Sawed-Off Shotguns this way if you level your skill with that weapon up all the way. Note that all other weapons are held conventionally (well, as conventionally as possible, for the minigun). This is also the standard stance for Mafia, highway patrol, and SWAT teams – as an exception, standard police patrols hold their pistols with both hands.^note A rather simple Game Mod allows all characters to do the same.
  • Grand Theft Auto IV and Grand Theft Auto V lets the player do this unintentionally when inside a vehicle. The franchise does this from time to time, but the two HD Universe games are the most promient example, since you normally don't aim this way.
• In Hac X, this is how the player character holds the Uzi.
• At the end of the first trailer for Hitman (2016), 47 tilts his gun before he fires it. This is purely so that the casing will fly straight upwards and he can snatch it out of the air.
• In Hotline Miami, one-handed guns are always held in this fashion.
  • The sequel ramps this up. Fat characters will hold all guns (including assault rifles and shotguns) with only one hand sideways.
• While you can't actually see your weapon being held like this in the original Wii version of The House of the Dead: OVERKILL, the game recognizes when you hold the Wiimote sideways and will give you a $1337 post-chapter bonus for killing 50 mutants in this manner.
• Jak and Daxter's Jak occasionally does this when firing the scatter gun.
• This can be done in Jurassic Park: Trespasser, since the game lets you rotate the objects in your hand (including guns) in any manner you like. It serves no practical purpose and absolutely kills your long range accuracy (assuming you don't line the sights back up), but it does look cool.
• Con and Coyote Smith in Killer7 fire their guns in some manner resembling this. Coyote actually holds his gun almost upside-down, and sure enough his recoil is much stronger and random than most of the other characters'. Con is closer to the traditional example; he's not actually holding his guns out in front of him, so much as he has one arm outstretched to the side and the other crossed over his front, so both guns are angled to the left. His case may be in part because Con is actually blind; the sights wouldn't do him any good anyway, and if he's turned to the side, that means one of his ears is turned towards his target for his super-hearing to help.
• In LEGO Star Wars: The Original Trilogy, Lando would hold his blaster sideways.
• In MADNESS: Project Nexus 2, the Arena Mode protagonist holds handguns in this fashion by default as the game's way of showing their mediocre firearms skill. Upgrading their gun-handling has them hold guns properly.
• Mega Man:
  • Axl from the later Mega Man X games fires an energy pistol this way.
  • The box art for Mega Man ZX Advent depicts Grey holding two energy pistols gangsta style.
  • Also, Omega in Mega Man Zero 3 shoots his pistol buster like this, which is odd considering that, since they went to the trouble of making a new sprite for it and that he's supposed to be in Zero's original body, why not give him an Arm Cannon?
• Metal Gear:
  • Used by EVA in Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater with her Mauser C96 (see below for the entry on that gun, under Real Life). The technique of turning a C96 sideways so the recoil guides your hand to the next target in a sweep is referred to as Bandit Shooting; Snake and Sigint have a discussion about using a Mauser this way. The fact that it's primarily a Chinese technique with that gun is one of the hints that she's not who she claims to be.
  • In a small handful of cutscenes in Metal Gear Solid 4, Snake cants his M4 the full 90 degrees. However, on the one occasion he actually fires the weapon in this manner, he has legitimate reasons for doing so - primarily, it's to keep as much of his body behind cover as possible rather than presenting it for the numerous enemies he's exchanging bullets with to shoot him; a minute earlier he takes a shot with his right hand at the front of the rifle to stabilize it against the corner of the wall in question, using his left to actually fire. Also, towards the end of the game, a Navy man can be seen briefly with a canted weapon, to more easily clear the consoles and equipment on the bridge of the battleship he's fighting from.
  • In the beginning of Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain, the XOF operators hold their submachine guns like this. In this case, it is because they are all wearing breathing masks with large protruding filters, and they need to tilt their guns this way to line up the sights, because said filters make it difficult to hold the gun normally in front of them.
• In Paladins, Talus holds his gun this way while using his overcharge ability, which gives his gun two barrels.
• In Perfect Dark, characters in single and multiplayer are able to do this - however, it only happens when they are right next to their target.
• RAmarls (human female Rangers) in Phantasy Star Online fire pistols like this.
• In Poke646 you can do this with the nailpistol, which lowers the accuracy and heightens the fire rate. But because the weapon in question looks like a big blue drill, it does not look cool here either.
• In the Quake total conversion Malice the protagonist fires his .44 automatic like this.
• In the Rainbow Six: Vegas games, characters do this when using a ballistic shield, so it's not as awkward to fire; Siege averts this due to a different design for the shields used by some operators, allowing for them to hold the pistol normally while protecting themselves.
• The second cheat you unlock in Ratchet: Deadlocked lets Ratchet do this with the Dual Vipers/Dual Raptors.
• In the Wii video game Red Steel, the player can fire his gun gangsta style if he turns the controller sideways.
• Resident Evil 2:
  • Leon's special costumes give him the ability to rapidly fire his handgun like this, which he loses if you clip on the custom stock - that fires even faster, so it's an acceptable loss.
  • Ada also holds her pistol 45 degrees sideways, although her stance is that of the Center Axis Relock (CAR) mentioned below, which justifies her far faster firing speed compared to other characters – only Jill in the next game can match Ada's fire rate, and that's exclusively when using the STI Eagle custom pistol.
• In Saints Row, all gang members (the Playa included) hold one-handed firearms at a 90° angle. In Saints Row 2, pistols and SMGs are held at a less-pronounced angle when hip-fired (the default stance for gang members and the odd civilian). From Saints Row: The Third onward, however, pistols are wielded using the Weaver stance outside of cutscenes and dual-wielding.
• In The Secret World, the pistol consumer ability Shootout combines this with Guns Akimbo.
• Mike LeRoi, the protagonist of Shadow Man, fires all his guns this way in the first game, despite having no other "gangsta" traits whatsoever. He holds them correctly in the sequel, though.
• In Silent Storm German soldier-class characters fire heavy machine guns sideways on full auto with one hand.
• Local gunslinger Gilder from Skies of Arcadia shots this way for close-range attacks (though for him, close range means walking up to the enemy and dropping the gun right in the enemy's face). However, for long range attacks he uses the more practical two-handed grip.
• In Slayers X: Terminal Aftermath: Vengance of the Slayer, Zane alternates holding dual pistols sideways and upright.
• In Splinter Cell: Conviction and Blacklist, Sam Fisher and other agents hold his gun heavily tilted to the left while holding it with both hands, although it's more a realistic depiction of Center Axis Relock (see 'Real Life' section below) than typical examples.
• Falco holds his Blaster this way in Super Smash Bros. Melee. Granted, a laser gun probably wouldn't have the same issues facing it as a real gun.
• Syndicate (2012) had 45 degrees offset iron sights on the ACR assault rifle, with an attachment. This meant you could fire in automatic, then tilt the gun back to vertical and start firing in a more powerful scoped semi-auto mode.
• Alvin from Tales of Xillia almost always fires his handgun in this fashion. Justified in that his gun is specifically designed so it can be sighted just as effectively when held sideways as when it's vertical.
• In Team Fortress 2, the user-created randomizer mode randomly assigns you a class and weapons. If the Medic gets a gun, he holds it this way due to the way he usually holds his Medigun.
• In Turbo Overkill, Johnny holds pistols and uzis sideways.
• Enemy Brutes in Uncharted 3: Drake's Deception can do this with the PAK-80 LMG. The worst part about it is that they still hit you. Repeatedly.
• Played straight in Unreal. Hitting the Automag's Secondary Fire turns it sideways and gives you a much higher rate of fire for some nasty DPS, but it's hideously inaccurate and isn't likely to hit anything outside of melee range. Very effective at dispatching a fast Personal Space Invader like a Skaarj warrior, or when you're being the invader to a strong but slow enemy's personal space, but otherwise it's highly situational.
  • In the spin-off sequel Unreal Tournament, the secondary fire of the default Enforcer pistol does the exact same; the manual specifically calls it "gangsta style". Pick up a dropped Enforcer, and you can double the fun. Realistically (if anything in UT can be called realistic), and faithfully to the first game's usage, this does decrease your accuracy.
  • The beloved Enforcer returned in Unreal Tournament III, and while there's no dedicated mode (secondary fire on this Enforcer is a faster three-round burst), keeping an opponent in the crosshair long enough will make your character automatically turn his gun(s) sideways. This is a cosmetic quirk that doesn't affect gameplay in any way.
• In Vampire: The Masquerade - Bloodlines you don't actually get to use this mode of fire, but Romero the Ghoul provides some advice on gunfighting that includes "keep that glock-to-the-side crap in the movies."
• In The Wonderful 101, the Wonder Stinger for the gun turns the gun sideways and fires off several bullets in rapid succession.
• Daigo Dojima's Poundmates summon in Yakuza: Like a Dragon has him aim a pistol this way, both for coolness effect and also that he's being backed up by the ghost of former chairmen and leaders of the Tojo Clan all armed with firearms so being accurate isn't a problem considering they're slinging enough lead to clear out an entire gang.

