WARNING: A LOT OF SPOILERS COMING UP. IF YOU HAVEN’T WATCHED THIS SHOW BEFORE AND PLAN TO, STOP READING NOW AND FOR THE LOVE OF ALL THINGS HOLY, DON’T WATCH THE CLIP ABOVE OF THE AA-12 IN ‘BREAKING BAD.’ Having said that, the show ended in 2013. Catch up already.
“Breaking Bad” ended in 2013, yet left its mark on the TV world that people still talk about it often in 2020. It’s constantly mentioned amongst the greatest shows of all-time alongside the likes of “The Sopranos,” “The Wire,” and others.
The show was good enough that it warranted the spin-off of “Better Call Saul,” which is pretty damn good in its own right. It’s also good enough that it warranted a rewatch from some of the Ballistic Staff. During that rewatch, we caught something fun: an AA-12 shotgun.
Also known as the “Auto Assault-12,” the AA-12 shotgun generates a lot of interest on the Internet. The original full-auto model is a spectacle of gun porn. We’re not going to go into a history lesson here, but 300 rounds a minute should more than enough.
News broke in 2018 that a semi-auto civilian variant of the AA-12 was coming to market. Then, in September 2019, Sol Invictus Arms announced the ATF was holding up production. Fast forward to today and we’re all still patiently waiting on the semi-auto variant.
The AA-12 Joins ‘Breaking Bad’
But let’s go back to “Breaking Bad” and how the AA-12 fits there. If you’ve never seen the show before and you’re still reading, this is your last spoiler warning. Gunplay in the show was always pretty solid. In episode 13 of season five, the story begins to wrap itself up. DEA hero Hank figures out that Walt is the mysterious drug kingpin “Heisenberg.” He partners with Walt’s former associate Jesse and finally puts Walt into cuffs. Walt’s reign as meth lord is over … until it’s not.
Earlier in the episode, Walt hired a group of neo-Nazis to kill his former partner, Jesse. Through a series of events, they find themselves face-to-face in a standoff with Hank and his DEA partner. The neo-Nazis draw down on the DEA agents with an assortment of firearms, but one stands out from the group: the AA-12.
Not sure why it took us a rewatch of the show to be like, “Holy sh*t! That’s an AA-12!” This is a key episode in the “Breaking Bad” lineage and arguably one of the biggest moments in the show. Maybe the plot was so intense that we just missed it. But we nearly jumped through the roof on second watch.
The AA-12 kicks off the shootout in glorious fashion. It’s the star of the shootout. And it doesn’t stop barking until the scene cuts to black and you’re left wondering who lives and who dies. Back in 2013, we remember how much that sucked because it was one week between episodes. In 2020, the wonders of Netflix had the next episode on before the last shotgun shell hit the ground.
If you haven’t watch the show and you read this, watch it anyway. If you have watched it, do it again.
