Discussion Main / GunsAkimbo

The phrase comes from "arms akimbo" which is the proper term for standing with your hands on your hips. Back in the 90s, shooter fans started calling dual wielding "Guns Akimbo" (or "pistols akimbo," etc). I'm honestly not sure if it's because they thought akimbo meant some version of "double" or because they were envisioning someone standing with two pistols at their hips.

It's not very clear though.

• the image is cluttered, what with there being 6-7 people in one image
• her right arm aligns too much with her leg
• people who won't know what they're even looking at may not even notice her shoe-gun

More extreme is not always better.

What Freshmeat said. It's not a great example.

Apparently, it is possible to dual-wield hand guns and hit widely separated targets but it needs several unusual thing to come together in one person.

First is that the shooter needs to be a full-functional ambidextrous adult. Genuinely ambidextrous children are rare and most grow out of it as they develop and one hand becomes dominant. A few do not and become ambidextrous adults.

Second is that the shooter has no dominant eye. Most people who shoot guns have one eye dominant. Dominant hand and dominant eye are not linked Sometimes its the same side as their dominant hand, sometimes not. Most people use their dominant eye when shooting but a small minority can use either eye to equal effect.

Combine those two characteristics - both rare - and we have somebody who can shoot accurately with both hands at the same time.

The third characteristic is an extremely developed positional sense. It's this sense that makes the difference between a great fighter pilot and a flying target. A person with this sense instinctively and without thinking about it KNOWS where everybody around him (or her) is at any instant. Also knows what they are doing and where they are going as if each one was displaying a vector. That allows them to sense where the target will be in a second or two. Fighter pilots can use this ability to rake a patch of sky with bullets and watch an enemy aircraft fly into them. Easy to get a list of people with this enhanced positional awareness - google "fighter pilot aces." Combine this enhanced positional awareness with the above two characteristics and we have somebody who can fight Guns Akimbo.

Using Revy from Black Lagoon as an example, I watched her gunfights on the Anime several times. She certainly has all three categories but when she hits targets that are widely separated, it's under circumstances where the rate of change of position is not great. For example in Guerillas in the Jungle, when her car with Shenhua and Rock is being chased by several others in the jungle, the relative positions of the cars don't change. Her positional sense is enough to let her hit both of them. Normally though, she fires both guns at the same target putting down a withering barrage of fire. (By the way, something clicked with that - that's why Revy likes Berettas. In the 1990s, they had an unusually high magazine capacity - 17 rounds when 12 or 13 was average). That's her answer to people dodging bullets - throw so many at them they can't dodge them all.

Another factor added to the mix is acute peripheral vision, allowing the shooter to respond to threats over a much wider arc than normal. Again, Black Lagoon shows Revy (to whom we very politely raise our hats) has that.

Put it all together, I'd say we're probably literally at one in a million people who have the potential to shoot like that.

Another motivator-style image? No, thanks.