TV Shows Misleading Viewers: “Hawaii Five-O” Shows Criminals With Machine Guns, Outgunning Police

TV shows continually illustrate criminals using machine guns, with police officers completely outgunned by multiple criminals with machine guns (Hawaii Five-O, Season 10, Episode 18, February 28, 2020).

On TV shows, machine guns always seem to be the weapons of choice for bad guys when they get in shootouts with police. Some hyperbole is to be expected on television, but the level of exaggeration has become pretty over-the-top. In real life, criminals use machine guns so rarely that a 2016 survey of prison inmates only broke down the numbers for uses of handguns, rifles, and shotguns. The survey did not even mention fully automatic weapons. Since 1934, there are only two know uses ever of a machine gun being used in a murder. And even before 1934 they were very rare.

Other examples are available here. https://crimeresearch.org/tag/television-show-machine-gun-myth/