Visual Novels

• Galaxy Angel: An animated cutscene of Forte in the first game has her briefly holding her gun this way as she points it towards Tact, who has a small freak out. Of course, she's just messing around and immediately pulls it back before smiling and greeting him.
• Phantom of Inferno: Drei holds her pistols like this, owing to her love of dumb action movies. While the man who trained her actually notes that it's totally useless as a marksmanship technique, Drei later moves on to giving her opponent a chance to shoot her, twirling her guns and yelling out catch phrases in the middle of a gunfight, so she's clearly not at all concerned with anything but Rule of Cool gun-handling techniques. She's sixteen, which might explain it somewhat.
• In Rose Guns Days, Leo wields his gun this way. As a former instructor in the army he probably knows it's completely useless, but since the character basically runs on Rule of Cool, that's not too surprising…

Webcomics

• Calamities of Nature points out that it can be easy to mistake cancer patients with gangsters, including an example of holding a gun gangsta style.
• Grrl Power: Archon firearms-safety training materials are less than amused with the idea of "gangsta style".
• The Whiteboard has Doc customizing a marker so that a customer may shoot in this style.

Web Originals

• Crapshots episode 69: The Aim. Also features increasing amounts of crouching.
• Like so many other things here, The Other Wiki has an article about this.
• Behold a glorious mocking of this trope here.
• Used a lot alongside other gangsta tropes in the Pistol Shrimps "Boyz N the Ring" video.

Western Animation

• Beast Wars: During the big shootout in Coming of the Fuzors, Waspinator of all bots is going full gangsta with his gun held sideways. It's hilariously in-character, considering Waspinator's moronic Small Name, Big Ego antics and that he's doing this during what's otherwise framed as a western-style Showdown at High Noon complete with tumbleweeds. As if to illustrate the power of this trope, anyone who didn't know Waspinator was the show's primary source of comic relief would look at this scene and think he was the coolest bot in the series◊.
• The Boondocks:
  • Riley is seen doing this with two guns during the opening for Seasons 1 & 3.
  • Many characters are seen holding guns one-handed at various angles, but nobody actually hits anything in the show.
• R2 shot down a "Thai" Fighter with a sideways gun in Family Guy Presents: Laugh It Up, Fuzzball.
  R2-D2: That's how we do it in my neighborhood, bitch!
  • Also lampshades by Stewie in a different episode.
    Stewie: What if I hold it sideways like a black guy?
• In The Simpsons episode "Trilogy of Errors", one of the cops asks Chief Wiggum if he can hold his gun sideways like they do in the movies ("It looks so cool!").
  Chief Wiggum: You can do whatever you like, birthday boy.

