The Guns of Civil War (2024): Every Weapon Identified

Alex Garland’s Civil War refuses to tell you which side is right, and it refuses to give anyone a cool gun. Those two decisions are related. This is a film about a near-future American conflict fought with the rifles Americans already own, and the armourers took that brief seriously enough that you can identify most of the hardware down to the handguard.

I went through it gun by gun. What’s striking is how specific the choices are. Not “an AR-15,” but a Colt AR-15A3 with an EOTech EXPS2. Not “a sniper rifle,” but a custom build on an Aero Precision upper and a MAS Defense lower. Here’s every significant weapon in the film, who carries it, and what you’d buy to own the real thing.

Table of Contents

The Colt AR-15A3 in the film’s worst scene

The rifle everyone remembers belongs to Jesse Plemons. His unnamed Nationalist militiaman, red-tinted glasses and all, carries a Colt AR-15A3 Tactical Carbine fitted with an EOTech EXPS2 holographic sight and a KAC rail handguard. He uses it to interrogate Lee’s group, threaten them, and fire several times.

“What kind of American are you?” is the line, and the gun is doing quiet work underneath it. It’s an ordinary carbine with ordinary accessories. Nothing about it marks him as military, or as anything really. That’s the horror of the scene: the most frightening man in the film is equipped exactly like a guy at your local range.

Start with our best AR-15 for the money guide if that’s the platform you’re after.

The gas station AR-15s

Two militiamen at the gas station carry builds detailed enough to spec out.

Pete runs a customized AR-15 with a PWS 15-inch Keymod handguard, flashlight, telescopic optic, Magpul MOE stock, Magpul AFG grip and an FDE PMAG. Eddie’s has a Troy Battle Ax CQB stock, a Troy Industries Alpha free-float handguard, an EOTech XPS2 with magnifier, a SureFire X400 Ultra and a PMAG. Eddie’s is the rifle in the scene where he shows Jessie the hanged civilians.

Here’s the detail I like. Both rifles reappear later on the other side. Pete’s turns up with a Western Forces radio operator during the White House assault, scope swapped for an EOTech XPS and black PMAGs. Eddie’s shows up with a Western Forces commando, minus the magnifier. Whether that’s deliberate or just the armory recycling props, it reads as the truth of a civil war: the same guns keep changing hands.

The Daniel Defense at the university

The Commercial Corporal, played by James Yaegashi, leads the militia squad assaulting the university with a Daniel Defense AR-15 running a Daniel Defense MFR handguard, stock and pistol grip, a flashlight, an EOTech 512 and a PMAG. It’s the most expensive-looking rifle carried by anyone who isn’t regular military, which fits a man who has clearly bought his way into this.

The Noveske N4 Diplomat

A militiaman in a red Hawaiian shirt carries a Noveske N4 Diplomat during the university shootout, with an EOTech 551, a flashlight, a Vltor EMOD buttstock and camouflage tape wrapped around the handguard for grip.

That tape is the detail worth pausing on. Wrapping a handguard because it’s slick, or hot, or because you want a repeatable hand position, is something shooters actually do. It’s a small piece of set dressing that says this man has spent time with the rifle, which is more character work than most films manage with dialogue.

The Mk 18 Mod 0

Mike and three other militia fighters carry Mk 18 Mod 0 carbines in various configurations at the university. Western Forces soldiers carry them again in Washington, mostly with EOTech 551 sights and KAC quad rail handguards.

The Mk 18 is the short-barrelled CQB version of the M4 family, and its presence on both sides is the point again. Nobody in this film has a monopoly on good equipment.

The continuity error

One for the people who watch these things frame by frame. During the university shootout, a militiaman is briefly holding a Colt Model 933 with an ACOG scope and a flashlight grip, in a shot that doesn’t match what he’s carrying elsewhere in the sequence. IMFDB flags it as a straightforward continuity error.

Every film has these. It’s just unusual to see one in a production this careful about hardware.

The sniper duel rifles

The sniper sequence uses custom rifles rather than an off-the-shelf answer, and the build is specific: an Aero Precision M5E1 Gen 1 upper receiver mated to a MAS Defense AR-10 lower. One appears with the rooftop sniper at the start of the film, and the same rifle in camouflage turns up with the sniper played by Jin Ha during the duel Lee’s group witnesses.

An AR-10 pattern build in a large-frame chambering is exactly what a competent American shooter would put together, and mixing an Aero upper with another maker’s lower is how these guns actually get built. Nobody buys a complete rifle if they can help it.

We tested the small-frame version in our Aero Precision M4E1 review.

