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Crooks Are Better Armed
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Often in fiction and even sometimes in nonfiction when the police and crooks start a firefight, the criminals will have more powerful guns. They'll be wielding automatic weapons, sometimes even explosive ones, and on the extreme end, get access to military hardware. As for the cops, they'll be forced to fight back with pistols. The reason for this trope can vary. Sometimes it's because it's based on historical times when crooks were better armed than police or when criminal organizations like Mexican Cartels started hiring ex-special forces for muscle like Los Zetas. Sometimes it implies that the law enforcement is held back by Honor Before Reason; they could do better against crooks if they'd use more deadly guns, but at the cost of looking like an occupying army. Police might also be restrained by the increased risk of collateral damage to innocent bystanders if they resort to high-powered or rapid-fire weaponry, while crooks are only bound by their personal opinions on the matter (and it's safe to assume that a criminal wouldn't go to the effort of acquiring high-powered weaponry if they weren't willing to use it). Another situation might be that while in theory the police force as a whole might outgun the criminals in question, it's small comfort to the lightly-armed and entirely outmatched beat cops who're forced to wait for backup from said better-equipped units. Other times it can seem like a critique against the United States' Second Amendment; why do we let the public gain such dangerous weapons legally?note In reality, military-grade ordnance like fully automatic weapons and explosives are not outright impossible for U.S. citizens to own, but lawful ownership is very, very strictly regulated, to the point that they might as well be banned to those without a lot of money and a very high tolerance for miles of red tape. Even getting them illegally would be an absurdly difficult task for your average street thug At its core, though, it's ultimately a way of increasing the stakes, so that the viewer roots for the underdogs. Contrast The Lopsided Arm of the Law, where the police say they're powerless to deal with criminals, but have plenty of firepower that they seemingly forget to use until the hero rallies them. Also contrast Does Not Like Guns, another way to make the heroes underpowered. One of the signals that the work is set on an Urban Hellscape. See also Offscreen Villain Dark Matter, when it comes to crooks having inexplicable access to weaponry and equipment far more effective than would realistically make sense for them to be able to obtain and/or afford. Compare The Enemy Weapons Are Better. |
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The opening scene of Predator 2 is an open shootout between the Los Angeles police and Colombian drug-dealers. The police are getting their asses kicked because the Colombians are packing stuff like grenade launchers and machine guns. Additionally, a reporter on the scene mentions that SWAT is having its ass kicked in a similar shootout on the other side of town. | |
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The opening scene from Beverly Hills Cop III has Axel and his team raid a chopshop with pistols, where they are fired upon with submachineguns. Lampshaded by one of Axel's colleagues. To be fair, though, Axel gets chewed out by Da Chief for not calling in SWAT. | |
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X-Men: Thanks to her years of thieving from various advanced races, Astra has quite the stockpiled arsenal. She defended herself with an 'ionized gauntlet' when fighting Nightcrawler. | |
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In Darkman II: The Return of Durant, the evil plan of Big Bad Robert G. Durant is to invoke this by creating nuclear-powered Frickin' Laser Beams that he will sell to the city's criminal underworld at a premium rate and monopolize the illegal weapons market as a result. | |
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In Cliffhanger although taking on a bunch of Treasury security men is probably no walk in the park even with The Mole getting the drop on them, Qualen's thieving crew goes above and beyond the call of duty by bringing an absurd amount of explosives, multiple automatic weapons and even a grenade launcher (that they lose early on), all of which ends up being pitted against a lone man armed with climbing equipment. | |
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RoboCop (1987): Dick Jones, an exec in OCP which owns the police, wants Robocop destroyed, so he supplies Clarence's gang with "the Cobra Assault Cannon", a .50 caliber rifle firing armor-piercing explosive rounds. Robocop uses one to completely destroy an ED-109 guarding the entrance to OCP headquarters. | |
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The climax of the The Simpsons episode "The Lastest Gun In The West" involves a group of thieves (led by Snake) getting in a shootout with the police while trying to rob a bank, with the police being only Wiggum and Those Two Guys armed with revolvers and the robbers (six of them) being equipped with body armor and the M41A Pulse Rifle. They are beaten by an alcoholic cowboy packing a lasso. | |
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Like a Dragon: Kiryu on occasions have encountered organized criminals that had access to weapons like rocket launchers, machine guns, and as well as a gatling gun (which is usually fired from helicopters). On the topic of helicopters with a gatling gunner inside, Kiryu has faced three of these, and took down two of them. The Amon Clan tops them by having access to a Kill Sat. | |
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Corridor Digital's "Superman with a GoPro" uses this. Two crooks with rifles hold off a lone policeman with a pistol. Naturally, though, those rifles are then outmatched by Superman. | |
