Guns of Clint Eastwood Movies

Few actors have had as storied a career as Clint Eastwood. Known today as a venerable director and producer, his acting filmography ranges from his earliest television appearances in 1955 to his most recent role in the baseball drama Trouble With the Curve.

Any actor who needs some motivation should check out Eastwood’s first role. It won’t take long. He has about two lines as a dim-witted laboratory assistant in the 1955 horror sequel Revenge of the Creature.

During his career, Eastwood revived the struggling genre of the western not once, but twice, and became what could arguably be called the first American action movie star. (He’s also about the best there is at delivering gravely one-liners) And he’s carried and fired more guns on screen than most people have in their real life. In fact, 35 of his film roles required slinging lead, not to mention his numerous TV roles in westerns like Maverick and Rawhide.

Eastwood has been a supporter of gun rights throughout his career. He’s a veteran, who was drafted into the U.S. Army in 1951. He was actually aboard a Douglas AD bomber when it ran out of fuel and crashed into the Pacific Ocean. He and the pilot escaped and swam three miles to safety.

There’s a famous quote attributed to Eastwood, which is true: “I have a very strict gun control policy: if there’s a gun around, I want to be in control of it.”

Many people assume because of the sheer amount of onscreen gunplay he’s participated in that Eastwood would be pro-gun across the board, but he’s been quoted as being in support of some gun legislation and for registering firearms, and isn’t a big fan of “assault weapons.” So like many Americans, he falls somewhere in the middle of the complicated issues.

So, let’s take a tour through some of Eastwood’s most memorable on-screen firearms, where things are usually much more cut and dry: