The Lethal Weapon Wheelgun
Dating a Movie Star
This battered old Smith and Wesson Model 19 .357 Magnum
pistol starred in all four Lethal Weapon movies.
I have been chasing guns since I was seven years old. My first was a simple, no-frills Daisy BB gun that set me back $7 at our local Otasco. There have been a great many since. Each one was a conquest.
I typically stalk my prey — scheming and planning until finally, I make it mine. Some have energized me more than others. And then there was a certain beat-up old Smith & Wesson wheelgun with a most compelling story.
For a time, this movie gun lived in the UK. That meant the bore and cylinder were hopelessly trashed.
A Most Serendipitous Find
Online gun auctions are my kryptonite. I troll them constantly, looking for obscure treasures. One day, I happened across a Facebook ad for something called the Propstore.
The Propstore has a couple of major auctions each year, each with hundreds of movie-related artifacts. Some are cheap, while others are astronomical. C-3P0’s screen-matched head from Star Wars Episode IV went for $843,750.
Movies have a lot of guns, and the Propstore has moved quite a few. Examples include the AR15 used in I Am Legend ($12,500) as well as the M56 Smart Gun from the James Cameron sci-fi epic Aliens ($150,000). Other Aliens iron included the HK VP70 carried by LT Gorman ($12,000) and the sawed-off Ithaca 12-bore used by CPL Hicks ($60,000). An original M41 Pulse Rifle brought a cool $137,000. Short of mortgaging my home or selling a kidney, all that stuff was way too rich for my blood. I naturally considered both, only to incur my wife’s veto. I’ll never understand women …
Then, one day, something caught my eye. I verified the details and took inventory of the mad money. Then, I made ready for a maximum effort.
Three weeks later, the Smith and Wesson Model 19 revolver wielded by Danny Glover’s curmudgeon cop character Roger Murtaugh in all four Lethal Weapon movies arrived in a cardboard box at the clinic. I dropped the battered old wheelgun in my lap, basking in where it had been and what it had done. Pawing over that high-mileage revolver was like touching Hollywood history.
Details
They used two identical Smiths in the Lethal Weapon movies. Hollywood armorers always have multiple copies of each gun used on set just in case one of them fails. That even applies to really reliable modern magnum revolvers. This gun came with a serial number inventory from Stembridge Gun Rentals. Stembridge charged the production company $35 per week to rent each of the two Model 19s.
Unique scuffed spots let me match the gun to particular scenes in the first film. This was the pistol Mel Gibson’s Martin Riggs used to threaten suicide in the bank. It is also the same weapon used during the shooting range scene where Riggs turns Murtaugh’s center mass shot into a smiley face. Yeah, I went through the movie frame-by-frame to be sure. I know, I’m pathetic.
At some point, some Philistine bought this gun and shipped it to England. That means it has been deactivated to British standards. Our English buddies sure know how to ravage a firearm.
The gun looks fine on the outside. However, the entrails are well and truly rubbish. The bore is blocked with a steel slug, and the center of the cylinder has been milled out and similarly abused. The firing pin has been ground off of the hammer. The inner mechanism was molested such that the hammer will no longer lock to the rear. To seal the deal, they put a tiny drop of weld over the frame screw so it could not be disassembled.
I briefly considered returning the gun to the S&W custom shop to see if they could resurrect it. However, as that would likely require a new barrel, cylinder and entrails, I demurred. What I got back would not so much be a movie gun as a part-for-part reproduction. As a consolation prize, I found an identical vintage used Model 19 on GunBroker at a decent price to use as a stunt double.
Ruminations
Lethal Weapon was a 1980s action classic. It made $120.2 million against a $15 million budget. It was also one of my favorite movies. It was Gibson’s lunatic cop character who sold me my first Beretta 92F. I paid a fortune for that gun back in the 1980s in the vain hope that it might make me as cool as Mel Gibson. Tragically, it didn’t.
Now, the Lethal Weapon revolver is venerated in my own collection. The gun wasn’t cheap, but it wasn’t Pulse Rifle expensive, either. In retrospect, it was a treasure worth straining for.
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