Gun fu
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The name Gun fu may mean one of several different things. It may be a mis-pronunciation of Kung Fu or Gung Fu; it may refer to Gun Fu - Animal Fighting Styles martial art from the Pacific Northwest; it may refer to the Howard Shum comic book, or it may refer to the fictional firearms based martial art as featured in movies.
Gun fu as a fictional martial art primarily exists in Hong Kong cinema and in Western movies influenced by it. The term is not usually used in the films themselves but is a common term used to describe the sophisticated gun-play that those films contain. It consists of a mixture of hand-to-hand and firearms manoeuvres performed at close quarters. The focus of Gun Fu is style, and the usage of firearms in ways that they were not designed to be used. Shooting a gun from each hand, shots from behind the back, as well as the use of guns as melee weapons are all common.
A classic Gun fu move consists of reloading two pistols simultaneously by releasing the empty magazines, pointing the guns to the ground, dropping two fresh magazines out of one's jacket sleeves, or strapped to one's legs, into the guns, and then carrying on shooting. This move appeared in the video game Max Payne, along with dual-wielding various weapons, including Berettas, and machine pistols such as Uzis, and the Ingram MAC-10. Father Tres Iqus in the anime series Trinity Blood also demonstrates this technique, as does Preston in Equilibrium.
Other moves can involve shotguns, Uzis, rocket launchers, duct tape, string, and just about anything else that can be worked into a cinematic shot.
Kurt Wimmer raised gun fu to a formal martial art in Equilibrium with the Gun Kata, and develops it further in UltraViolet.
Gun Fu is also the name of a series of comic books by Howard M. Shum and Joey Mason about a Hong Kong police officer in the 1930's who employs a combination of gun-play and martial arts.[1]
In the video game Shadow Hearts: From the New World, the Native American character Natan uses gun fu for his primary attacks, additionally in the Devil May Cry game-series the game's protagonist Dante incorporates the stylish use of akimbo pistols (named Ebony & Ivory due to their cosmetic differences) as well as other firearms (including a sawed-off shotgun and akimbo SMG's) into unrealistic yet visually stunning combat sequences which can flow seamlessly between swordplay and gun-fu to create long-chain combos such as shooting in two different directions with his pistols. Some of the memorable aspects of Dante's "gun-fu" would be the use of akimbo handguns, Juggling/suspending opponents in the air via rapidly firing at them mid-fall, and delaying/briefly suspending his descent (from a jump or fall) by firing his guns whilst in mid-air.
Gun fu has become a staple factor in modern action movies due to its visually appealing nature (regardless of its actual practicality in a real-life combat situation). This is a contrast to action movies of the 80's and early 90's which focused more on heavy weaponry and outright brute-force in firearm-based combat.
In the Buffyverse role-playing games, gun fu is the name for the firearms skill, but this is more likely meant to be humorous rather than to imply characters practice an actual firearm-based martial art.
The actual martial art of Gun Fu [2] is a self-defense focused art that uses animal fighting styles to conceptualize technique.
