Need to stop using the word weapon. What's more appropriate?

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Brian Pfleuger said:
I'm imagining teaching a group of Boy Scouts to shoot. Teaching the four rules, etc.
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The four rules, is a bad example given this post I made on page five. Jeff Cooper uses the term weapon all through his writings in direct reference to firearms. I hardly think he qualifies as a mall ninja.

Also this site is owned and hosted by SWAT Magazine (Special Weapons and Tactics), the term weapon and weapons are used throughout the articles in that publication. Rob Pincus for example, doesn't fit the description of a mall ninja either.

As others have stated many, many times in this thread alone, members of the military are specifically trained to call their issued rifles weapons. Many of the members of TFL are current active duty and ex-military, many are active LEOs, ex-LEOs, firearms instructors and combat shooters, that use the term weapon for firearms all the time. To suggest that doing so is a habit confined largely to 'mall ninjas' is at best incorrect and at worst mildly insulting.

Imagine if the people I referenced above referred to hunters and target shooters who'd never served in the military, never been police, or engaged in combat type shooting as, fudds who've never fired a weapon except on a skeet range, or at a squirrel, for using the term 'shooting iron', or 'muh gun', etc. They'd be quickly warned not to insult other members and rightly so.

Calling firearms weapons is not a technicality, or semantics, weapons are what they are. As already demonstrated earlier in this thread, arms are synonymous* with weapons. Whether certain individuals, like or use the word, has nothing to do with it. When one calls a pistol, rifle or shot gun a firearm, they are calling it a weapon. Remember also that firearms and ammunition are weapons.


* synonymous

1. : having the character of a synonym; also : alike in meaning or significance
2. : having the same connotations, implications, or reference
 
There's also a context to my statements. Context is important.

Boy Scouts and deer hunters are neither soldiers nor SWAT officers.

I never said the word was "confined" to anything.

Being able to adapt one's word usage to fit the audience is an important part of effective communication. Soldiers use the word "weapon" in the appropriate context. Firearms instructors, teaching survival or defensive tactics use the word weapon in appropriate context.

Teaching Boy Scouts and soccer mom's is NOT the appropriate context. Talking to "regular" people in "average" conversation is not the appropriate context.

Is the word technically correct? Yes, it is. Is it the appropriate word for effective communication at those moments? No, it is not.

Firearms are weapons.

We don't have to "find" a different word. Ordinary people don't use that word in ordinary conversation.

It's not PC. It just doesn't fit the ordinary conversation.

You'll see from my very first post in this thread that I said we don't stop using the word "weapon". It's the context that matters.
 
I don't disagree with you Brian. Context does matter. Using militaristic sounding lingo in the wrong setting is inappropriate. We're all aware of the wannabe type who over does their tacticool persona.

However, if someone asks someone else, especially a non-gun oriented person, "What type of weapon do you CCW?" and they answer "I don't carry a weapon, I carry a Glock 19." That would be a ridiculous, non-sensical answer. I realize you would never do that, but some of the posts in this thread make me wonder if others might.
 
"Personal weapons are what raised mankind out of the mud, and the rifle is the queen of personal weapons."

"The rifle is a weapon. Let there be no mistake about that. It is a tool of power, and thus dependent completely upon the moral stature of its user. It is equally useful in securing meat for the table, destroying group enemies on the battlefield, and resisting tyranny. In fact, it is the only means of resisting tyranny, since a citizenry armed with rifles simply cannot be tyrannized."

"The rifle itself has no moral stature, since it has no will of its own. Naturally, it may be used by evil men for evil purposes, but there are more good men than evil, and while the latter cannot be persuaded to the path of righteousness by propaganda, they can certainly be corrected by good men with rifles."

—Jeff Cooper, The Art of the Rifle
 
Ask Kim Rhode (olympic shotgun shooter) if she refers to her shotgun as a weapon.

Ask Amanda Furrer (olympic 3 position rifle shooter) if she refers to her rifle as a weapon.

Just food for thought. By the by - my bro and I call everything a smokewagon :D:D

But - if and when I may need to be politically / technically correct, they are pistols, revolvers, rifles, and shotguns. ;)
 
It's argued that the sporting uses mean the boom thingee is not a weapon. However, even the specialized and techy events and guns are derivative of their primary lethal usage for people or animals.

Look at a lumberjack competition - certainly an axe is a deadly instrument or weapon and some were designed for such. However, one can use the axe as a tool easily. The competitions primarily practice such. Yeah, there are axe throwing as a side event.

The boom thingee was designed not to cut down trees but put holes in living creatures. The sporting events came from practice of such.

The Swiss shooting competitions were to practice using them as weapons and not as a method of making holes in Swiss cheese.
 
