Miami Vice did something no other cop show bothered with. It changed its lead character’s sidearm four times across five seasons, and each change was a deliberate decision about what counted as the most modern pistol in America that year. Michael Mann treated a handgun the way the show treated the Ferrari and the linen suits: as a statement about where the character stood.
It also put the Glock 17 on screen before anyone else in the world did. More on that below.
This is every significant firearm in the series, tracked by character and by season, with the production stories behind the ones that matter and what you’d buy today to own the real thing.
Table of Contents
Sonny Crockett’s guns, season by season
Nobody else on television got this treatment. Here’s the whole arc.
| Era | Primary sidearm | Backup |
|---|---|---|
| Pilot | SIG Sauer P220 | Detonics Pocket 9 |
| Seasons 1-2 | Dornaus & Dixon Bren Ten | Detonics Combat-Master |
| Seasons 3-4 | Smith & Wesson 645 | Detonics Combat-Master |
| Season 5 | Smith & Wesson 4506 | Smith & Wesson 669 |
The Bren Ten
The Dornaus & Dixon Bren Ten was Crockett’s gun through seasons one and two, and it’s the reason a generation of shooters knows what 10mm is.
Mechanically it was a beefed-up CZ 75 built around the original 10mm Norma Auto, and it was the first production pistol ever chambered for the cartridge. The factory gun shipped two-tone, black oxide slide over a stainless frame.
The screen guns weren’t factory guns. Mann’s production ordered two, and Tom Dornaus built them himself from components that weren’t up to production standard but were fine for a pistol that would only ever fire blanks. Here’s the part that surprises people: they were chambered in .45 ACP, not 10mm, because .45 blanks were what the armoury could reliably get. Mann asked for hard chrome on the slides so the gun would read against dark scenes and pale suits.
Dornaus & Dixon closed in 1986 and the contract eventually passed to Smith & Wesson. The show had a standing rule against featuring discontinued guns, so the Bren Ten went. It’s the only pistol I can think of that became famous because the company making it failed.
You can’t buy a new one. The closest living relative is the EAA Witness, built on the same CZ 75 pattern the Bren Ten grew from, in 10mm.
If the cartridge is the draw, we’ve covered it properly: best 10mm pistols, 9mm vs 10mm, and the story of when the FBI ditched 9mm, tried 10mm, and came back.
The SIG Sauer P220 in the pilot
Before the Bren Ten arrived, Crockett carried a SIG Sauer P220 in “Brother’s Keeper.” There’s a moment at the climax where he runs the P220 in one hand and a Colt Model 654 with a twenty-round magazine in the other, which is ridiculous and looks fantastic.
His backup in that era was a Detonics Pocket 9, carried in the rear waistband rather than on the ankle.
The Smith & Wesson 645
From season three Crockett moved to a Smith & Wesson 645: full-size, stainless, .45 ACP, five-inch barrel. The reasoning was the same as it had been for the Bren Ten. Smith’s second-generation autos were brand new, and the producers wanted their lead holding whatever counted as current.
It photographed beautifully. Big slab sides, bright stainless, and it read instantly against a white jacket at night.
Season five: the 4506 and the 669
Most write-ups stop at the 645. The show didn’t.
For the final season Crockett moved again, to the Smith & Wesson 4506, the third-generation .45 that carried more than twenty design changes over the 645, including the one-piece arched backstrap. And in the series finale he wears a Smith & Wesson 669, the compact alloy-framed 9mm, in an ankle holster.
Four primary sidearms in five seasons. Name another show that bothered.
The Detonics ankle gun
My favorite gun in the series and the one nobody mentions. Crockett wore a Detonics Combat-Master in an ankle holster through the middle seasons, and there’s a nice throwaway moment in “Prodigal Son” where it’s just visible in a bar scene.
The Combat-Master was a genuinely chopped 1911, one of the first serious attempts at a carry-sized .45. An ankle gun on a working vice detective is the single most realistic thing in Crockett’s loadout. The Bren Ten got the poster. The Detonics got the job.
The holsters, which matter more than you’d think
Crockett’s rig changed almost as often as his gun. He starts in a Ted Blocker Lifeline, moves to a Galco Original Jackass Rig, and settles into the Galco Miami Classic.