Real Life — General Practice

• It's believed this trope was invented by Hollywood's actors showing off to the camera. Actors don't like anything that blocks their faces, leading to lots of laughably unsafe things — see also military movies where soldiers don't wear the chinstraps on their helmets (if they wear helmets at all).
• Another possible origin of the trope is film stuntmen, who turned their guns sideways to avoid ejecting hot shells onto each other. That said, ejecting straight upwards tends to drop spent casings directly down the shooter's collar; definitely a lateral move. Except the case in which the gangster is using is left hand in the case of a weapon designed for being held by right-handed people or using the right hand in the opposite cases.
• On YouTube, you will actually find several videos of people wielding guns sideways, from random guys with dual 9mm pistols to experts doing it one handed.
• Occasionally police officers using armoured shields will hold their pistols like this so they can see their sights through the window in the shield. That's about the only time you will see someone competent playing the trope dead straight in real life.
• Members of the United States military are trained to hold their rifles sideways when wearing gas masks, as the design of the mask is too bulky for standard sighting. The M16 has a selectable rear sight with a larger peep hole designed for quick acquisition of targets at shorter ranges or in low-light conditions, however it also makes it easier to use when looking through a gas mask.
• The Darwin Awards gave an Honorable Mention to a man who attempted to fire a high-power pistol this way at a firing range, the recoil causing it to fly back and smack him in the mouth, knocking out several teeth.
• The guy in the front seat during a Gangland Drive-By would hold his weapon on its side so that the ejected casings wouldn't be propelled into the rear window - instead they would be ejected up onto or over the top of the car. Additionally, when using machine pistols or firing rapidly this compensates for muzzle rise and makes their spray pattern horizontal instead of vertical. More practical when you only have a second to aim at a moving target from a moving vehicle and don't give a damn about collateral damage. It is also to avoid having to deal with having the window get in the way of the gun's butt, allowing faster usage and retreat.
• There are some gun training tips that will advocate some tilting of the gun, though almost never to a full 90 degrees.
  • When one has not been formally trained in shooting, the heft of the gun can make a sideways hold "feel" more natural. Indeed, tilting a handgun about 20-30 degrees can help recoil management, and is often taught as a technique for shooting one-handed with the off hand. However, a 90 degree tilt results in a weaker grip than normal.
  • There also exists a shooting system in which the firer cants their pistol 45 degrees or more to the side. It is known as Center Axis Relock (CAR) and it is used by many law enforcement, security, and armed forces groups as a method of close quarters shooting. The technique is actually extremely effective for trained shooters and can be applied to rifle and shotgun shooting in close quarters as well. Watch a demonstration here. This technique is scary effective at helping the shooter cope with recoil, as seen here where a shooter fires a 12-gauge shotgun as though it were a pistol. Here's an explanation of the physiological flaws of Gangsta Style and the strengths of CAR.
  • Canadian firearms safety instructor Terry Pratt developed a system for people with cross dominant eyes to effectively fire a pistol. If, for example, your dominant eye is your left eye but your dominant hand is your right hand, you would tilt the pistol 45 degrees to the left as to allow your left eye to line up the iron sights. On the flipside to Pratt's logic, in the US Army people are allowed to choose their firing side; about half of left-handed people fire right, while 10% of right-handed people fire left. If someone is having difficulty, a drill sergeant may check their eye dominance, and if they have cross dominance, suggest they switch hands. It is not hard to fire a US military M16A2 or A4 with your non-dominant hand (especially since the A2 added a small wedge-shaped outcropping just behind the ejection port, which empty casings are at least supposed to bounce off of to eject forward rather than into your face) unless there is something wrong with your hand - in which case, you probably won't be in the army.
• Similar to the CAR system above, some military units practice the Ambi stance, a near-90-degree tilt. It's used when breaching a room, if you catch a hostile in your peripheral vision, to bring the gun to bear as fast as possible, before following round into a proper shooting stance. It's not used for protracted periods of time.
• Another consideration is that many techniques for disarming a guy with a handgun are meant to be used when the opponent is holding it vertically, and need to be adapted and practiced in order to deal with an opponent holding it in this manner. Though in some cases, being held up this way allows for easier disarming.
• The trope doesn't become any more effective with airsoft guns that use hop-up to add extra spin to the pellets and make them fly further. Such systems are supposed to make them spin backwards, which makes them fly farther; firing one in this manner makes them spin sideways instead, which can cause the pellet to curve in-flight.

