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Bond first appeared on the silver screen in 1962's Dr. No starring Sean Connery. Bond carried a Beretta 418 in .25 ACP in the beginning of the film but is soon instructed by boss M to turn it in for what would become Bond's signature handgun, a Walther PPK. His first Walther was chambered in 7.65 mm. Bond's love interest in the film, Ursula Andress' Honey Ryder, was chambered in 38-25-36. Pictured: M taking Bonds Beretta
Sean Connery's Bond returned the following year in From Russia With Love and although he still carried a Walther, 007 got his hands on plenty of other firearms in this outing. In one scene Bond takes out the pilot of the helicopter, hell bent on slicing him in half with an Armalite AR-7 .22 survival rifle. Hey, I'm just reporting what was on film – I never promised what I reported would be plausible. Originally designed by Eugene Stoner, this unique rifle breaks down and all of its parts fit into the stock. First introduced in 1959, today the rifle is manufactured by Henry Repeating arms.
Sean Connery returned as Bond for the fourth time in 1965's Thunderball. Although Bond spends more than half the movie underwater (at least it seems like he does) he does manage to get some dry-land shooting in. He shoots a Browning Auto-5 shotgun with villain Largo while down in the Bahamas. Wait a minute. There aren't any quail down in the Bahamas.
You Only Live Twice brought the Bond films into over-the-top territory with Sean Connery fighting bad guys in a secret volcano base and with a moped-sized helicopter. Despite this heavy-handed camp, Bond still carried his trusty Walther PPK. Decades later gun nuts studying the film noticed that in one scene Bond is actually shooting a Colt Model 1903 Pocket Hammerless rather than his Walther. The error has been attributed to a mix up by the prop department. Well, that just ruined the movie for me.
1969 brought On Her Majesty's Secret Service to theaters and George Lazenby to the franchise as Bond. For this first and only outing by George (By George – get it?) 007 still carries a Walther, but gets to shoot a Sterling L2A3 sub machine gun in the film's finale, which also turned out to be Lazenby's finale.
1973's Live And Let Die was a Bond film full of firsts. It was the first time Roger Moore appeared on screen as 007, was the first and only time the words "honky" and "pimpmobile" were used in the franchise, and the first time for Bond to shoot a .44 Magnum. An S&W Model 29 .44 Mag to be exact.
Roger Moore's Bond returned in 1974's The Man With The Golden Gun. In this outing Bond is on the trail of an assassin who kills with a golden bullet…and a pretty ridiculous golden pistol (a fictional 4.2 mm single-shot). One stop in the trail leads Bond to a custom rifle maker, where Bond schools the firearm craftsman in target shooting with a bolt action rifle designed for a hit man with only three fingers. A three-fingered hit man, a golden gun that assembles from a cigarette case and pen, and a flying car – man the seventies were a strange time.
Roger Moore flew into outer space as Bond in 1979's Moonraker. While on planet Earth however, he managed to shoot a few firearms more grounded in reality (Man, watching all these Roger Moore films has me following his lead in delivering horrible puns.). The nicest, and perhaps most expensive, of these was the Holland & Holland Royal side-by-side shotgun he uses on a pheasant hunt to take out a would be assassin.
Roger Moore's second to last outing as Bond was in 1983's Octopussy, a film whose title many theater owners refused to put on their marque. Sexual innuendo aside, Bond's thirteenth outing on screen found him putting aside the Walther for something with a little more get up and go — a whole banana clip full of go. Bond unloads on a foyer full of bad guys with a SA Vz-58V with folding stock, while sliding down a bannister. The full auto SA Vz-58V saves more than his life though when Bond uses it to clear the bannister of a potentially crotch-smashing decorative fixture.
The Living Daylights saw new actor Timothy Dalton taking on the iconic role for the first of two films. Mr. Dalton wastes no time in straying from 007's PPK. In one scene he utilizes a Walther WA 2000 sniper rifle (pictured: top) to break future love interest Kara Milovy's Winchester Model 70 in half. In another, Bond unloads an AKMS (pictured: bottom) with folding stock and banana clip desert warlord style.
Pierce Brosnan took over as Bond in 1995's Goldeneye. Movie goers had no doubt what Bond's pistol of choice was when Valentin Zukovsky identifies it as a, "Walther PPK, Seven-Point-Six-Five-Millimeter." Despite this declaration, Bond actually utilizes an AKS-74U more often than he does his Walther. The AKS-74 is apparently a bad guy favorite as Bond acquires two different ones from his antagonists on two different continents.
Bond returns to the more believable less-camp world in 2006's Casino Royale. This film marked the first of what is said to be an at least six-film run for Daniel Craig. As the scrappiest Bond on film, Craig utilizes a Walther P99 (pictured: above) to make his second official kill. He also blows up a propane torch with a recently acquired Browning Hi Power Mark III (he commandeers this gun through a lightning-fast butt kicking). Of course Myth Busters ruined the latter scene for me when the show proved propane tanks don't explode like the one in the movie did.
At the end of Casino Royale Bond puts Mr. White on his knees with a Heckler & Koch UMP-9. That same gun, minus the suppressor, also appears in follow-up Quantum of Solace.
Among many other guns, Bond uses a .500 Nitro Express double rifle in Skyfall. From Internet Movie Firearms Database: "Anderson Wheeler is a London-based maker of luxury rifles and shotguns whose custom made double rifles are also available in calibers from .375 to .600. Bond's depiction of recoil is akin to that of a nail gun, despite the mammoth cartridge. Bond casually discards it when it runs out of ammunition." .
We’re taking a look back at the best of Bond’s guns from 50 years and 23 movies.
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