That last one is worth knowing. The Miami Classic is named after this show. A television program sold so many shoulder holsters that the model took the city’s name and it’s still in Galco’s catalogue four decades later. Not many props can claim that.
The Glock 17’s first appearance anywhere
Here’s the fact worth the price of admission. The Glock 17’s first appearance in any film or television production was Miami Vice, in the episode “Cuba Libre.”
Think about what that means. The pistol that went on to arm most of American law enforcement, that became the default handgun of the next forty years, made its screen debut on a show about two detectives in pastel jackets. Miami Vice got there first because getting there first was the entire editorial policy on guns.
Ricardo Tubbs
Tubbs is the shotgun guy, and his handgun is quieter than his partner’s on purpose.
His primary sidearm is a Smith & Wesson Model 38 Bodyguard fitted with Pachmayr grips, the shrouded-hammer J-frame that’s about as discreet as a revolver gets. He carries a Model 36 in the pilot and a SIG P228 by the series finale. A Beretta Cheetah with wood grips turns up in “Calderone’s Demise” and “Smuggler’s Blues.”
That’s a deliberate contrast. Crockett carries whatever is newest and shiniest. Tubbs carries a small revolver he can forget about, which fits a man who spent the whole series pretending to be somebody else.
More in our best snub-nose revolvers and best .38 Special revolvers guides.
Tubbs’ shotguns
Three of them, and they get shorter as the series goes on.
Season one gives him a sawed-off double-barrel. Season two upgrades him to an Ithaca 37 Stakeout, cut down with a shortened barrel and magazine tube, a ventilated barrel shroud and a folding vertical grip, carried on a halter under his jacket. From season three he runs a modified short-barrelled Remington 870.
The Ithaca Stakeout is the interesting one. It’s a real pattern, associated with police stakeout squads, and hanging it under a linen jacket is peak 1985.
See our best pump-action shotguns guide.
Lieutenant Castillo
Edward James Olmos plays Castillo as a man who says nothing and means all of it, and his guns follow suit. He’s the revolver man in a show full of autos.
A Colt Trooper Mk V in .357 is his signature, and Smith & Wesson wheelguns fill in around it: the Model 19, the 586, the 686, and a nickel-plated Model 29. He also carries a Detonics Scoremaster, the full-size sibling of Crockett’s ankle gun.
Giving the boss revolvers while the young detectives chase the newest polymer and stainless autos is good, quiet characterisation.
We tested the big one in our Smith & Wesson Model 29 review, and it leads our best .44 Magnum revolvers list.
Switek and Zito
The surveillance pair get the odd hardware. Stan Switek carries a nickel-plated Browning Hi-Power, seen clearly in “French Twist,” and there’s a well-known continuity slip in “The Hit List” where he’s suddenly holding Crockett’s Bren Ten. The usual explanation is that the chrome Hi-Power wasn’t available that day and the armourer grabbed the nearest bright pistol.
Larry Zito runs a Smith & Wesson 659, a Mossberg 500 in the pilot while in uniform, and an M60 on a rooftop in “Lombard,” which is the sort of escalation this show treated as a Tuesday.
Browning dropped the Hi-Power and the design came back. Springfield’s SA-35 is the modern version.
Gina and Trudy
Both Gina Calabrese and Trudy Joplin carry Smith & Wesson Model 36 revolvers in .38 Special, with Trudy also handling a Mossberg 500 in uniform. Small J-frames for undercover officers is correct for the period and the job, and the show doesn’t make a thing of it.
What the villains carried
Miami Vice had a strict visual grammar for the other side. Pull a MAC-10 or an Interdynamic KG-99 and you were not going to be alive at the end of the hour. The KG-99 turns up repeatedly, including in Crockett’s own hands during “Smuggler’s Blues,” and Uzis run through all five seasons.
The heavier stuff is a tour of the decade: the Franchi SPAS-12, a Street Sweeper, the Smith & Wesson M76, M16s and M16A1s, HK94s, HK MP5s, a Steyr AUG that Crockett runs in “Out Where the Buses Don’t Run” and “Free Verse,” Norinco Type 56 rifles, a Desert Eagle Mark I, and a LAR Grizzly Win Mag in “A Bullet For Crockett.”