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Beverly Hills Cop II has a final shootout at Dent's oilfield where Taggart and Rosewood at least start toting shotguns (or a rocket launcher in Billy's case). Axel makes use of grenades as well as his pistol. The Mooks are all armed with assault rifles. | |
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Hancock: Cops wielding standard-issue handguns plus a few rifles are pinned down by a group of bank robbers wearing Body Armor and armed with machine guns and Bottomless Magazines. Hancock shows up in order to pull the two pinned down cops to safety, then catch the robbers. | |
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Modern Warfare The main timeline games generally averts this, with the starting weapons for the player's faction being better or at least equivalent to whatever the non-western army or terrorists wield. The infamous "No Russian" mission is a downplayed case as while the Russian terrorists armed with military-grade weapons, explosives and body armor can make quick work of both all the innocents in the terminal, the airport security who are initially armed with pistols, are also issued with sub-machine guns to even the playing field... to no success. Even the responding Interal Force (Russian SWAT team) is only much of a challenge because of their numbers, as the terrorists use grenade launchers. The "Picadilly" mission from 2019 reboot plays this straight however, in which terrorists armed with automatic weapons and suicide-vests tear up the titular Picadilly Circus in London. The British police and CTSFO on the scene start with only pistols (which the former don't carry in real life). Garrick even lampshades this at the end of the mission, saying that the government is holding them back by limiting how they can fight. "Borderline" from the 2022 sequel to the rebbot is a Zig-Zagged example; one one hand, Rodolfo (your player character) starts out with only a pistol, while Vargas (your ally) is armed with a submachine gun. On the other hand, the Texas PD are only armed with pistols. The latter got blindsided when the Cartel launch a surprise attack with an RPG. Even if the police managed to see it coming, their performance will be similar to what the British police have experienced back in 2019 as the Cartel are armed with automatic weapons. |
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RoboCop 2: The Cobra Assault Cannon only knocks RoboCain off balance for a moment without doing any damage, showing just how tough RoboCain is. | |
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In Triage X, the terrorist group, Syringe, have access to a V-22 Osprey, a VTOL only used by the United States Marine Corps and the Japan Ground Self-Defense Force. If we believe what the Fake Makoto is saying, they have developed prototype weapons (not yet fielded by Western militaries) that are ready for field testing. | |
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"Borderline" from the 2022 sequel to the rebbot is a Zig-Zagged example; one one hand, Rodolfo (your player character) starts out with only a pistol, while Vargas (your ally) is armed with a submachine gun. On the other hand, the Texas PD are only armed with pistols. The latter got blindsided when the Cartel launch a surprise attack with an RPG. Even if the police managed to see it coming, their performance will be similar to what the British police have experienced back in 2019 as the Cartel are armed with automatic weapons. | |
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At the beginning of Fire Birds, Preston tells his superiors that the cartels are much better equipped than the forces sent to fight them. Luckily, the army has the new Apache helicopters that can match what the cartels have. The climax has the heroes (using the Apaches) facing off against a Cartel air force composed of a mercenary hired by the Cartels that has his own helicopter gunship and several fighter jets. | |
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Grand Theft Auto: When you start out, the guns you have are laughable compared to the police (and in some games, getting in a cop car gets you a shotgun and ammo). Some missions are directly set up so there's an in-story reason to get more powerful weapons. By the end of the game, though, you have more bullets than there are enemies. | |
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Zigzagged in Metal Slug: your team of mercenaries come with a pistol and supply of small grenades against whole infantries. Even if you can get a HEVEE MASHINE GUN or RAWKET LAWNCHAIR and the various Slugs later, your enemies will still have a lot of things under their sleeves. Death of a Thousand Cuts applies, though, so with enough shootings they'll all fall down. | |
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The Saints and the Deckers in Saints Row: The Third have cutting edge weapon tech, while Steelport police has your run-of-the-mill hardware. Subverted half-way through the game, though, when STAG (essentially, a beefed-up crime fighting agency) shows up in Steelport and fields futuristic weapon designs years ahead of everything the gangs have (but which they quickly appropriate). | |
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Downplayed in The Dark Knight. The Joker's guys have rifles and are more indiscriminate about using them. The police and SWAT have rifles, but they rarely use them. Notably, the Joker surprises them at one point by pulling out a rocket launcher. | |
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On the climactic shootout of Death Wish II, Paul Kersey and Detective Ocha, an Inspector Javert cop (both armed with handguns), end up fighting a gang of crooks armed with black-market assault rifles and submachine guns. | |
