Jim Zubiena served as firearms instructor (he also guest starred as the hit man who killed Crockett's first boss, before Castillo took over) for this show. He is an expert marksman and personally trained Don Johnson on how to move, fire and reload. This show was noted for its high sense of realism when it came to the gun battles, and it shows.

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Thanks, that's some cool trivia. And I noticed that about Supernatural aswell. I always enjoy it when movie- and tv producers pay attention to stuff like this.

Miami Vice was noted at the time for having at least some coordination and cooperation from local law enforcement, which included Johnson and Thomas doing some ride-along with the real Vice unit. In fact, some of the stories were based on local police scandals.
There are a lot of little details, especially early on, that they put in for local color. "Smuggler's Blues" is really notable for that, especially one fun scene where they're all standing around talking about the different jurisdictions and departments involved in their operation, and how tricky it's going to be figuring out the leak in their own department as a result.
A more recent show (though definitely not a cop show) that's noted for doing weapon handling and gun play well is Supernatural on the CW. Both leads have talked about going to the gun range to practice and there have been scenes in the show where they're discussing a case while one or both of them is cleaning their weapons or they're lock-and-loading up for a fight.
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Compared to the cop shows today where everyone is always racking a round. Or most of the cop shows the cops always charge their weapon. And the weapon makes So much noise when they do it. Not to mention the noise of a semi auto and the gun is a wheel gun. I was always taught to be locked and loaded at all times.

I noticed that even back them. Not as glamourous as other shows at the time but more realistic.

And yes. He's really adamant about training his actors to handle weapons correctly.

Yeah, and those stock sound samples were dated, even then. They were from the fifties. Maybe this was what made Mann start recording actual gunfire for use in his later films.

Crockett's gun had that stock sound effect sound heard in all cop shows in the '80s.
But I think you're right about the weapons-handling, and that's clearly Mann's influence. It's consistent in all of his movies.
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I noticed that too. Maybe it's because his pistol is supposed to be more powerful than most other pistols used on the show. It's a Bren 10, which was a very powerful(but not impractically so) pistol at the time. It was one of very few pistols chambered in 10mm. That said, the gunfire sound library feels a bit dated.

Not sure, as I am no expert in weapons and their handling, but I do remember Sonny Crockett's weapon sounding very different than anyone else's in the series.
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