One hitman, Ludovici Armstrong, uses a shortened Ruger AC556 with jungle-taped magazines in “The Hit List.” That one genuinely is a select-fire AC556, unlike a certain other 1980s show.
Why the guns kept changing
Every swap follows one rule: Crockett holds the newest serious pistol on the American market. Bren Ten in 1984 because 10mm was the future. The 645 in 1986 because Smith’s second generation had just landed. The 4506 in 1988 because the third generation superseded it.
That’s why the Glock 17 showed up here before anywhere else, and it’s why the show’s gun list reads like a snapshot of what the industry was doing each year. Most productions pick a gun and forget about it. This one kept shopping.
The custom shop guns
Two guns in this series are not off-the-shelf anything, and they’re the ones I’d point a collector at.
The first is a Richard Heinie custom M1911A1 Series 80. Heinie is a name that means something to 1911 people, and putting one of his guns on a television show in the eighties is roughly like putting a Wilson Combat on screen today. The second is a custom Wilson Combat Smith & Wesson 3000, a worked-over pump shotgun from a shop far better known for pistols.
Neither gets a hero moment. Both are the kind of detail that tells you somebody in the armoury cared.
The Colt Python and the wheelgun bench
A Colt Python turns up across four seasons, usually with detectives rather than the leads. So do Colt Detective Specials, a Dan Wesson Model 15, and Charter Arms snubs.
Miami Vice is remembered as the show that killed the police revolver on television, and it is, in the sense that Crockett spent five years demonstrating what came next. But the background of the frame stayed full of wheelguns the whole time, which is exactly what a real department looked like in 1985.
The reissue is very good. We put it through its paces in the Colt Python review.
The period pieces
For a show set firmly in its own present, there’s a surprising amount of history in the prop room. A Luger P08. A Mauser C96. A Thompson. An M1 Garand and an M1 Carbine. A Colt Single Action Army and a Remington Double Derringer.
Most of these belong to collectors, smugglers or old men inside single episodes, which is the honest way to use them. A drug war in 1986 Miami would absolutely have turned up somebody’s inherited Luger.
The sniper hardware
When the show needed precision it reached for real precision. A Heckler & Koch PSG-1, which was about the most serious semi-automatic sniper rifle money could buy at the time, plus a Steyr-Mannlicher Sporter and a Winchester Model 70. The Steyr is the rifle Ludovici Armstrong uses to shoot at Crockett in “The Hit List.”
The rest of the armoury
The Internet Movie Firearms Database catalogues Miami Vice across five separate season pages, which means nobody has ever had the whole thing on one screen. Here it is, consolidated and cut down to what earns its place: the guns a named character carries, the ones that recur across seasons, and the handful that matter historically.
The hero guns above aren’t repeated here. This is everything else worth knowing about.
Handguns
| Gun | Where you see it |
|---|---|
| Smith & Wesson Model 38 Bodyguard | Tubbs’ primary sidearm, all five seasons |
| Smith & Wesson Model 36 | Tubbs in the pilot, plus Gina and Trudy throughout |
| Browning Hi-Power | Switek’s nickel-plated gun, and villains in all five seasons |
| Beretta 92F | Four seasons, mostly police and federal hands |
| Beretta Cheetah | Tubbs in “Calderone’s Demise” and “Smuggler’s Blues” |
| Walther PPK/S | Four seasons, usually smugglers and middlemen |
| Smith & Wesson 659 | Zito’s duty pistol |
| Colt Python | Four seasons, mostly other detectives |
| Colt Trooper Mk V | Castillo’s signature .357 revolver |
| Smith & Wesson Model 686 | Castillo, plus Metro-Dade officers |
| Smith & Wesson Model 19 | Castillo and assorted plainclothes detectives |
| Smith & Wesson Model 586 | Castillo |
| Smith & Wesson Model 29 | Castillo’s nickel-plated .44 |
| Detonics Scoremaster | Castillo’s full-size 1911 |
