CONTINENTAL ARCHIVE // DECLASSIFIED · UPDATED JUNE 2026

John Wick Guns: The Complete Arsenal, Film by Film

Ask what guns John Wick uses and you're really asking how the franchise thinks. Every chapter gives John a deliberately curated loadout — a pistol, a rifle, a shotgun — and the films treat selecting them with the reverence other movies reserve for romance. The sommelier scene in Chapter 2 is literally a wine tasting with firearms.

This is the full armory, movie by movie: the screen-used props (almost all built or tuned by Taran Tactical Innovations), who carries what, and why the hardware changed as the films evolved. For a deeper file on the sidearms specifically, see the pistol dossier.

>John Wick (2014): the buried kit

The first film's arsenal is intimate — literally buried under John's basement floor with the gold coins. No custom race guns yet; this is the professional's working kit, dug out of concrete with a sledgehammer.

HK P30L
John's primary — a long-slide 9mm wearing a distinctive custom compensator
Glock 26
The subcompact 9mm backup John falls back on when the P30L runs dry
Kimber Warrior
The .45 ACP 1911 most associated with Marcus (Willem Dafoe), John’s old friend and overwatch
Coharie Arms CA-415
A semi-auto HK416 stand-in — John’s rifle from the unearthed arsenal
Benelli M4
The Italian semi-auto shotgun that becomes a franchise staple, debuting here

The P30L with its comp is still the gun most fans picture when they hear the name John Wick — it does most of the work in the Red Circle nightclub sequence that put the franchise on the map.

>Chapter 2 (2017): the sommelier's tasting

I know of your fondness for the German varietals, but I can wholeheartedly endorse the new breed of Austrians.

The Sommelier, John Wick: Chapter 2

Chapter 2 is where Taran Tactical Innovations takes over the armory, and the film celebrates it with the best scene in the series: a Roman gun sommelier pairing weapons to the evening's work like vintages to courses.

Glock 34 TTI Combat Master
The "tasting" — a competition-tuned long-slide 9mm with TTI magwell and fiber-optic sights
Glock 26 TTI Combat Master
The compact companion piece, carried as backup through the catacombs
TTI TR-1 Ultralight
"Something robust... precise" — an 11.5-inch AR-15 with a compensator
TTI Benelli M4
"Something big, bold" — the M4 again, this time fully worked over by TTI
Dessert
"The finest cutlery" — a drawer of blades, because Rome

That Glock 34 Combat Master became so iconic that TTI sells civilian builds of it to this day — the rare case of a movie prop creating a real product line rather than copying one.

>Chapter 3 — Parabellum (2019): 9mm Major and armored shells

Parabellum's armory scene moves to the Continental's vault, where Charon walks John through options before the siege. The enemy has changed — High Table troops in ballistic armor — so the guns change with them.

2011 Combat Master
A double-stack STI 2011 race pistol in hot-loaded 9mm Major — Charon’s recommendation
Benelli M2
Run by John and Charon with armor-piercing slugs to crack the High Table’s shock troops
Pit Viper?
No — a common mix-up. The Pit Viper doesn’t exist yet; it’s built for Chapter 4
[ARMORY NOTE]
The Continental defense is a deliberate lesson in terminal ballistics: pistol rounds sparking off armor until John and Charon switch to shotguns and start aiming for the gaps. Few action films let the hardware drive the choreography this openly.

>Chapter 4 (2023): the Pit Viper and dragon's breath

Chapter 4 commissioned entirely new hardware. TTI built the Pit Viper — a 9mm 2011-style pistol with an integrated compensator — as John's signature sidearm, alongside the desert-tan Sand Viper sibling created for the production.

TTI Pit Viper
Custom 9mm 2011, integrated comp, double-stack mags — John’s Chapter 4 sidearm
TTI Sand Viper
The FDE-finished sibling 2011 built for Chapter 4
Genesis Arms Gen-12
AR-pattern 12-gauge loaded with incendiary dragon’s breath shells
Setting it apart
The Gen-12 stars in the overhead one-take apartment raid in Paris — fire visible from God’s-eye view

The dragon's breath sequence exists because of the gun, not the other way around: director Chad Stahelski wanted muzzle effects an overhead camera could read, and incendiary 12-gauge through a Gen-12 paints the frame. The result is the most discussed single shot in the series — fitting for a film with the franchise's highest body count.

>Ballerina (2025): Eve's arsenal

The spin-off keeps the TTI house style. Eve Macarro's primary is a Glock 17 wearing a prototype TTI “Ballerina” Combat Master package — bronze compensator, slide and magwell — and she's offered a TTI custom Benelli M2 with a 21-inch barrel and fin grip in Frank's shop. The film's most memorable duel, though, trades guns entirely for a pair of flamethrowers. More on Eve in the Ana de Armas file.

Around the same era, Canik and TTI released the real-world Canik TTI Combat — a Taran Butler-designed 9mm that isn't a screen hero gun but exists squarely because of the franchise's gravity.

>Taran Tactical: the armorer behind the legend

Nearly everything above traces back to one shop: Taran Tactical Innovations, founded by champion 3-gun competitor Taran Butler. TTI builds and tunes the screen guns, and — just as importantly — trains the cast. Keanu Reeves spent months at Butler's range learning competitive 3-gun (pistol, rifle, shotgun transitions), and the resulting practice footage went viral because it wasn't movie-fast. It was match-fast.

That training is why the films can shoot gun-fu in long, unbroken takes instead of hiding cuts — the actor can genuinely run the gun. The full story of Reeves' preparation is in the Keanu Reeves file.

[PROP DEPARTMENT]
Everything on this page describes screen-used film props and the productions behind them. On set, the weapons are handled by professional armorers under industry safety protocols — the choreography you see is the product of months of supervised training, not improvisation.

>Frequently Asked Questions

What guns does John Wick use?

John's signature weapons change each film: the HK P30L and Kimber-era hardware in John Wick (2014), TTI Glock 34/26 Combat Masters, a TR-1 Ultralight AR-15 and a TTI Benelli M4 in Chapter 2, the 2011 Combat Master and Benelli M2 in Chapter 3, and the TTI Pit Viper 9mm plus the Genesis Arms Gen-12 shotgun in Chapter 4.

What Glock does John Wick use?

In Chapter 2 John uses a Glock 34 customized by Taran Tactical Innovations as the Combat Master, with a Glock 26 Combat Master as backup. Both are recommended by the Roman sommelier as "the new breed of Austrians."

What pistol does John Wick use in John Wick 4?

The TTI Pit Viper, a custom 9mm 2011-style pistol built by Taran Tactical Innovations specifically for Chapter 4, with an integrated compensator and double-stack magazine.

What shotgun does John Wick use with the fire rounds?

The Genesis Arms Gen-12, an AR-pattern 12-gauge, loaded with incendiary dragon's breath shells in Chapter 4's overhead one-shot apartment raid in Paris.

Is the Canik TTI Combat in the John Wick movies?

Not as a screen-used hero gun. The Canik TTI Combat is a real-world collaboration between Canik and Taran Tactical Innovations — the company behind the films' guns — so it's marketed in the John Wick orbit, but Eve's pistol in Ballerina is a TTI-customized Glock 17.

Who trained Keanu Reeves to shoot?

Champion 3-gun competitor Taran Butler of Taran Tactical Innovations trained Reeves at his range in California. Footage of Reeves running 3-gun drills before Chapter 2 went viral for its genuine competition-level speed.