As was seen in Star Wars A New Hope the Millennium Falcon has dorsal and ventral laser cannons. During the Battle of Endor I can not recall ever seeing these weapons used, even though they probably would have been very helpful (such as when being chased by TIE fighters through the superstructure of the Death Star 2).
Was there some legitimate reason for why these guns were not used?
According to this forum thread:
Yes, the turrets were manned during the Battle of Endor. As mentioned above, those shots were deleted, however. An image in the STAR WARS: THE ACTION FIGURE ARCHIVE shows the man seated behind Lando in one of the turrets.
This is confirmed on Wookieepedia list of cut scenes in ROTJ
There are cut shots of rebel gunners aboard the Millennium Falcon.
Those guns were fired. A few frames from Return of the Jedi:
Those girders were whizzing by awfully close. Anyone sane would want to stay in the center of the ship to avoid the risk of being scraped off. Indeed, they banged the roof of the ship against the superstructure on the way in. Also, as they headed into the Death Star there were X-wings running interference behind the Falcon, so they would have risked blasting their own ships. The Falcon did blast fighters in the battle outside the station, particularly in the scene just before Lando wonders aloud why the Star Destroyers were not engaging the Rebels.
The gun wells were actually manned! you don't really get to see it in the movies, but Airen Cracken actually fires from the top turret. He eventually went on to be a general in the New Republic Intelligence, and fathered Pash Cracken, a member from Rogue Squadron during their insertion into Coruscant, in preparation for the Assault by the New Republic :P
In A New Hope those guns had to be manned, by Han and Luke. Those guns are also in bubbles, which add a certain amount of risk to those manning them.
The Rebels had every ship manned that they could, which required a lot of manpower. Also, my impression was that the Millenium Falcon, in that case, was primarily a command ship and secondarily an attack ship. While Lando was in the pilot's seat, he had a co-pilot and someone else, who seemed to be handling secondary needs, like navigation and communication. It's very possible they didn't want to put two more men in that one ship. (Also, with 3-4 people in that ship as it was, adding two would mean losing one ship would take out 6 crew members, which makes it a much higher risk than losing one man in a fighter.)
It's also possible it was given the specific mission to target the power core, which they knew would mean flying through narrow spaces and didn't want to put men in the bubbles to man the guns.
In The Force Awakens it is stated that the Falcon is designed for use with a copilot. And in ROTJ there only is 2 or 3 people in the ship. They could be fired from the cockpit, and they are, outside of the Death Star. But once they went inside, there was girders and stuff, and there had X-Wings following them. They might hit the guns off of the ship, or they might hit their own men.
