Guns of John Wick Chapter 4: Lets Take a Closer Look [Spoilers]

John Wick 4 has hit theatres, and gun nerds, kung fu fans, and action junkies are flocking to the theatres to see it. It’s already sailed beyond expectations, and fans love it. I often tell people you are just watching John Wick movies for the truly incredible action that is somehow loosely connected by a plot. John Wick 4 emphasizes that beyond every other flick in the film, and provides dozens of heart-racing action scenes, gun fights, and chase scenes. 

Since we are Gun University, we went for the guns! The guys behind Wick know guns. You don’t see most of the tropes in Wick movies you see elsewhere. John reloads, John runs out of ammo, and John is always scooping up the next gun to stay in the fight. With that in mind, we wanted to limit our scope of focus to the guns used by the main characters. 

There are literally hundreds of guns in this movie, and it will take a blu-ray release and a lot of rewinding to find them all. For now, we are going to focus on the guns that got the most screen time and were used extensively by our main cast. 

John Wick’s Handguns

Throughout the film, John mostly handles handguns. He picks up the occasional rifle and shotgun, but we don’t see him head to an armory and grab his favorite long guns. With that in mind, Wick sticks to two weapons outside of the many he scoops up as he fights his way through Japan, Berlin, and France. 

The Glock 34 TTI Combat Master

John Wick returns to a Taran Tactical custom Glock 34 at the beginning of the film. This same gun popped up in both JW 3 and JW 2, so we know he has a preference for it. The Glock 34 is the long slide Glock 9mm handgun. It uses a Glock 17 frame with a 5.31-inch barrel. Longer barrel and slide give you a longer sight radius and a boost in velocity. 

The TTI package includes high-visibility sights, a redone, and a refined grip texture. The slide gets all the fancy cuts we see these days and a match-grade barrel. We got an integral magwell for fast reloads, a scallop cut magazine release, a grip reduction, and an undercut. Plus, it’s got a Timney trigger.

The Glock 34 TTI Combat Master takes custom Glock to new levels. It makes what’s typically the boring slab of Spartan Glock design and accomplishes a nearly impossible task. It makes Glocks interesting. 

Pit Viper 

The Pit Viper represents the first time someone has made a gun specifically for the film and released it. Taran Tactical designed the Pit Viper John gets at the end of the film, and it essentially premiered with the film. The Pit Viper uses a 2011 design that’s been extensively worked over to deliver something entirely different. The Pit Viper gains its name from the fang-like protrusions at the front of the slide. 

Wick even takes the gun to pieces when he runs out of ammo and kills a man by stabbing him with the protrusions. The Pit Viper carries a very striking appearance, and it makes for an outstanding hero gun for our titular assassin. 

John’s precious Pit Viper has a single port compensator, ambidextrous safety, a fixed front sight for easier sight tracking, an Extreme Engineering trigger group, a match-grade barrel, and I can just keep going on and on. It’s custom the extreme, and the Bowery King describes it as: 

“9mm Pit Viper, a 21-round capacity magazine with a built-in compensator for virtually no muzzle flip. Fiber optic front sight, ambidextrous safeties, flared magwell for faster reloads, 2-pound extreme trigger.” 

Caine’s P365

Caine is one of my favorite characters, and Donnie Yen plays him wonderfully. He’s a blind assassin and old friend of John, who carries a rather interesting gun. The character poster made it easy to identify as a custom P365. While watching the film, I noticed the gun had no sights, which is a great detail because why would a blind assassin need sights? 

The character poster reveals that it’s seemingly a SAS variant because there are no cuts for sights, and you can see just a hair of the rear Bull’s Eye sight. It’s the non-ported variant of the SAS as well. SAS stands for SIG Anti Snag, and SIG went ham on the SAS P365. They melted the corners and edges to create a smooth, easy-drawing firearm. 

Additionally, they lopped the sights off, well, the traditional sights. They replaced the rear sight with an odd but effective sight system that sits flush with the rear slide of the gun. This is called the FT Bullseye sight. They also changed the controls and made it flush fit with the frame. It’s easily the most anti-snag automatic ever created. 

I really like to think they chose it to give the appearance of no sights, which completes the Caine character. The gun is fitted with a 15-round magazine and what appears to be a Stirke Industries Mass Driver. The Mass Driver is only available for the Glock series, so it must be custom fit for the film.

Read our full review on the factory P365 SAS.

Killa’s S&W 500

The character of Killa killed it. Seriously, Scott Adkins disappeared into the role of the inhaler needing German head of the Table. He’s a villainous monster that’s massively overweight yet still able to go toe to toe with John Wick. It was a surprise to see the big man throw such graceful roundhouse kicks. A big guy needs a big gun, and his weapon of choice is a Smith and Wesson 500. 

He carries the 4-inch model with the ported barrel and stainless steel finish. It’s a massive gun for a massive man, and it leads to a good ole German standoff that they settle by playing a game of cards. The S&W 500 is a ridiculous revolver. S&W’s aim was to create the most powerful production handgun cartridge, and they accomplished their task. 

The big half-inch-sized projectiles weigh anywhere from 300 to 670 grains and move from 2,075 feet per second to 1,200 feet per second. They generate an energy of up to 2,868 foot-pounds. It’s just beastly. S&W had to create the X Frame to handle the cartridge. 

