: : Here's a question that I've wondered about for ages.
: : In "Chosen One", Roxton and Marguerite take a little swim to escape and naturally take their weapons with them. Would that effect the mechanism of the gun? Several movies have shown the hero shooting a gun while underwater - is that accurate/possible?
: : Thanks!
: : Janet

In the early days of guns and gunpowder, water and dirt were the biggest problems a shooter faced (other than finding his target). During the American Civil War, the manufacturers began to figure out how to keep the powder from getting wet by developing a sealed cartridge (which also helped speed up the rate of fire a soldier could bring to bear on the enemy by reducing the amount of time it took to reload a rifle - the Yankees figured it out first). As the level of technology increased, so too did the reliability of a weapon. In WW1, the early machine guns were notorious for jamming when wet or dirty, but the manufacturers did take the lessons of trench warfare to heart and by WW2 the weapons were a bit more reliable, though still prone to fouling when exposed to copious amounts of dirt and mud. Even in the Vietnam War, the early model M16 rifles issued to the GI's typically required very little dirt to jam. Today submersion in water is one of several tests a weapon is put through to determine its worthiness for being issued in the field. Most guns pass, a few still fail.

So, to answer the question of whether its possible to fire a gun while leaping out of the water like Rambo, the answer is: "Maybe".