Hero Guns From Your Favorite Christmas Action Movies

Die Hard & Lethal Weapon Pack Serious Holiday Heat

It’s become the fun thing in recent years to be into unconventional Christmas movies: films that have stories set at Christmas, but have nothing to do with the holiday, Santa, or the rest of it — most of the time. Die Hard is the now classic example of an action movie that has become a holiday-watching staple for many, right up there with A Christmas Story and It’s a Wonderful Life. 

Two movies in the action genre reign supreme in this extremely narrow sub-genre of Christmas action movies: Die Hard and Lethal Weapon. But what you might not know is that the first two films in both series are linked by a pair of Beretta handguns. 

Die Hard (1988)

Memes made this into a holiday staple for many people, but the cool kids were already watching Die Hard every Christmas. This is one of several movies from the 1980s that helped to make the Beretta 92 pistol platform so famous, in addition to the fact that it replaced the M1911 as the U.S. military’s general issue sidearm beginning in 1985. 

John McClane (Bruce Willis), the vacationing NYPD detective who is in Los Angeles to visit his estranged wife and kids for Christmas, carries a gun that was a little ahead of its time for a New York cop. Actually, while the LAPD adopted the handgun, it was never authorized by the NYPD, which stuck to SIG Sauer and Glock models once the force transitioned away from revolvers. 

McClane carries a 92F in a leather shoulder holster, which we see in the first scene on his flight from New York to L.A. He famously ends up on the run in an unfinished skyscraper fighting a gang of terrorists/thieves in a tank top and barefoot. But he managed to grab his Beretta before fleeing into a stairwell when the bad guys attacked. Why he didn’t grab his entire shoulder rig off the coathook, we’ll never know — especially since he seems to have at least one spare mag for his pistol with him. Luckily, the bad guys are all also carrying 9mm pistols and submachine guns, so he has plenty of chances for resupply.  

The pistol had an extended slide release and magazine release, modifications made so the gun would be easier for Willis to use as a lefty. He appears to activate the mag release with the index finger of his left hand during reloads throughout the movie. 

Eventually, John ends up using a couple of different Heckler & Koch MP5s (“I have a machine gun now. Ho-Ho-Ho.”) in addition to his pistol, but the Beretta gets a lot of screentime, capped by the unforgettable final scene with the gun taped to McClane’s bloody back. 

McClane came back for a bunch of sequels, but Die Hard 2 (1990) was the only other installment also set at Christmas. This time McClane is fighting terrorists in the sprawling Dulles International Airport outside of Washington, D.C. (it was mostly filmed at airports in Colorado and Michigan, but not Dulles) on Christmas Eve. He’s there meeting up with his wife to visit her parents for the holiday. While he’s at the airport waiting for his wife’s plane to arrive, the terrorists strike. 

This time, McClane carries an updated Beretta 92FS, as do a number of other characters. Since he gets to remain clothed this time, we see him carry it in his shoulder holster instead of in his waistband. 

There were three more Die Hard movies after that, believe it or not. Die Hard with a Vengeance (1995) saw McClane take on a new gang of bad guys in New York City in the summer, again carrying his Beretta 92FS. 

For Live Free or Die Hard (2007), McClane switches to a SIG Sauer P220 as his go-to pistol until he loses it. Then he switches to a Beretta, but instead of the 92FS, it’s a much newer Px4 Storm that he takes from Russo (Yorgo Constantine).  

A Good Day To Die Hard (2013) isn’t really worth mentioning. 

Lethal Weapon (1987)

There’s another 1980s classic action movie that absolutely takes place during the Christmas season in L.A. — Lethal Weapon (1987). This is a no-brainer. I mean, Nearly the entirety of “Jingle Bell Rock” plays over the opening credits and first shot of the film. There’s a clip from A Christmas Carol on TV that Gary Busey shoots and screams at after taking out the Murtaugh’s tree with his car. 

It’s a Christmas movie as much as Die Hard is — and gun-wise, it has a whole lot in common with Die Hard.

LAPD Det. Martin Riggs (Mel Gibson) is a relatively young former sniper who did a lot of black bag stuff during the Vietnam War. He’s highly trained and deeply in mourning for his wife, who was killed in a car accident. As a result, he drinks too much and takes a lot of unnecessary risks. “A real burnout. On the ragged edge.”  

His weapon of choice, carried in his waistband with no holster, is a Beretta 92F, just like McClane. In fact, the very same 92F handgun that Gibson uses in the first Lethal Weapon was used a year later as Willis’ gun for the first Die Hard. Of course, when Gibson carried it, it hadn’t yet picked up the modifications done for Willis. 

Riggs is legitimately suicidal when we first meet him, demonstrated by a heavy scene where he almost shoots himself in a close-up of his Beretta as he drunkenly chambers a round and puts the gun to his head with a Bugs Bunny Christmas special playing on the TV. 

This movie is a special one that still holds up if you watch it with the right kind of eyes. It was often imitated and the sequels made its characters into caricatures, but this original is still something. 

And who hasn’t tried to shoot a smiley face on a target at the range like Riggs does with his Beretta? 

Later in the movie, we see Riggs demonstrate some of his sniper skills using a pretty freakin’s sweet rifle — a Heckler & Koch PSG-1 with a large magazine and a Harris bipod. 

Det. Sgt. Roger Murtaugh (Danny Glover), while also a Vietnam vet, is a generation older than Riggs, and so are his firearm preferences. His daily carry duty gun is a classic Smith & Wesson Model 19 in .357 Magnum, which he refers to as a “four-inch Smith” in the famous scene where Murtaugh and Riggs compare their guns. 

Murtaugh: (while examining Riggs handgun) “Nine millimeter Beretta, takes fifteen in the mag, one in the pipe, wide ejection port, no feed jams.”
Riggs: “Whatchu got in there?” 
Murtaugh: “Four-inch Smith.” 
Riggs: “Six-shooter, huh? 
Murtaugh: (nods approvingly)
Riggs: “A lot of old timers carry those.” 

While Lethal Weapon 2 (1989) was not set at Christmas, it does have another interesting tie to Die Hard. 

Riggs upgrades to a Beretta 92FS for the sequel, and — you guessed it — the same Beretta was later used in Die Hard 2. Once again, it was modified for Willis by reversing the mag release for the lefty, but this time, an extended slide release wasn’t added. 

Murtaugh also upgrades his daily carry for the sequel. Not to be outdone by his partner, he begins carrying a backup gun in the form of a Smith & Wesson 5906. Danny Glover is a big dude, but not many people can pull off a full-size all-steel 9mm as a backup gun. 

Murtaugh continues carrying his Model 19 in a cross-draw OWB holster on his belt, and the 5906 rides in a right-handed shoulder holster.