Gun-related sayings that need to go away

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and, yes "tragic boating accident" is supposed to be cute and clever, but it is a very corny and worn-out.
I guess it will be used to avoid gun confiscation in some imaginary future Gestapo-style state, I highly doubt that would work ...
 
A lot of good ones here. I'll have to add, "The only way to stop a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun." No, it's not the only way. It may be the most effective way in most cases, but this is very dependent upon the exact circumstances of each incident. If you search you can find real-life examples of when this statement wasn't true.

Using the term "Glock" to describe any polymer-framed semiautomatic pistol, the term "High-Capacity Magazines" to describe standard-capacity magazines, and the term "Assault Weapon" to describe... well, this is just an asinine manufactured term anyway and means absolutely nothing.
 
Actually, a zinc-alloy RG-25 will just as easily kill someone if employed correctly.

In light of this, what is your point? Ruger revolvers can be deadly? Granted. Ruger revolvers are well-made. Granted. But what does any of that have to do with the question at hand?


The saying, "Rugers are built LIKE tanks" that was stated as being a gun related saying that needs to go away. That it may but I was only making the point that they are built stout the way humans refer to as "like a tank". Same way a big steel car is referenced as being a "tank". Or anything that's built to be very big or strong.

I'm not sure how literal you are getting with this saying or what you read but by being built like a tank I mean built for strength. No side plate and beefy. Strong, similar to a tank, as the saying implies.

The last part was meant in more of a joking sense but another way it's similar to a tank is it will kill you. Not that its the only firearm that will and I'm kinda stunned I'm actually having this interaction with somebody about some off comment I made, which actually is true.

Also, I'm TN Outlaw, not TX Outlaw as in your quote of my post.
 
"Colonel Cooper said..." is one I wish would go away. Very little that he said has any relevance today as far as I'm concerned. He's like Galen: an important historical figure but almost none of his treatments are still in the medical books today.
 
To take one of my initial 3 as an example, it's both amusing and frustrating watching some competitors in a game like USPSA stay very smooth - and very slow - for years without making any material improvements in their speed. Because they have been promised that if they stay slow and smooth well enough, the speed will eventually come naturally. If/when they finally get frustrated and decide to practice speed for a change, they often get different results in a short space of time. But they get deterred from doing this for months or years (or, worse, forever) because of an old saying that keeps going around.

I agree, the saying isn't the best way of communicating the message. The message, which originated in the SF community, is "Start your training with slow, by-the-numbers motions.As your proficiency increases, increase the speed until proficiency drops a bit, then train until it is back to where it was, repeat until at maximum speed that maintains proficiency."

"Its the Indian not the arrow"

It was Ross Seyfried that won an IPSC match with a stock Government model 1911 way back when. Yes, it was way back when, but even at that time modded 1911s were the fashion for matches.

Well, I agree with the sentiment, though the saying is inelegant. I shoot Trap with an 870 Tactical Magnum with a SpeedFeed III pistol grip stock (and a 28" Remchoke barrel, not the 20" cyl.) , and shoot right along side the top shooters with their 725 Citoris, BT-99's, and Silver Pigeon Berettas. You shoot what you have, and for now, that's all I have. I do plan on getting a BT-99 or Citori before next Trap season.

For some reason, i can tolerate the occasional boomstick, but the adolescent term "shottie" gives me a Yosemite Sam meltdown.

AMEN to that!
There's very few saying that makes us look like ignorant teenage gamers that the use of that word.
Shottie and Deagle; both are the excremental detritus of the gaming community us shooters are left to scoop up. :barf: I do occasionally use them for colloquial humor.
 
To respond to a couple of earlier ones;

"Slow is smooth, and smooth is fast" - intended to slow down beginners or someone performing a new task in order to get them to focus on fundamentals. It works.

"Rugers are built like tanks" - my experience at the Armor School taught me that Rugers are built BETTER than tanks.

To add new one:

"If you ever shoot someone on your porch, make sure to drag them inside" - good advice on how to get locked up.
 
  • Beware the man with one gun/rifle/pistol; he probably knows how to use it.
.

IMO this is a very good saying. Prior to the emergence of the middle-class after WWII most folk could not afford owning many firearms so they made do with what they had. The 32-20 was considered to be a good deer rifle until the gun writers and "experts" came along and told me it isn't so. (Come to think of if the 32-20 isn't enough cartridge for deer why is the .223? :confused: )

But the real meaning to me is practice, practice, practice with what you use for self-defense. Instead of buying another gun spend the gun on ammunition and range time. (FYI I am guilty of buying guns when I should be shooting more).

What is frightening to me is look at the many posts on THR of members that only shoot a couple of magazines full of ammunition when they get a new carry gun, call it good enough and start carrying it for self-defense. So after shooting less than 25 rounds they are totally confident of their ability to operate the gun correctly under stress and that it will work flawlessly.

The two most important rules in a gunfight are: always cheat and always win.
- What does that actually mean?

For me it means having the warrior mindset. My life is so valuable to me that I am going to do everything I can to survive the outcome.


"It's the Indian, not the arrow."