Ultimately, it’s a cartridge designed for hunting or maybe bear defense. It’s not a fighting gun by any means. The massive recoil makes it slow to shoot and not exactly great in a firefight. However, it has a very striking appearance that fits Killa’s whole persona. 

Sadly Killa doesn’t get a chance to use the gun, but he and Wick square off in a martial arts fight that is both shocking and entertaining. 

The Tracker, Aka Mr. Nobody’s Lever Gun

John Wick 4 introduces us to the mysterious Tracker, who, when asked his name refers to himself as Mr. Nobody. He, and his pup, track Wick around the world. His motivations are often hazy, but money beckons. He styles himself as an All-American with a Marlin Model 1894. Not just any Marlin Model 1894, but a custom takedown variant with all the modern features and tactically to it. 

As the name implies, Marlin first produced this lever action rifle in 1894. It’s been kicking since and seen chamberings in common calibers like .45 Colt and oddballs like .218 Bee. The gun features the solid top Marlin is known for, as well as the side loading gate for quick top-offs, which we see Mr. Nobody use quite often. 

Call me a nerd, but I’m a sucker for tactical lever actions. The Marlin 1894 found its fame in the cold of North West America and Canada, where the freezing temperatures would often shut down top-opening lever guns. The Marlin 1894 became a friend to hunters, prospectors, and of course, trackers. It’s appropriate since Mr. Nobody is hunting the most dangerous game of all, Mr. Wick. 

The upgrades include an extended M-LOK handguard, XS ghost ring sights, a SilencerCo ASR muzzle device, and a SilencerCo Octane suppressor. The gun also features numerous spare rounds mounted for quick and easy use. Nobody keeps the gun in his backpack and deploys it when necessary to great effect. Mad Pig Customs produced this gun, and they are the company that makes take down Marlins as it’s not a factory option. 

That Flame Breath Shotgun

Chekhov’s gun states that if a gun is introduced in a story, then it must be fired. In a film like John Wick, that’s an easy one. All the guns are going to get fired. However, it’s tough to say which ones Mr. Wick will pick up. When we see various teams of hitmen and assassins gear up to take Mr. Wick down, we see one group shooting shotguns with Dragon’s Breath loads, and I think we all know what was coming. 

Wick kills a number of the gang and retrieves one of these flame-breathing shotguns for himself. We get one of the most creative and beautifully shot action scenes with Wick running ham on the gang of bad guys with this brutal dragon’s breath shotgun. It’s very AR-like because it comes from our friends at a little company called Genesis 12. The Genesis 12 Gen 12 shotgun is an AR-10-based shotgun that uses a short recoil system of operation. 

What we end up with is a lightweight, fast-firing, and reliable semi-auto, mag-fed shotgun with AR-10 roots. Genesis isn’t a huge company, so I’m psyched for these guys to get the screen time they deserve. 

It bears mentioning that Taran Tactical also customized these guns for the film. TTI calls them the Dracarys Gen 12s. They feature tons of cool parts and pieces, including Magpul stocks and grips, keymod rails, Eotech sights, and what appear to be 10-round magazines. This specific model is a short-barreled shotgun variant with a 10.5-inch barrel topped with a breaching muzzle device. 

Dragon’s breath is nowhere near as effective as the movie makes it out to be, but it’s fun to see, right? Also, I’m not sure if the load could actually cycle a semi-auto shotgun, as it’s often quite light. I’m willing to be wrong, but I would bet that I’m right. Either way, it’s a cool shotgun in a series of films that often has cool shotguns. 

The Dueling Pistols 

Spoilers are ahead, so stop reading here if you don’t want major plot spoilers. So far, I’ve talked guns, but this entry dives into spoiler territory. You’ve been warned. 

At the end of the film, Wick faces Caine and, later, the Marquis in a duel. This is an agreed-upon duel, and the weapons of choice are pistols. Of course, the pistols are not Pit Vipers and Glock 34s. But something from a more civilized era. The filmmakers clearly wanted to capture the essence of the old dueling pistols without having to revert to flintlock and percussion muskets. 

They created a set of custom Thompson Center Arms Encore Pistols. These are single-shot, break-open pistols that come in a ton of different calibers. They often feature adjustable sights or where scopes. Their purpose is hunting, and they are enjoyed by handgun hunters in both rifle and pistol calibers. 

For the film, they ditched the traditional sights and went with what looks like brass bead sights. They replaced the polymer furniture with wood and used short barrel configurations. They have beautiful scrollwork and a custom finish. They certainly look like the high-end dueling pistols of yore. Caliber is unknown, but I’d say it’s a big caliber, maybe a .44, .45 Colt, or .45-70. 

Yeah….

John Wick continues to elevate the action film franchise. Seriously, John Wick changed action films. Gone were stupid shaky cam fights and action you could barely see. John Wick made it clear and concise and ensured it kicked ass! The movies continue to thrill and have elevated stunt work to an art form. Plus, it always features some kick-ass custom guns that we never see anywhere else. 

Extra Video of John Wick’s Guns

The Flannel Daddy himself, in all of his chaotic larping glory, and a few of his friends shoot some of the Guns of John Wick Chapter 4. If you are looking for a serious video, this isn’t it, but you can see some of John’s guns in action in this video by Garand Thumb!