offensive terms

KMAX said:
Pistol describing a revolver.
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A revolver is a pistol. It is only recently that some people have created an artificial distinction between revolving pistols and semi-automatic pistols that excludes revolvers from consideration as pistols.

By this modern definition, only a semi-automatic handgun is a "pistol." So how is it that those 200+ year old matched sets of flintlock dueling "thingies" were called "pistols"?

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This doesn't come up in casual conversation or in the mass media, but it really irks me when I see blackpowder shooters using Greenhill's twist rate formula to calculate the appropriate rifling twist for a spherical projectile.
 
A revolver is a pistol.
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Okay. I put five bullets in my SP101 pistol.

I don't put in empty cases. I try not to go to the range without bullets. It makes shooting much harder. I don't make my own bullets. I buy them, with and without cases, powder, and primers attached. So why do so many people get so bent out of shape when less technically minded folks don't use the proper word for ammunition. Even "ammo" could be considered incorrect. Seems odd to get annoyed about one word that may not be exactly correct but be fine with others.

It is only recently that some people have created an artificial distinction between revolving pistols and semi-automatic pistols that excludes revolvers from consideration as pistols.
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It may not be right, but it makes it easier to sort them on some websites.

This thread has been fun, but its my bedtime. Goodnight.
 
So how is it that those 200+ year old matched sets of flintlock dueling "thingies" were called "pistols"?
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I'm not really sure when or how folks started assuming that only automatics were "pistols." No-prize for anyone who can turn up the information.

Samuel Colt's original patent was for the Paterson Revolving Pistol, BTW.

I try not to go to the range without bullets.
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Several years ago, we had a guy come into the shop. Without asking any questions, he went over to the reloading section and picked up a box of .45 Barnes bullets. He bought them without comment.

A few hours later, he came back in to shoot. I assumed he'd gone home and loaded some ammo.

After a couple of minutes, he approached me and informed me that his gun was malfunctioning. Specifically, he was having failures to fire. I went over to the line, and there were two magazines, loaded to the brim with bullets. Not cartridges. Just bullets.

Yesterday, a guy did come in asking for cartridges. He bemoaned my ignorance when I asked what caliber he needed. "No, they're the things that go in the gun. The things that hold those." He was referring to magazines.

Some days, I live the dream, baby.
 
Hi KMAX

Don't forget Folger's Tactical Coffee for your Duracoated tactical coffee cup. Please note that genuine tactical snipers do not drink frappes nor put cream or sugar in their black (as in black ops) coffee.

My coffee maker pours within 1 MOC (minute of cup). Which leads me to another offensive term "minute of man or torso or body."
 
ScottRiqui said:
I've never seen anyone corrected on that score - what makes "charge" incorrect?
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Nothing. That is an example of "Some that don't seem to matter, at least to me ..." I've edited to put that sentence in that paragraph.

I've not seen people "corrected" so much as I have seen new reloaders question it's meaning.
 
I don't find the terms offensive but like so many others have mentioned, I cringe every time someone in the media says "high powered assault rifle" or "military style assault rifle."

I was watching Don Lemon on CNN and I swear he must have said one of those two terms every 10 secs for an hour straight. It's like he was contractually mandated to say them as much as possible.

On a much more frightening note. The Century 16 movie theater is about 3 blocks from my house. A buddy of mine called and asked me if I wanted to go to the midnight showing that night, but I had to go to work at 3 am. He ended up staying home as well. I-225 passes right by that theater and as I was driving to work I saw some police lights and didn't think anything of it. Figured they just pulled over a drunk or something. There wasn't anything on the radio about it either. I didn't find out about the shooting until I got to work and co-worker mentioned it.
 
Thank you, Tom Sevro

Enjoyed the story about the bullets and the cartridges. That's funny there.

As for offensive terms, I really usually consider that the source is less informed on the subject and may or may not try to correct them, depending on if I feel it will make any difference or if they will change anyway. Also, I try to keep in mind that I don't know everything and didn't always know as much as I know now. I learn new stuff all the time.
 
I just read another one in an AP article "high-powered drum magazine"

I can pm the link upon request.


The reason I embrace terms such as "assault rifle" is that I believe adopting the term can take away its power. How many serious target shooters use an AR "assault type" platform? Take the power out of the words and let them come up with more and more ridiculous terminology.
 
I think it is more appropriate to cringe when you read that someone used a high-powered assault rifle to actually kill someone. I think it is even more appropriate to cringe when you read a description of someone who went and shot up a place and it sounds an awful lot like yourself, except for the age, right down to the arsenal in the basement.

I think you're kidding yourself when you somehow imagine that isn't what guns are for. When you carry around the latest pistol (or revolving pisol) around stuck in your pocket, do you tell yourself that it isn't really there for the purpose of shooting someone. Horace Kephart, an outdoor writer of the turn of the century, took an acquaintance to a shooting competition back when shuztenfest-style target shooting was popular. He thought it would impress his friend. His friend watched for a while and commented that if it were for all the smoke and noise, it would be a nice lady's activity.

But I imagine that people who fence no longer imagine that what they're doing is pretending to fight someone else--with a weapon totally useless in combat, unless that's all the other person has.
 
Who pretends all that?

We may shoot targets, but target practice was designed to train soldiers and, to some extent, hunters.

It may be sport for many, now, but it wasn't in its origins.

And those of us who carry concealed certainly don't pretend weapons aren't deadly.

The types whom I tend to find in denial are the bunny-huggers and the antis.

For instance, the antis think that gun control laws seriously impact felons, instead of law-abiding types.