Become a firearms instructor or send time at a shooting range watching folks shoot. Watch for the guy (usually trying to impress a female companion or a newbie). he shoots what at best can be called a pattern, complains that the sights are off and out comes his trusty screwdriver. Or with fixed sight guns it either goes back into the safe or is traded / sold off for another gun that has sights that are off. o_O

As I previously commented read past posts to see how many THR do not practice with their self-defense guns.

The whole "don't pull a .25 on somebody. If you do, you might have to shoot him with it. If you do shoot him with it, he might just find out. If he finds out, he might just be mad enough to beat you to death with it." thing..

Spend some time riding along with Police Officers going to shooting calls or in a hospital emergency room. To me the .25 is false security especially in golden age of small, well design pistols of a much more powerful cartridge.

"I'd rather be judged by twelve than carried by six"

To me reflects ignorance of the legal requirement for claiming self-defense. I'll just shoot him and figure out if it was legal is b.s. way of thinking.

and, yes "tragic boating accident" is supposed to be cute and clever, but it is a very corny and worn-out.

Worse yet is it is actively encouraging disobedience with the law.
 
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"Beware the man with one gun/rifle/pistol; he probably knows how to use it."
IMO this is a very good saying. Prior to the emergence of the middle-class after WWII most folk could not afford owning many firearms so they made do with what they had. The 32-20 was considered to be a good deer rifle until the gun writers and "experts" came along and told me it isn't so. (Come to think of if the 32-20 isn't enough cartridge for deer why is the .223? :confused: )

But the real meaning to me is practice, practice, practice with what you use for self-defense. Instead of buying another gun spend the gun on ammunition and range time. (FYI I am guilty of buying guns when I should be shooting more).

No. The saying makes a factual assertion about the real world. It claims that owning only one gun, or only one type of gun, is positive correlated with firearms competence. In other words, it says that you can use ownership of a single gun to predict/infer a higher likelihood of competence. Let's see how that would play out. Imagine we have 100 gun owners. 50 of them own a single firearm. 50 of them own multiple firearms.

The axiom posits that, if we were to take the to the range, on average the first group would be better at shooting and otherwise manipulating their firearm than the second 50. When I think of the serious, highly-competent shooters that I know, they would all be in the second group. Conversely, there are surely a lot of people who technically own a gun, but who rarely even touch the thing, much less shoot it. Are all of the first 50 like that? No, but a bunch are, if we selected a representative sample of single-gun-owners.

Does owning multiple guns make you competent? No, certainly not. Does owning a single gun make you incompetent? Again, no. Heck, there are a few people who own zero guns yet are competent (usually because they are issued their guns and some agency or branch owns them!). But, in this day and age, is there anybody who seriously thinks that most single-gun-owners are more proficient than most multiple-gun-owners, such that we can use ownership of a single gun as being a positive predictor of competence?

Come on. That's silly. And the saying is silly and wrong.
 
Dave,

I understand your viewpoint but we will have to agree to disagree.

As a rookie leo there were two very good pistol shooters on the department. One was the Chief who would outshoot most of us using his S&W Chief Special 2" barrel snubby which included shooting at 25 yards. The other was a Officer who was so good he would hold his 4" barrel S&W Model 10 upside down when qualifying just to make it challenging. I always aspired to be so good but some things just are not to be.

I was involved in IPSC in the early days. Early enough to watch it become a expensive equipment race. Most of the club members were pouring lots of money into their guns when they should have be using the money for ammo and range time.

The saying among the R.O.'s and top shooters was the shooter to watch for was the one with a well used 1911 that had the finish worn off from thousands of draws from the holster and being shot thousands of rounds.

I'll be honest. I like collecting guns. And to brutally honest most of them rarely get shot. They hang on the wall and shelves in the gun vault where they are admired, oiled and kept in good condition. However I put my practice for self-defense into just a few firearms. My year round carry handgun is the Beretta 92 and a SIG P239 as my movie theater gun. I have shot thousands of rounds in my Beretta but I am not sure I can say I truly know this gun. Familiar with? Oh yeah. But do I know it well enough to hit what I am aiming at when holding it upside down? Or hit the 10-ring at 100 yards everytime I pull the trigger?

I can easily live with just a few firearms. I would not be happy but the reality is it can meet all my of needs.

The reality is we live in a affluent society where the prevailing attitude is" the boy with the most toys wins".
 
Dave,

I understand your viewpoint but we will have to agree to disagree.

You disagree with me about what the axiom is saying? Or you seriously contend that ownership of a single firearm is positively correlated with skill?
 
Better judged by twelve than carried by six

Dumb interpretation is not to consider legal risks equipment choice, tactical aspects that might be counter productive (like saying if you carry a 380 you will empty the mag, reload and emptying the second magazine ) ,saying such on the internet.

Next -saying if it’s a good shoot ...
Assumes all will agree with your action
and you won’t go to trial or the jury will see it as a good shoot.
 
