this post was submitted on 02 Nov 2023
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There's a version of the first Harry Potter film where they replaced all the wands with guns. It's not on YouTube anymore, but you can download it from here if you're so inclined.
Haha yes! This is a brilliantly hilarious watch, I remember when it came out years ago. The person put effort into not just replacing wands with guns, but all the effects and such to go with it. Also I think in that version Hermione kills one of the main'ish characters (I forget his name), and they just go with it in awkward and funny moments instead of bringing him back.
I highly recommend it to anyone reading. It's one of my favourite fan edits.
Ok, this has been driving me crazy for seven movies now, and I know you're going to roll your eyes, but hear me out: Harry Potter should have carried a 1911.
Here's why:
Think about how quickly the entire WWWIII (Wizarding-World War III) would have ended if all of the good guys had simply armed up with good ol' American hot lead.
Basilisk? Let's see how tough it is when you shoot it with a .470 Nitro Express. Worried about its Medusa-gaze? Wear night vision goggles. The image is light-amplified and re-transmitted to your eyes. You aren't looking at it--you're looking at a picture of it.
Imagine how epic the first movie would be if Harry had put a breeching charge on the bathroom wall, flash-banged the hole, and then went in wearing NVGs and a Kevlar-weave stab-vest, carrying a SPAS-12.
And have you noticed that only Europe seems to a problem with Deatheaters? Maybe it's because Americans have spent the last 200 years shooting deer, playing GTA: Vice City, and keeping an eye out for black helicopters over their compounds. Meanwhile, Brits have been cutting their steaks with spoons. Remember: gun-control means that Voldemort wins. God made wizards and God made muggles, but Samuel Colt made them equal.
Now I know what you're going to say: "But a wizard could just disarm someone with a gun!" Yeah, well they can also disarm someone with a wand (as they do many times throughout the books/movies). But which is faster: saying a spell or pulling a trigger?
Avada Kedavra, meet Avtomat Kalashnikova.
Imagine Harry out in the woods, wearing his invisibility cloak, carrying a .50bmg Barrett, turning Deatheaters into pink mist, scratching a lightning bolt into his rifle stock for each kill. I don't think Madam Pomfrey has any spells that can scrape your brains off of the trees and put you back together after something like that. Voldemort's wand may be 13.5 inches with a Phoenix-feather core, but Harry's would be 0.50 inches with a tungsten core. Let's see Voldy wave his at 3,000 feet per second. Better hope you have some Essence of Dittany for that sucking chest wound.
I can see it now...Voldemort roaring with evil laughter and boasting to Harry that he can't be killed, since he is protected by seven Horcruxes, only to have Harry give a crooked grin, flick his cigarette butt away, and deliver what would easily be the best one-liner in the entire series:
"Well then I guess it's a good thing my 1911 holds 7+1."
And that is why Harry Potter should have carried a 1911.
This raises the question how much they have blanket protections. We don't see defenses against fast rocks (or defenses against artificed weapons or defenses against the elements lead and copper.) We also don't see the extent of magical military innovation. I'd assume wizards would be able to create autonomous (sentient, even) wandering spells that waft about wanting nothing more in the universe than to lodge itself into an enemy head and explode (or turn the poor victim into a zombie host) Rowling never really shows she can think like DARPA.
In The Chronicles of Amber book II, The Guns of Avalon while the properties of black powder cease to be explosive in the true world of Amber, Corwin finds a jewelers rouge that serves as a nice substitute, and develops manufacturing of the substance to be used in Amber-compatible bullets (which are, themselves, to be used in automatic rifles held by his shadow troopers). This is an example of worldbuilding in which there is a defined incompatiblity of natural mechanics, which is then overcom3 by innovation.
Hogwarts is ambiguously covered by an anti-technology field, but it's never explained what mechanisms it covers. We assume this is why students have to use quills rather than Bic or Pilot rollerballs but the Weasley flying Ford Anglia works there, and we never see what happens to an iPhone, or even a Babbage Analytical Engine.
Also there are cameras contemporary to some already deadly firearms (late 19th/early 20th century at a guess). You'd think at the very least a musket would work, or more likely a bolt-action rifle.
My headcannon is that wizard society is so fascist that they just find it too horrifyingly distasteful to use muggle technology (even against Voldermort himself), but also it's why they try so hard to stay hidden because deep down they know they stand no chance against anything resembling a modern muggle army, despite their claims of superiority. I mean, even if Hogwarts itself is protected against technology, an artillery shell is hardly technologically advanced and could be fired from tens of km away.
Do you feel lucky Voldemort?
Nobody going to call out that guy's pfp has a cursador helmet? Ok.
Guns Akimbo
It did bother me in Deathly Hallows Part I the Death Eaters assaulted with zaps tha broke things, as if they couldn't think of anything more creative than shooty-shooty.
At the point I took the Potterverse world-building seriously (this was before Rowling turned out to be a fascist all along) I assumed the technology developed by muggles would completely outclass wizards in a stand-up fight (hence the need for the masquerade), but also the plutocrats driving us to autocratic rule and extinction by pollution would quickly secure control of the established magic-regulatory bodies. Essentially, the aurers work for the establishment elite, including The Boy Who Lived.
And I bet Rowling would see this as a good ending.