And bunny-huggers just have fits when it's pointed out that the cute kitten, lying on its back and holding a ball of yarn with its front paws while kicking it with its rear paws, is practing holding its prey with the fronts and gutting it with the rears.

Kind of like the dog, shaking its toy, is practicing neck breaks.

Lots of things out there, that may be harmless in the form we typically observe, derive from things that were not remotely harmless.

And dog bites can still really hurt.

So can guns.
 
I hear what you're saying but what I'm getting at is the way hunters are perfectly willing for "assault rifles" to be banned, provided they can keep their sporting weapons, which are by definition, innocent objects. The same thing with target shooters, some of whom use brightly colored rifles that don't look so much like weapons as they do sporting equipment.

It's all guilt by association. A switchblade isn't sharper than a kitchen paring knife, probably, yet it is associated with gang members, and youthful ones at that--or do they also carry paring knives? I realize that guns are merely tools (and toys, too) but do people really kill other people with hammers, screwdrivers, wrenches, ice picks (okay, maybe ice picks), kitchen knives, scissors, hatpins (you may need to google that), axes, tire irons, and the like? I suspect it happens once in a while but would you use one over using a gun?

Even sixty years ago, articles were being entitled, "Today a rock may kill you!" I don't know. Maybe it just used to be more common.
 
Most of the terminology mentioned in the many posts to this thread are just cases of ignorance or sloppiness in language use, but there are terms that are meant to influence the readers perceptions of the issue. The one that bothers me the most is "arsenal". It seems common that in press accounts of a crime where police sieze weapons and ammunition at the home of the suspect, finding two or three firearms and more than a box of ammunition constitutes "an aresenal". It is clearly an intent to convince the reader that the individual is preparing for mayhem or an end-of-the-world-as-we-know-it crazy. I recently was talking with a non-gun enthusiast aquaintance who asked me how much ammunition I keep on hand. I am not even a frequent shooter, going to the range maybe 4 to 6 times a year, but when I mentioned that I have about 2000 rounds in various calibers, not including a few boxes of 500 each 22-caliber long rounds, he reacted with "are you preparing for the end of the world?". I am not a golfer, so I think it odd that someone would have 3 or 4 sets of golf clubs, after all you can only use one set at a time, but then again, golf is not my game. With guns and ammunition, ignorance is one thing, but emotionally distorting language is another thing, and that is what anti-gun journalists often engage in.
 
Offensive to me:

gun control
gun safety
gun licenses
gun ban
gun buyback
........and every politician who supports mandating any of the above.
 
Quote:
There are two types of automatic firearms: semi-automatic and fully automatic. Over the years, it has become common and accepted practice to refer to fully automatic firearms simply as "automatic" while semi-automatics are differentiated by their prefix.

So what you are saying is that the common and accepted practice is okay as you see it, but you still find fault with the media for using the correct terminology when they do. In other words, when gun folk became lazy and dropped "fully" from "fully automatic" that was okay, but the press calling a gun "automatic" instead of "semi automatic" is wrong despite the fact that the press' description is accurate.
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If I thought the media were doing this out of ignorance or laziness, it wouldn't bother me so much, but when they misuse the term it's usually in an intentional attempt to confuse the difference between semi-automatics and fully automatics.

For example, if the anchor simply said something like "police found an automatic pistol at the scene" it wouldn't bother me all that much. What they normally do, however, is report on a propoasal to ban "automatic assault rifles" (given the definition of assault rifle, this implies a fully automatic weapon) or talk about "dangerous automatic weapons" while showing video of someone dumping a magazine through a full auto Uzi or something. Confusion arising from honest mistake I can forgive, but that rising from intentional misrepresentation and fear mongering I can't.
 
Offensive to me:

gun control
gun safety
gun licenses
gun ban
gun buyback
........and every politician who supports mandating any of the above.
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you're joking, right? gun safety should be paramount for anyone considering obtaining a firearm. if there's one thing i'm certain of, there's are a lot of irresponsible gun owners out there who wouldn't know how to properly handle a firearm if they tried
 
The one that bothers me the most is "arsenal". It seems common that in press accounts of a crime where police sieze weapons and ammunition at the home of the suspect, finding two or three firearms and more than a box of ammunition constitutes "an aresenal".
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well, the dictionary definition of arsenal is, "a collection of firearms," so it's not that far off the mark. how many guns constitute a collection is open for debate. it's also a term that's frequently bandied about on this very forum when someone gets a new gun. case in point: http://thefiringline.com/forums/showthread.php?t=496311. so it's ok for a gun owner to refer to their collection as an arsenal, but when the media does it it's incorrect?
 
I hate nothing more than when people say 'clip' instead of 'magazine'.

When people say it and then say I'm wrong when I correct them, that's even worse.

I also hate when people say silencer, but I can live with it, barely.
 
By flip out, Tom - I meant starting to preach, war dance, berate, scorn and monkey dance on someone who says clip or bullets, incorrectly.

I will gently in the course of conversation inform them. That's what I mean by not flipping out.

Being a psychologist and listening to so much crap in that domain from lay people, I've learned to be mellow (well, sometimes!!).

Just like the folks who don't understand the modern usage of insane in the context of legal proceedings vs. psychiatric or psychological processes. Now, if you don't know that - :mad: ($(*#)$(* - ;), etc.

I agree that 'arsenal' is just media hype. Assault pistols are stupid. Tactical knives - my black Spyderco is tactical. WalMart sells them in different colors. I've read you should carry a yellow one as now it looks like an emergency tool. BTW, I do like the raspberry LCP - they are pretty.
 
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