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Normally doesn't happen in the Disney Ducks Comic Universe, but: In Italian stories, the Beagle Boys will sometimes show up with Humongous Mechas they build themselves. Justified in that they use them to deal with the Money Bin, a veritable fortress defended by actual artillery and high-technology devices. In these cases the police just waits for Scrooge to defeat the mechs and call them to pick up the Beagle Boys. The "classic" Paperinik stories doesn't have them normally, but supervillains capable of taking on Paperinik are too much for them. In Paperinik New Adventures the supervillains tend to target Paperinik directly (aside for one instance when the Raider attacked the police because he wanted to talk with Paperinik and figured out this was the quickest way to get his attention), but during the second series there were two biker gangs armed with Ducklair-made military-grade Disintegrator Rays. Justified in that said weapons were being stolen and sold to the gangs by the company supposed to deliver them to the military, with the B-plot being Ducklair's subordinates figuring out just that and informing the Senate's inquiry committee, that promptly had the culprit arrested by the Federals just as the police and Paperinik took down the two gangs. |
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Die Hard: The Hero John McClane is armed only with his standard-issue 9mm Beretta while the terrorists carry sub-machine guns, assault rifles, a whole lot of explosives and even an anti-tank rocket launcher (and after he manages to poach a submachine gun of his own, John is still outnumbered on every encounter where he puts it to use, forcing him to keep running for his life). With this firepower and the advantage of being entrenched, the crooks manage to easily fend off the LAPD for hours. | |
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Two incidents in S.W.A.T. (2003): The Action Prologue is based on the infamous North Hollywood shootout (detailed in Real Life below), with a gang of bank robbers armed with Kalashnikovs and wearing body armor going up against patrol officers armed with pistols. A Deleted Scene has a couple of officers come rushing into a gun store and frantically ask if the proprietor has anything that can penetrate body armor. Then the SWAT Team shows up and kills the two robbers outside, reducing it to a hostage situation. After Alex Montel offers $100 million to free him, an L.A. gang attacks the police motorcade transporting a dummy standing in for Montel to federal prison, armed with submachine guns and rocket launchers. |
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Discussed and defied in Mass Effect, when Shepard gets involved in an operation to trace a shipment of illegal high-power weapons. The C-Sec officer points out that the reason those weapons are illegal is so that C-Sec always has the edge when they have to fight criminals. | |
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Silver Streak: Played straight. The Feds have revolvers. Devereau and his men have what appear to be M-16s. | |
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Red Skull: It's not usually played up, but in some versions, the Skull is a borderline Gun Nut. Even in those where he isn't, he usually brings at least a sidearm to the fight; and when he expects serious trouble, he brings the artillery. Downplayed in the Silver Age, for obvious reasons. | |
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It's established early in Assault on Precinct 13 (1976) that the Street Thunder gang have gotten hold of a stash of stolen firearms, including scoped M16 rifles and Broomhandle Mauser pistols—the latter isn't exactly a government issue weapon, so they must have been stolen from a private collector. However when it comes to the final battle in the basement the firearms have mysteriously disappeared, enabling the protagonists to hold the gang members off with a makeshift barricade and clubs. | |
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Almost Human has this as its Central Theme. In the Cyberpunk Dystopian future, technology has grown so rapidly and so quickly that the criminal underworld has access to what amounts to supervillain technology. Not only does this create whole new kinds of crime but they are often able to overwhelm the police with strange weapons like Terminator-esque kill bots. | |
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Alien Nation. At the beginning of the movie, police officers Matthew Sikes and his partner try to stop an armed robbery. They have pistols, while one of the robbers has a rotary shotgun that fires armor-piercing slugs. It's used to kill Sikes' partner by shooting him through a car. | |
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Beverly Hills Cop. When the protagonist cops invade Victor Maitland's estate in the first film, they're armed with pistols. The mooks who attack them are armed with fully automatic submachine guns. Beverly Hills Cop II has a final shootout at Dent's oilfield where Taggart and Rosewood at least start toting shotguns (or a rocket launcher in Billy's case). Axel makes use of grenades as well as his pistol. The Mooks are all armed with assault rifles. The opening scene from Beverly Hills Cop III has Axel and his team raid a chopshop with pistols, where they are fired upon with submachineguns. Lampshaded by one of Axel's colleagues. To be fair, though, Axel gets chewed out by Da Chief for not calling in SWAT. |
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Zig-zagged in Dredd: on the one hand, the heavily outnumbered Judges use extremely advanced sidearms capable of using a variety of ammunition types and firing settings, as well as being in possession of sophisticated stun grenades. On the other, Ma-Ma's cartel is in possession of three Gatling guns that they pull out against Dredd at one point. Then there's the fact that the cartel is able to bring some crooked Judges onto the payroll. | |
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In Firestorm (2013), the Hong Kong Police Force gets severe casualties when they are engaged by a heavily armed robbery crew to the point of having a showdown in Central where they blow the CNG pipeline as a last act of defiance before the crew is taken down. | |
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The Incredibles opens with a police chase. The crooks open fire out their car's window with an automatic rifle, and the police shoot back with a pistol. No-one gets hurt in the half-minute they spend driving around the block firing wildly. | |
