The Guns of Reacher: Every Weapon Identified

Here’s the thing about Reacher: he doesn’t own a gun.

He owns a folding toothbrush and the clothes he’s wearing. Everything else, including every firearm in three seasons, is something he picked up off somebody who no longer needed it. That makes this the strangest entry in our TV guns series, because the interesting question isn’t what Reacher carries. It’s what he takes.

The man who doesn’t carry

Across the series Reacher handles a Glock 17, a Heckler & Koch P7, an M1911A1, a Steyr AUG, a Desert Eagle and a borrowed revolver, and none of them are his. He acquires the P7 in “Number 2 with a Bullet.” He briefly uses the AUG. He handles Roscoe’s pistol in season one. In season two he runs a Glock 17 alongside Dixon, O’Donnell and Detective Russo.

The only gun that’s genuinely his is one he no longer has: the M4A1 carbine he carried as a Military Police investigator in Iraq, seen in the flashback in “In a Tree.”

That’s a deliberate character choice, and it’s the most interesting gun decision on television right now. Reacher isn’t a gun guy. He’s a competence guy who happens to be able to use anything he’s handed.

The Heckler & Koch P7

The P7 in season three is the pick of the bunch and a slightly obscure choice, which suits the show. It’s the German squeeze-cocker: you grip the front strap to cock it, release and it’s safe. Gas-delayed blowback, fixed barrel, superb trigger, and a cult following out of all proportion to how many were sold.

Putting one in Reacher’s hand is a nice bit of writing. It’s exactly the sort of gun a man who doesn’t care about guns would end up with by accident, and exactly the sort that a man who reads everything would already know how to run.

Frances Neagley’s Glock

Neagley is the counterweight. She’s the one from the 110th who stayed professional, and she carries properly: a Glock 19 in “Smoke on the Water,” a Beretta she rearms with elsewhere, and in “Pie” she and Finlay run customised M4s kitted with DD RIS II handguards, KAC vertical grips, suppressors, Eotech holographic sights and magnifiers.

That’s a properly specified rifle build, and the contrast is the point. Neagley plans. Reacher improvises.

Finlay, Roscoe and Margrave

Season one’s small-town Georgia setting gives the police their own hardware. Chief Detective Finlay grabs a Winchester Model 1200 shotgun from the rack, and there are Smith & Wesson 5946 pistols in the armoury behind him. He also uses a gun to shoot out tyres at one point while calling it something it isn’t, which is a nice touch for a character who’s competent but not a shooter.

Elsewhere in the series there are SIG Sauer P226s and P232s, a P220 Sport, a SIG SG 552, Smith & Wesson Model 60 and Model 686 revolvers, Mossberg 500 Mariner Cruisers and a Desert Eagle in season one, episode four.

Why this works

Most action heroes get a signature gun because it sells posters. Reacher gets the opposite, and it’s better writing. A man with no fixed address, no possessions and no permit isn’t carrying a custom 1911 around America. He’s using what’s in the room.

It also means the show never has to explain how a drifter keeps a pistol through fifteen state lines, which is a plot hole most series in this genre simply ignore.

Frequently asked questions

What gun does Jack Reacher carry?

He doesn’t carry one. Every firearm he uses across the series is taken or borrowed, including a Glock 17, a Heckler & Koch P7, an M1911A1 and a Steyr AUG.

Did Reacher carry a gun in the army?

Yes. An M4A1 carbine, seen during his Military Police service in Iraq in the flashback in “In a Tree.”

What is the Heckler & Koch P7?

A German squeeze-cocking 9mm pistol with a gas-delayed blowback action and a fixed barrel. Reacher acquires one in “Number 2 with a Bullet.”

What does Frances Neagley carry?

A Glock 19 in “Smoke on the Water,” plus a customised M4 with a suppressor and Eotech optics alongside Finlay in “Pie.”

Keep exploring

Part of our guns of TV legends series. See also Hawaii Five-0 and Justified.