the "Why didn't they just shoot Voldemort?" thread

[DoPo]

I'm pretty sure Voldemort knows at least one spell that could stop 3 ounces of lead in mid-air.

But is he fast enough? How quick can he speak the words and wave his hands? I'll go ahead and assume he already holds the wand. He has to 1. Be aware of the possibility to be shot at 2. Be prepared 3. React instantaneously or in advance.

He has to be crazy prepared to stop a random bullet. Probably needs like a really detailed prediction for the future - nothing like "dark strangers" and all those metaphors. The prophesy actually needs to say "You will be shot on Monday the 17th of April at 13:43 - it will be a man with jeans and a dark hoodie. He won't have shaven that morning." that kind of detail...at which point, Voldemort can just avoid the situation.

He may know a spell that stops one bullet, but I doubt his reflexes are up to it. Even then, just shoot him again - how long can he keep intercepting the bullets? He'll Won't even be halfway through Avada and he can get shot twice.

EDIT:

Then there's the logical (read: boring nobody cares) answer, which is that Harry doesn't actually know how to use guns, and in a life-or-death situation he'd almost certainly miss and/or jam the bloody thing and then get murderised by Voldy's green death beam.

Well, I agree Harry is going to probably hurt others and himself much more than Voldie, but still he isn't the only character. There are tons of other people who'd like to stop Voldemort. Most of them are even adults. and seriously - a course in firearms last, how long? A month? Two months? Half a year? They've had a lot of time to prepare, it's not like Voldy appeared out of the nothing. There were years until he popped out. And more time afterwards.

 

[aegix drakan_v1legacy]

SaneAmongInsane, good points, I'll elaborate on them down under my own points/counterpoints. (I mostly agree with you)

Here are my $0.02 on this topic.

Wizards don't know shit about muggle technology. They even regard it as inferior. I don't see any of them using a gun. Most of them would go "oh please. A device that shoots lead balls at high speeds, and has limited ammo, has recoil, doesn't necessarily kill the target on hit, and can jam on you? I can just use an Avada Kedavra and get the same result!" Plus, most of them wold be lousy shots without training.

If they can't/won't properly use guns, then there would need to be a muggle agency that does. Which might lead to the info of the magical community being leaked to the muggle public. Leading to a full on war with the wizards.

Honestly, when your muggle studies class is talking about pulleys and stuff instead of computers and the internet, and when the muggle related jobs at the ministry require next to no training and are understaffed and crammed into the corner of the building...I think you need to rethink your view of muggles. Muggles aren't stupid. The wizards might have their magic, but they are way too reliant on it. Their pride would be their downfall at some point.

---
SaneAmongInsane, your first 2 points are SPOT ON, and well put. High five.

3. So Voldemort comes back... Just keep shooting everytime he resurrects. It's not like it's instantaneous, and you could probably do it several times before he actually could come up with an effective counter... and even then, just have hermione snipe him from across the pond. The time granted (instead of being wasted fighting him with magic) would be invaluable in finding the remain horcruxes.

Agreed on this one too. If they could kill him, it would be hard for him to come back, and they could have more time. SADLY, the vast majority of wizards have some kind of nobility complex, where they refuse to kill enemy wizards even when those death eaters are trying to kill them. That and as I said in my own points, wizards are too proud/stupid to see the value of muggle tech.

The whole reason the stakes are high is because the magic world assumes that unless Harry stops volde the muggles wouldn't stand a chance... Truth of the matter is, and JK Rowling said so herself, that in a straight up war with the magical realm the muggles would win. We have vastly superior technology and armor, not to mention numbers.

Which just proves my point that the wizarding community just doesn't understand and appreciate how powerful the muggle community is. If they went into a straight up war, rather than the wizards being hiding in secret, the muggles would WTFpwn the wizards.

The fact that the wizards think that unless harry wins, the muggles will die out is KINDA understandable (it would take a LOOOOONG time and a LOOOT of invisible war before the muggles FINALLY caught on that there IS in fact magic, and it's being used on them in a hidden war), but still misplaced, because as soon as the cat is out of the bag...The muggles would bust out the weaponry. It wouldn't be a curb-stomp battle, but the muggles would win in the end.

The only reason, the only GOOD reason why they didn't shoot Voldemort is because Harry just plain didn't think of doing it... and seeing as how both he and hermione both came from the muggle world and never once even lampshaded it I see is a major flaw in the whole series.

Ok, THIS is a brilliant point. Hermione is super logical. Even though she's been researching spells like mad for 7 years, I'm surprised the thought of using muggle weaponry didn't cross her mind.

I guess I can understand harry not remembering it, though.

NO! I freaking hate this response, because all it is trying to cover up how poor the story really is

I disagree with this, only because it's SUPPOSED to be a wizards and wands/magic story, not one about magic and technology working together. It would have been AWESOME to see them intertwine more, but that wasn't the point of the story.

So yeah, that's why I disagree with that.

 

[DoPo]

Even D&D had an answer for that, its called a conditional spell. "If my life is seriously threatened then I automatically teleport to...." type spell.

Yes, I can see how can we apply D&D here. Wait, I don't. It's an entirely different thing.

At any rate, even if we assume conditional spells it doesn't make sense. Veldemort wouldn't be killed by anything in that case, so it would be useless to fight him in the first place. But how about being shot in the leg or the arm. For bonus points - the one that holds the wand. Not (immediately) life threatening and it still finishes him off effectively. Also, there are things like pepper spray, tear gas and all sorts of other weapons that are not as lethal as firearms. One can just taser him. Few volts of electric goodness through his body would make him dance in joy.