Real Life — Specific Weapons

• The famous Mauser C96 'Broomhandle' was only used as a service pistol by one nation: the Republic of China. During the Warlord Era, Yan Xishan's soldiers produced a copy, the Shanxi Type 17, in a much larger cartridge (.45 ACP, shared with the unlicensed Thompson submachine guns they also used at the time) and imported large numbers of the select-fire Mauser M712 and its Spanish copies when they were invaded by Japan. Both weapons could only be effectively used firing sideways (in Gangsta Style), or else the huge recoil would spray the gun straight up (when held sideways the recoil would shift accordingly, which is actually highly effective as it can sweep a room out), or the already-fired cases would fall back into and jam the gun.
  • Many mafia men back in the days of Prohibition would likewise turn their Thompsons sideways and allow the recoil of the gun to fan the bullet stream over their target. This actually made some sense, as the Thompson was very prone to muzzle climb on full automatic due to the rate of fire, heavy cartridge, buttstock placed well below the line of the barrel, and heavy trigger pull.
• A police officer in Missouri related that a gangsta took a shot at him with a Calico M950. The M950 has a 50-round magazine, but it also has idiot-proofing — it ejects spent casings downwards, using gravity alone. The gun jammed on the first shot and the policeman tackled his assailant.
• The Nerf N-Strike Deploy CS-6 gun has its targeting light flipped to the left of the barrel, which may necessitate this. Sure it's got regular sights, but being sponge darts launched at safety speed, the drop in the trajectory makes a targeting light below the barrel more practical.
• Going back a few generations in firearms design, this was the only practical way to ensure that a wheellock actually fired. Given the design of the action, turning the gun at least 45 degrees (but not the full 90 degrees) was the best way to make sure that the powder was close enough to the sparks to actually go off. Specifically, it puts the sparks directly over the priming charge so that they fall into it, rather than some of them going over the side and being wasted.
• Cavalry using flintlock pistols have been artistically depicted as firing their pistols in this trope's manner, (such as this one of a London and Westminster Light Horse Volunteer◊ or another of the Pavlograd Hussar Regiment◊). This may have been because flintlock pistols were not very ergonomic so tilting it that way was easier to keep stable it on horseback, and it could have prevented misfires by keeping the powder and sparks in the proper spots of the mechanism... not to mention that one of the biggest reasons to not fire a modern pistol sideways, the sights on top of it for aiming, were not a feature of flintlock weaponry in their heyday.
• December 10, 2009: fleeing from police through crowded Times Square, scam artist and sometime rapper Raymond "Ready" Martinez draws a Masterpiece Arms pistol (basically a modern clone of the Ingram MAC-11), holds it sideways in the best "gangsta" fashion and pulls the trigger. The weapon jams after two shots (with a spent casing falling back into the ejection port), both shots fail to hit anyone, and police return fire, bringing "Ready's" criminal career to a swift conclusion. Had he held the gun correctly, the jam would have been averted and the loss of life could easily have been much worse.
• Dual Glock full auto pistols.
• Spoofed with the Birdman Weapon Systems◊ "Homeboy Nyte Sytes" for Glock pistols, adding secondary sights to the right side of the gun that can be used when firing the gun sideways.
• The proper procedure for firing rifle grenades at area targets with the French FAMAS assault rifle involves turning it onto its right side◊ to use the launcher sight inside the carry handle.

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Q: Why do gangsters shoot their guns sideways?
A: Because that's how they came in the box.

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