| SIG Sauer P230 | Three seasons, concealed-carry roles |
| Colt Commander | Three seasons, various |
| Desert Eagle Mark I | Three seasons, always a villain’s statement gun |
| Heckler & Koch P7M13 | The squeeze-cocker, carried by professionals |
| Heckler & Koch P9S | Held on Crockett by a thug in “Smuggler’s Blues” |
| Smith & Wesson 639 | Two seasons, alloy-framed 9mm |
| Colt Detective Special | Calderone’s snub in the pilot |
| Dan Wesson Model 15 | Trini DeSoto’s stainless revolver in the pilot |
| Custom Richard Heinie M1911A1 | A genuine custom-shop 1911 on 1980s television |
Long guns and submachine guns
| Gun | Where you see it |
|---|---|
| IMI Uzi | All five seasons, the default villain SMG |
| Mossberg 500 | All five seasons, including Zito and Trudy in uniform |
| Remington 870 | Four seasons, plus Tubbs’ cut-down version from season three |
| Ithaca 37 Stakeout | Tubbs in season two, on a halter under his jacket |
| MAC-10 | Four seasons, shorthand for a man who won’t survive the episode |
| Interdynamic KG-99 | Used by Crockett himself in “Smuggler’s Blues” |
| Franchi SPAS-12 | Three seasons, the decade’s signature scary shotgun |
| Smith & Wesson M76 | Three seasons |
| Mossberg 500 Bullpup | Three seasons, a very 1980s idea |
| M16 and M16A1 | Three seasons, military and paramilitary hands |
| Steyr AUG | Crockett in “Out Where the Buses Don’t Run” and “Free Verse” |
| Heckler & Koch HK94 | Used to kill Calderone in the pilot’s climax |
| Ruger AC556 | Armstrong’s shortened, jungle-taped rifle in “The Hit List” |
| Colt Model 654 | Run akimbo with a P220 in the pilot’s climax |
| Heckler & Koch PSG-1 | The serious semi-auto sniper rifle of its day |
| Steyr-Mannlicher Sporter | Used to snipe at Crockett in “The Hit List” |
| Winchester Model 70 | Three seasons, precision work |
| Micro Uzi | Two seasons, close-protection and cartel roles |
| Norinco Type 56-1 | Two seasons, imported AK pattern |
| Street Sweeper | Rotary-magazine shotgun, pure 1980s menace |
| M60 machine gun | Three seasons, including Zito on a rooftop in “Lombard” |
| Custom Wilson Combat S&W 3000 | A worked-over pump gun from a pistol shop |
Beyond these the series ran through a long tail of one-off hardware: Lugers, a Mauser C96, a Thompson, M1 Garands and Carbines, a Colt Single Action Army, an M72 LAW, even an FIM-43 Redeye. Most turn up for a single scene in a collector’s cabinet or a smuggler’s crate. Count every background frame and the total across five seasons runs to 118 distinct firearms. The ones above are the guns that actually matter to the show.
Frequently asked questions
What gun did Sonny Crockett carry?
Four in total. A SIG Sauer P220 in the pilot, a Bren Ten in seasons one and two, a Smith & Wesson 645 in seasons three and four, and a Smith & Wesson 4506 in season five, plus a 669 ankle gun in the finale.
Was Crockett’s Bren Ten really a 10mm?
No. The two screen guns were hand-built by Tom Dornaus and chambered in .45 ACP because those blanks were easier to source. The slides were hard-chromed at Michael Mann’s request so the pistol would show up on camera.
Was Miami Vice the first screen appearance of the Glock 17?
Yes. The Glock 17’s first appearance in any film or TV production was in the Miami Vice episode “Cuba Libre.”
What handgun does Tubbs carry?
A Smith & Wesson Model 38 Bodyguard with Pachmayr grips as his primary, plus a Model 36 in the pilot and a SIG P228 by the finale.
Is the Galco Miami Classic named after the show?
Yes. Crockett’s shoulder rig moved from a Ted Blocker Lifeline to Galco’s Original Jackass Rig and then to the Miami Classic, which still carries the name today.
Can you buy a Bren Ten?
Only used, and originals are expensive collector guns. The EAA Witness shares the CZ 75 lineage in 10mm, and the Glock 20 is the most common modern 10mm.
Keep exploring
Part of our guns of TV legends series. See also Magnum P.I. and Hawaii Five-0, or on film, Dirty Harry and The Equalizer.
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