The Guns of James Bond

007 has to have guns... that is a must for someone licenced to kill... unless he a certain Mahesh Bhatt who can kill people by just talking to him...

Here are some importat tit bits about Bond and his Guns...

1. When Major Geoffrey Boothroyd wrote to James Bond creator Ian Fleming after reading "Casino Royale", he criticized Bond's use of firearms. He stipulated that Bond's Walther PPK was not as potent a weapon as the .44 magnum (used by Dirty Harry) and that a shoulder holster (as seen in Dr. No (1962)) does not provide as quick a draw as a belt holster (viz many Westerns).

2. James Bond creator Ian Fleming once wrote an article for the Sunday Times and Sports Illustrated about the Guns of James Bond.

3. The character of Q (aka Major Boothroyd) in the Ian Fleming James Bond novels is said to be based on Major Geoffrey Boothroyd, a gun expert who lived in Glasgow, Scotland. They share the same surname. Boothroyd wrote to Fleming about the James Bond character and his choice of firearms. Major Geoffrey Boothroyd can be seen with Sean Connery in the black and white 1964 short documentary "The Guns of James Bond".

4. The famous pose of Sean Connery holding a gun across his chest had to be redone at the last minute. The Walther PPK was left at the studio, but the photographer had an old air pistol in his car. The gun in the picture is the air pistol.

5. James Bond has a new gun in Tomorrow Never Dies (1997). It is the Walther P99, which is the replacement for his trademark Walther PPK. He picks up the gun in Wai Lin's apartment. Sales of real and toy replica Walther P-99 pistols went through the roof after Tomorrow Never Dies (1997) was released.

6. The only time James Bond fires a gun in Moonraker (1979) is when he shoots the sniper out of the tree with Drax's hunting rifle.

7. In Thunderball (1965), the actor playing James Bond - Sean Connery performed the opening gun-barrel opening sequence for the first time. In the first three Bond films, Dr. No (1962), From Russia with Love (1963) and Goldfinger (1964), the gun barrel walk was done with stuntman Bob Simmons. Roger Moore became the first actor to perform the gun barrel sequence without a hat in Live and Let Die (1973). The Spy Who Loved Me (1977) featured a more modern version of the gun-barrel opening sequence. It featured a closer shot of Roger Moore against a more colored background. In GoldenEye (1995), for the first time, computer graphics were used to create the famous "gun barrel" opening. In Die Another Day (2002), the sequence had a bullet zooming towards through the barrel after James Bond fires. In Casino Royale (2006), the sequence is radically altered, it has no gun barrel walk and begins after the opening sequence not before.

8. During the beginning of the teleplay "Climax!: Casino Royale" (1954), a prop gun was accidentally misfired and went off unintentionally. Four shots are heard but only three gunshot markings are seen on the casino building.

9. The Golden Gun in The Man with the Golden Gun (1974) consisted of a number of gold components from Pistols Scaramanga's personal effects. These included: A gold 15 x 1.5 cm fountain pen which became the gun barrel; a 8 x 4 cm gold cigarette lighter which formed the hammer and bullet chamber; a 10 x 6 cm gold cigarette case doubled as the gun's magazine hand grip (or gun butt or handle); whilst a solid gold cuff link from his shirt cuff was adjoined to the cigarette case turned into Publish Post gun's trigger. In the movie, custom made 23 carat golden bullets with nickel trace elements were manufactured for the gun by Eastern expert Portugese gunsmith Lazar. It fired single shot 23 carat 4.2 mm golden bullets with nickel trace elements whereas in the Ian Fleming novel of the same name, The Golden Gun was just a gold plated .45 caliber Colt 45 revolver that fired silver jacketed solid gold bullets.