Yeah, sort of. I think it probably started as advice to guys on a firing line who were learning some kind of manipulation or movement for the first time. When you go faster than your competence allows, you do start to get the kinds of mistakes that slow you down. So if your goal is to get a class of 20 guys of varying skill level to, say, reload their pistols in a way that looks basically competent and can be done in a length of time that is not ridiculous, it's good advice. It has no relevance, though, when someone has the basic competence and then is actively trying to learn to go materially faster.

The "take your time in a hurry" is really about the need to go as fast as your competence allows, but no faster, when performing under pressure.

i agree with your point about training. i'll send you a pm on the topic. however, if you open the aperture a bit (since this thread is about annoying phrases), the saying is still applicable for the wide range of things that you don't really train for. i don't think we're saying pulling your pistol slower is faster. but complex movement, assessing situations, moving through obstacles like opening doors, etc and any sort of fine motor skill work is best done in a more deliberate manner than herky jerky top speed.
to your point, watching people manipulate bolt guns when they go buzzer dumb, is frightening. they'd be so much better off slowing down
i do hate the phrase though.

"It's the Indian, not the arrow."
My retort is that the Grand Masters don't need a custom gun to beat me, but they need the best they can get to try to beat each other.
in my experience the arrow has a LOT to do with it. i really hate it when people say "my rifle outshoots me". what they're telling me is "i can't shoot OR apply basic logic to a simple situation".

That’s kind of my point. “All guns are always loaded” is an absolute. It contains the words “all” and “always.”

It isn’t worded to be taken in context; we take it in context, because we aren’t idiots and we know it can’t be true. It is why we buy more ammunition, and practice reloads, and clear guns before we clean them: we know they aren’t always loaded. As I said, I have no problem with the phrase “treat all guns . . .” but to start teaching beginners with a lie seems like a disservice to me.

I prefer "all guns are always loaded" to "treat all guns as if they were loaded". not to pick nits, which we're totally doing, but you have the exact same problem with the second phrase you mentioned because it also uses the qualifier 'all'.

this discussion isn't about guns. it's about language. If I say I my wife yells all the time, do you take that to mean literally every second of every day she's yelling? no, you don't. we aren't lying when we make statements like that, even though they're not technically, precisely accurate. we assume our listeners are intelligent person capable of understanding the thoughts being conveyed. we choose phrases like this for emphasis and color, and it is rightly applied in this instance. call it poetic license.

You disagree with me about what the axiom is saying? Or you seriously contend that ownership of a single firearm is positively correlated with skill?

clearly, the best shooters own multiple rifles. i think you're being overly literal. these are SAYINGS. they're not intended to be taken literally. they're intended to make a point. this point of this one is if you have a finite amount of time to practice or shoot, spending 100% of your time on one thing is going to make you more skilled with that thing, as compared to dividing your time amongst lots of things.
it's common sense, and largely true. if a world class competitor took all the time he spent practicing pistol and shotgun, and instead applied it ALL to rifle, wouldn't he be even better at rifle?
i think the larger context is that most of the guys who collect lots of rifles and shoot a couple hundred rounds through each don't really develop the muscle memory or wind reading and practical ability of the guy who only shoots one rifle all the time
 
Better judged by twelve than carried by six

Dumb interpretation is not to consider legal risks equipment choice, tactical aspects that might be counter productive (like saying if you carry a 380 you will empty the mag, reload and emptying the second magazine ) ,saying such on the internet.

Next -saying if it’s a good shoot ...
Assumes all will agree with your action
and you won’t go to trial or the jury will see it as a good shoot.

The saying means, simply, that living is better than dying. I'd accept that axiomatically.

There are places you can kill in self defense and still wind up in keep legal kimshe.
 
The whole "what's your life worth?" when suggesting carry guns (or criticizing the choices made by others.)

There is not one person who can make me understand the algorithm behind that. So, you carry a three-thousand-dollar gun. How does that tell me at what amount, in USD, you value your life? I haven't even come up with an amount at which I value mine.

I have an algorithm. Lamda bang press.

Translation, if I press it damned well better go bang! I get that level of performance from a sixty dollar Harrington and Richardson shotgun.
 
"More accurate than i am"

Except in my case that is true with most of my guns. :( So for me it is a good saying.

I do have a couple of rifles that I can outshoot so to speak. A MN 91/30 that I have not been able to find the correct size of bullet to get something I call a decent group.

The other is a H&R Trapdoor carbine in 45/70. With it's light weight short barrel has a kick to it with full power blackpowder loads and the sights are a challenge. With the lack of training soldiers had back then it is no wonder Custer's men got wiped out.
 
If you can’t do it in five, you ain’t doing your job.

- just posturing baloney for many reasons
 
"Modern Sporting Rifles", I know its more a term than a saying... but it just nauseates me.

A hundred years ago, the hotshot fighting rifle was the Mauser. Today it is domesticated and ordinary, and I think that is what the nauseous saying hopes to convey about the AR-15.
 
If you can’t do it in five, you ain’t doing your job.

- just posturing baloney for many reasons

Flip side: "You ain't got but six shots in your revolver."

"I have eleven shots."

"Bull puckey!"

Until you have seen an old coot, who learned how when it mattered, do the New York reload you ain't seen the whole state fair, by a wide stretch. There is no audible discontinuity of fire.
 
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