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Also in Steel, the plan of the Big Bad is to rent out (and have exclusive rights over maintenance of) experimental energy weapons he helped developed for the Department of Defense to the highest criminal bidder. He demonstrates the effectiveness of these weapons in advance by making his goons go on a crime spree all over the city that the cops can't stop. | |
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The Punisher: A lot of Frank's military hardware comes from the criminals he kills, so he's at least as well-armed as they are (and he's determined to be the only one around with that kind of firepower). One story has him scope out an arms deal when a sentry wearing night-vision goggles fires an anti-tank missile at him, which leads him to discover a criminal gang getting their stuff directly from corrupt quartermasters. | |
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Death Wish 3: The climactic shootout has Kersey and Inspector Shriker (both armed with handguns, although Kersey is carrying a Hand Cannon) facing off against a gang of crooks armed with black-market assault rifles and sub-machine guns. To add insult to injury, every "normal bystander" citizen of the neighborhood that decides to fight back during said battle manages to kick the ass of at least one crook, while every responding police officer that appears gets riddled with bullets. | |
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In Disco Elysium, the cops of the RCM are restricted to muzzleloaders while the rogue mercenaries that the detectives must confront in the climax are armed with automatic rifles. | |
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Fossil Fighters: Wanted vivosaur thief Blambeau carries around a shotgun. The unarmed and largely ineffective police force send Hunter after him. Thrice. | |
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The opening scene of Demolition Man, set in 1996, feature Phoenix's gang that have access to anti-aircraft guns, enabling them to easily shoot down any aircraft that they see, and render Los Angeles a No Fly Zone. This forces the regular police to drive in Humvees for protection. | |
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The "Picadilly" mission from 2019 reboot plays this straight however, in which terrorists armed with automatic weapons and suicide-vests tear up the titular Picadilly Circus in London. The British police and CTSFO on the scene start with only pistols (which the former don't carry in real life). Garrick even lampshades this at the end of the mission, saying that the government is holding them back by limiting how they can fight. | |
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Superman Returns: One crook surprises the police with a mounted 20mm Gatling gun. Very good that ol' bulletproof Superman is there to rescue them. | |
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In Paperinik New Adventures the supervillains tend to target Paperinik directly (aside for one instance when the Raider attacked the police because he wanted to talk with Paperinik and figured out this was the quickest way to get his attention), but during the second series there were two biker gangs armed with Ducklair-made military-grade Disintegrator Rays. Justified in that said weapons were being stolen and sold to the gangs by the company supposed to deliver them to the military, with the B-plot being Ducklair's subordinates figuring out just that and informing the Senate's inquiry committee, that promptly had the culprit arrested by the Federals just as the police and Paperinik took down the two gangs. | |
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Dragon Ball Z: At the beginning of Great Saiyaman Saga, the cops in Satan City are struggling against heavily-armed bank robbers. Throughout the saga, they're also heavily dependent on Videl and, unbeknownst to them, Gohan. | |
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PAYDAY: The Heist more or less has the criminals (players) and the cops (AI) on equal footing in firepower, but the Wolf Pack DLC adds a Grenade Launcher, which can easily obliterate the cops. PAYDAY 2 follows the same trend as the first game where the players and the enemies use the same weapons, but additional DLC adds even more powerful weapons for the players such as rocket launchers, flamethrowers, frag grenades, melee weapons (swords, bats, knives, etc), and many other weapons that the cops will never have. | |
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The B'wa Kell uprising in Artemis Fowl: The Arctic Incident. The conspirators backing the uprising arm the B'wa Kell Triad with highly dangerous softnose lasers, and sabotage the Lower Elements Police's neutrino weapons, leaving the LEP only a handful of obsolete electric stun rifles to defend themselves with. This example is Playing with a Trope because the modified softnoses aren't supposedly that reliable against misfires or self-destruction (a significant factor in real-life equipment selection), and a good part of their danger comes from the vast amount of unintentional damage they can do in a high-tech underground complex. In most cases for this setting, standard LEP weaponry is technically superior in almost all respects; the conspirators were depending heavily not just on surprise, comprehensive sabotage and overwhelming numbers, but on the uprising's failure. | |
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Marvel Future Fight: Red Skull uses a pistol, a rifle and the Cosmic Cube in his skills, and his basic attack is entirely built around firing guns as well. | |
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In Jormungand, Orchestra is known to be this. They have been involved in several shootouts with police forces around the world with police officers killed due to the group's access to better small arms such as assault rifles and grenade launchers. | |
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