The Remington M24

A Western Forces sniper sets up an M24 during the Washington battle. The M24 is the US Army’s Remington 700-based sniper system, so the civilian route to the same rifle is a Remington 700 in a chassis or a heavy-barrel configuration.

The AK

There’s one, and it’s specified more tightly than “an AK.” A long-haired militiaman carries an AKM-type rifle with black synthetic furniture, a flared magwell and a Crane SOPMOD buttstock on a buffer tube during the university shootout.

An AK wearing an American buffer-tube stock is a very particular thing. It’s a rifle somebody has modified with parts from the AR world, which is precisely what a lot of US-market AKs look like now.

The pistols

Glocks, as you’d expect, and the film splits them sensibly. NYPD officers carry Glock 19s in the opening. Western Forces soldiers and Secret Service agents both use pistols in the final battle, and holstered Glock 17s appear on Western Force soldiers during the Washington fighting. There’s a dropped Glock 17 when the journalists enter the White House.

The odd one out is a Browning Hi-Power, and it’s placed with real care. It only appears when Lee flashes back to covering foreign conflicts. The Hi-Power is the old war-correspondent’s gun, the pistol you’d have seen in a dozen countries through the eighties and nineties, and putting it exclusively in her memory is a neat way of saying this war is different from the ones that made her.

Browning stopped making the Hi-Power, then the design came back. Springfield’s SA-35 is the current take. More options in our best concealed carry handguns guide.

The MP5 family

Three variants show up, not one. The MP5A2, the MP5A3 and the MP5K, with Secret Service agents running MP5Ks while defending the White House at the end.

That’s correct casting. The MP5K is the short, stockless version built for close protection details working out of vehicles and under coats, which is exactly the job Secret Service agents do. It’s a small accuracy that a lazier film would have got wrong by handing everyone the same gun.

Civilians can’t buy a transferable MP5 without serious money and paperwork, but HK sells the semi-automatic SP5, which is the same gun in a legal package.

The heavy weapons

Once the Washington assault starts, the film stops pretending this is a skirmish. Browning M2HB heavy machine guns, M240Bs, Mk 48 Mod 0s, an M134 Minigun mounted in the side doors of a Western Forces CH-47 Chinook at the Charlottesville base, a Carl Gustav M2 recoilless rifle, FGM-148 Javelins, M224 mortars, M230 chain guns and rocket pods.

The armor is a fake. The M1A1 Abrams in the film is a mock-up, which is standard for productions that can’t get real armor and is worth knowing before somebody tells you it’s the real thing.

The one that isn’t lethal

During the President’s speech in the opening, a US Military Police soldier carries a Sage Control Ordnance Deuce Revolution grenade launcher with an EOTech sight and a Magpul CTR stock. That’s a less-lethal launcher, the sort used for crowd control rather than combat.

Putting it in the film’s first minutes is a choice. It tells you the state is still policing rather than fighting, right before everything stops being that.

Why the gun choices matter

No exotic hardware. No signature hero weapon. No character defined by a distinctive gun the way John Wick or Dirty Harry are. Almost everything on screen is something you could legally buy, or a close relative of it.

That’s the whole thesis of the film delivered through the props. A war fought with ordinary rifles by ordinary people is much harder to dismiss as fantasy than one fought with invented weapons, and the armourers understood the assignment well enough to spec individual handguards.

Frequently asked questions

What gun does Jesse Plemons use in Civil War?

A Colt AR-15A3 Tactical Carbine fitted with an EOTech EXPS2 holographic sight and a KAC rail handguard, used in the “What kind of American are you?” scene.

Are the guns in Civil War real?

They’re real models, deliberately so. Garland avoided invented or futuristic weapons entirely. The one significant fake is the M1A1 Abrams, which is a mock-up rather than a real tank.

What sniper rifle is used in the sniper duel?

A custom build using an Aero Precision M5E1 Gen 1 upper receiver on a MAS Defense AR-10 lower. The same rifle appears in camouflage for the duel and plain for the rooftop sniper at the start.

Can you buy an MP5 like the ones in the film?

Not the select-fire versions without significant cost and federal paperwork. HK’s SP5 is the semi-automatic civilian equivalent, and there are cheaper MP5-pattern clones for pistol-caliber carbine shooters.

Why does the Browning Hi-Power only appear once?

It shows up in Lee’s flashback to covering foreign conflicts, not in the American war. It signals her past rather than her present.

The rifles in this film are straightforward current-production ARs, which is most of why it looks as plausible as it does. We track them on our AR-15 deals page, and cheap AR-15 rifles is the place to start if the budget decides.

Keep exploring

More screen guns identified: Extraction, Saving Private Ryan and No Country for Old Men. On television, our guns of TV legends rundown covers the same ground across eight decades.