 

[DoPo]

But is he fast enough? How quick can he speak the words and wave his hands? I'll go ahead and assume he already holds the wand. He has to 1. Be aware of the possibility to be shot at 2. Be prepared 3. React instantaneously or in advance.

He can preform the killing curse without saying "Avada Kadavra". Plenty of other spells too.

OK, I give you that - I had forgotten that detail. "Silent spells" or whatever they were called. Still that doesn't make him immune to bullets, just gives him more of a chance in a fair fight.

 

[Jonluw]

Snippolainen

I have a .gif for you, OP.

[sub]Oh snap.[/sub]​

OT: I agree. Your argument is sound. However, it's a children's book series. It's bound to have loopholes. There's not much to do but pretend they aren't there if you want to enjoy the series.
I mean, they have a fucking time machine, and what do they use it for?

[sub]Catch all the classes![/sub]​

Oh, and they save the life of a hippogriff. That's nice I guess.

Spoiler: Oh, curse you, ninjaing bastard.

Well, the main reason is probably becasue the book would be over in like five minutes.

Spoiler: It would be cool though

 

[Esotera]

So the biggest issue you have in a world where elves, dragons, goblins, and griffins exist, people can fly, there are invisibility cloaks, ghosts exist, and magic is used on a daily basis, is that guns don't work in it?

The major issue I had with the universe is the whole part at the end where there isn't any satisfactory justice for all the wizards like Malfoy who repeatedly broke the law. And also the complete lack of any magical military, who you'd think would be in place to stop exactly this sort of thing from happening.

 

[DoPo]

So the biggest issue you have in a world where elves, dragons, goblins, and griffins exist, people can fly, there are invisibility cloaks, ghosts exist, and magic is used on a daily basis, is that guns don't work in it?

No, the issue is that guns do work but are not even mentioned. No matter how magical your world is, a plothole is a plothole. Unless you're talking about Discworld sort of world, that is, in that case everything can be handwaved as "a wizard did it" or "a historey monk did it" or "the gods did it" or simply "because it's cool".

You know the saying - if the only tool in your story is magic, you tend to forget the existence of everything else. Imagine if in D&D the wizard says "OK, I don't have Levitate memorised today, there is no way we reach that " and everybody agrees...ignoring the fact that a ladder would have still worked just the same.

 

[SpikeyGirl]

Why don't they just use a Death Note?
Wrong fandom because wizards lack creativity.
Anyway, what about conjuring fast projectile bullets? No pesky mechanism that, depending on who's arguing, may or may not work in a magical environment.
If guns do work magic could make the bullets invisible and probably silence it!
Ultimate sniper time.

 

[Nyaoku]

The reason a gun would not work is that for a bullet to deal a fatal blow, it is required to rather hit a vital organ, poison the bloodstream, or cause significant shock/bleeding to kill. What many people do not take into account is that Voldemort is nothing but a physical manifestation of magic resembling his once-human form. He doesn't require a brain to think, a heart to beat, or anything like that. The body is just for appearance sake. Think of it like shooting a ghost. Maybe a magic/silver bullet would work though but not a regular gun.

 

[JoesshittyOs]

I always thought that was the underlying message with the books and just why the books were so good.

The Wizards were so disconnected from the real world, that they were in turn dooming themselves.

I think if you were to really want those questions answered in the real world, it would be "because they're stupid". And in reality, they are. The culture behind them is vaguely reminiscent of the gypsy culture (And I'm American, so sorry if the word 'gypsy' offends anyone). Style is more or less lost on them. The house you visit are generally cluttered and at the very least are mostly a few decades behind muggle life.

They are very much pretentious, and that is why they had a downfall. They view themselves higher, when in reality they are having problems that even the muggles fixed, and they didn't need magic to do that. They lived in terror of a dictator like cult leader thing that lived in hiding, with a pretty much absentee government. Hell, they even had means to discern who would be an asshole by which house they got put into when they were eleven, yet they never seemed to use that as a criteria for who got into the highest ranks of the government.

 

[irishda]

To all other escapists who are thinking of bringing the "common sense says..." into this thread:
This is FUCKING MAGIC. Common sense doesn't come into play at all. Ever. This is a book with kids chasing dragons on brooms while trolls and giants and centaurs and three headed dogs are all regularly recurring features. There's plenty of glaring plot holes within the context of the story that someone could point out without resorting to "Well why don't they just launch a cruise missile up his ass?" or "Just chop his hands and feet off so he can't hold a wand AND talk at the same time."

For instance, you could argue the stories are shitty because, in most of the books, usually the way to overcome the final obstacle is with something the kids learned that fucking semester. And the bad guys probably could've won if they had a copy of the syllabus. Rowling took the chekhov gun argument to the extreme.

You could argue the stories are shitty because Harry is usually saved by a deus ex machina he pulls out of his ass or pure dumb luck hurling him ass-first to victory. Every time he's stuck, you can bet someone's gonna be all "oh wait, I forgot I had this" or "Wait a minute, something just appeared."

You could even argue the stories are shitty because super awesome devices are never used for the right reasons because Rowling realized she wrote herself into a corner. Harry and his friends have a necklace that can teleport you through time itself and a room that has WHATEVER YOU WANT INSIDE OF IT. Yet they still can't manage to overwhelmingly crush Voldemort.

These are all perfectly valid reasons to argue why Harry Potter is a bad story. So please stop trying to interject real world sense into a fantastical narrative. Besides this movie already stole that ending:

 

[Casual Shinji]

Seeing as the concept of magic itself is handled as clumsy and clunky as it is in Harry Potter, I'm not surprised this slipped ol' J.K.'s mind.