Goofy cliches in Westerns we always see.

When I saw the topic for this thread, the first thing I thought of was “The Fastest Gun Alive” and my favorite shooting exhibition. As Glenn Ford stands in the town street shooting coins out of the air, the townspeople form in a circle around him. Ford is looking right at people when he draws and shoots. It looks like hitting a coin in the air makes bullets disappear.

This is like the scenes when the mob shows up at the jail demanding that the prisoner be handed over. The guy leading the mob will go for his gun. The brave Marshall will draw and shoot the gun out of the guy's hand. But all the people standing behind the mob leader don't even flinch. Where does the bullet go after it has hit the mob leader’s gun? The same place as when they hit coins, I guess.

In an episode of “The Rifleman,” Lucas McCain lines up a bunch of empty bottles on a hitching post and then, standing in the street, rapid fires his rifle, breaking all the bottles. Again, what happens to the bullets? The downtown building behind the hitching post should have been riddled with bullet holes and the proprietors extremely pissed, if not shot to death.