Glad it made an impression on you.

And congratulations! You’ve hit what was probably going to be next “Movie Pet Peeve.” Still bugs hell out of me.

At one point, a character is threatening a room full of people with a submachine gun, trying to make them think she will shoot them if they don’t do what she wants. People, as is often the case, are slow to react to this threat. So, to create a greater sense of immediate danger, the character racks a round into the gun. A scary noise our culture has learned to equate with, ’someone is about to start shooting.’

What was great about the scene was that the gun was already loaded and had a round in the chamber, so all the character accomplished was ejecting an unfired round onto the floor.

I loved that. It’s such an obvious thing, and yet that was the first time I’d ever read anyone mention it. Now I can’t watch that scene on TV or in a movie (tough guy racks a round before going to work, then later racks it again to let someone know he means business) without imagining the unfired bullet he just ejected bouncing across the floor.