Side Note:


I just finished a research report on Gun Control in America for my final in my College poli-sci class…………..and I used "weapon" quite a few times:D
 
I'm kind of torn on this one. Firearms can be defined as a weapon or as a piece of machinery designed to expel projectiles at high velocities: Neither are wrong. Machetes are generally classified as agricultural implements but were used during the Rwandan genocide. In the end, words are merely words while actions speak for themselves.

When I think of the first projectile weapon, it was most likely either a rock or a sharpened piece of stick. In that case, would the weapon be the rock/sharp stick, the man throwing it or both? Unlike math which is cold and absolute, words evoke emotions and carry multiple meanings.

Looking at the evolution of warfare and weapons, the human factor is gradually diminishing. A time where man would kill an enemy with his bare hands to a time where man can kill with a press of a switch. Separate the man from the machine, the machine cannot kill on its own* but man can still function independently as a weapon.

I hate to consider objects as weapons since just about any object, no matter how benign, can be weaponized. I also feel that ultimately every man is accountable for his own actions. To even place partial blame on an inanimate object goes against my principles, as the murderer will be 100% responsible in my eyes. At any rate the 2nd Amendment is most definitely not about sporting or hunting, that is a given. In the end I feel there is no wrong or right answer.

*Excluding landmines and traps.
 
Odd said:
I'm kind of torn on this one. Firearms can be defined as a weapon or as a piece of machinery designed to expel projectiles at high velocities: Neither are wrong. Machetes are generally classified as agricultural implements but were used during the Rwandan genocide. In the end, words are merely words while actions speak for themselves.

When I think of the first projectile weapon, it was most likely either a rock or a sharpened piece of stick. In that case, would the weapon be the rock/sharp stick, the man throwing it or both? Unlike math which is cold and absolute, words evoke emotions and carry multiple meanings.

Looking at the evolution of warfare and weapons, the human factor is gradually diminishing. A time where man would kill an enemy with his bare hands to a time where man can kill with a press of a switch. Separate the man from the machine, the machine cannot kill on its own* but man can still function independently as a weapon.

I hate to consider objects as weapons since just about any object, no matter how benign, can be weaponized. I also feel that ultimately every man is accountable for his own actions. To even place partial blame on an inanimate object goes against my principles, as the murderer will be 100% responsible in my eyes. At any rate the 2nd Amendment is most definitely not about sporting or hunting, that is a given. In the end I feel there is no wrong or right answer.

*Excluding landmines and traps.
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Your own words betray your attempted rationalization. ;)

"Looking at the evolution of warfare and weapons..."

What weapons? If usage of an object is the defining characteristic of whether or not an object is a weapon, there are no "weapons" to evolve. There would be "things" that people sometimes use as weapons, that they are changing to make the use of those non-weapon things more effective when they choose to use those not-always-weapons as weapons.

The way you use the word weapon in that sentence, without definition or qualification, implies that you expect the reader to understand what the word weapon means... and you'd be right.

We all subconsciously know that firearms are weapons and we use the word accordingly. We have to consciously attempt to rationalize it away if we decide we don't like it. It's not the typical (or logical) understanding to think they're not weapons.
 
I just finished a research report on Gun Control in America for my final in my College poli-sci class…………..and I used "weapon" quite a few times
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Looking back do you think you could have not used the word weapon in your paper ? If it was a must could you have used it much less ?
 
You can't go wrong by calling it a firearm.

Trapshooter
Hunter
Soldier
Collector

Its the same to all of the above.
 
Whenever I had to register a handgun in the history of the old rules, the cop always told me, "Your weapon is on the desk," "Your card is with your weapon," i.e. they never seemed to call it a gun. It stuck and I've always called it a weapon. That's what it is anyway, as I see it, so I don't mind the term at all and use it myself quite a bit, though I don't have an aversion to the term gun or firearm, either.

I do HATE the term gat, or any of the others that seemed to come from the 'hood.:rolleyes: I have an original Gat, which is a pellet gun, and I've always wondered it that is where the term originated.
 
I hate the term 'piece'. In class, once a guy drew his roscoe and on the draw threw it down range about 10 feet. He said: OH, I lost my piece.

How about gat?

Have we concluded yet that we will not change any anti's mind by not calling boom thingees weapons?

Bob Costas wouldn't call for a tool ban?
 
OK this is my last post on this thread ;)

It's not about the anti's or the pro guys . It's about the undecideds . We will never convince antis a gun is not a WMD just like you will never convince the pro guys that a semi auto AR is an assualt rifle . It's about being able to pull some over to your side that are still on the fence or have no real dog in the race or what ever metaphor you wish .
 
It's not about the anti's or the pro guys . It's about the undecideds . We will never convince antis a gun is not a WMD just like you will never convince the pro guys that a semi auto AR is an assualt rifle . It's about being able to pull some over to your side that are still on the fence or have no real dog in the race or what ever metaphor you wish .
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The best way to get an undecided onto our side is to take them out shooting. Changing our lingo will in no way make them decide one way or another. Take them shooting and in 9 times out of 10, you've just made another shooter.
 
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