"ok, imagine a gun."
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That's like an amazing American showerthought, I never even considered it
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It's used in the UK too
Fortunately I can't say I've ever met anyone who uses it. I believe it though, I'm seeing American-isms creep in to regular speech more and more.
Can't say I like it.
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Years ago I read "shotgun wedding" and thought it was common to see a guy having to marry a girl he fucked while her father was there at the side with a rifle.
Capaz son asi andá a saber...
wrote last edited by [email protected]It means "quick marriage because the bride is pregnant" and that is 100% the origin of the phrase.
Particularly in poorer, rural parts of the USA having a child out of wedlock was incredibly shameful, and the financial burden of a single motherhood was intolerable. So the bride's family would ensure the man responsible married their daughter ... regardless of how he felt about it. Sometimes that meant having a shotgun at the wedding to ensure he didn't run off.
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Every American police car I've seen has the gun rack in the trunk.
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They're both staplers - one's just manual and the other isn't.
Spray bottles did not exist before guns, no.
They both put staples into things but they aren't really interchangeable functionally. It makes sense to distinguish them depending on the context.
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Shotgun is an America thing, coming from the stagecoach era. The shotgun in question has a shortened barrel for reduced storage footprint.
The BMW R12 has a sidecar mounted with an MG 42 light machine gun. But no-one calls sidecar gunner
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La place du mort, c'est pas le siège du milieu a l'arrière ?
Ben j'ai toujours pensé que c'est la place du passager.
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While this is probably some bullshit from the horse drawn carriage era, what I'd like to say is that statistically speaking riding shotgun is the most dangerous seat in car crashes, so the saying still works
Isn't that because a driver will instinctively pull left (instinct to protect their own body) when facing a head on collision in many cases? Also the rate of being thrown from the vehicle, being pierced by objects from outside the vehicle, and the risk of unsecured things (including passengers not belted in - wear your goddamn seatbelt!) flying forward from the back all being higher?
Not sure how the saying still works if those types of things are the main causes for passengers riding shotgun being statistically higher to get fatally injured
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Ben j'ai toujours pensé que c'est la place du passager.
Ça dépend peut-être de la région.
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Yes, thats part of the why but it's still odd culturally from the perspective of the rest of the world especially since what you're describing occurred 100+ years ago and the terminology has likely only persisted because of the US' gun obsession.
only persisted because
That is a wild stretch of imagination. Loads of things we say, across all countries and languages, persist for centuries after losing their original meanings.
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only persisted because
That is a wild stretch of imagination. Loads of things we say, across all countries and languages, persist for centuries after losing their original meanings.
Sure but in this case there are numerous gun related phrases that have persisted in American culture because of this particular affinity.
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NL here. "Shotgun" is a concept, though mostly through Pop Culture Osmosis.
hi northernlion i love your videos
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The apocryphal story is actually kind of interesting.
Roads and right of way established during the pre-firearm era were that you'd ride on the left, with people going the opposite way on your right. This was so you could use your dominant hand (usually your right) to use a sword to defend yourself.
Roads after firearms were available often established right of way with riding on the right, with oncoming traffic on the left. This is because when you shoulder a firearm on your right shoulder it's easier to aim left.
Stagecoach drivers would sit in the left seat, with the extra person sitting on the right, holding a shotgun, hence the colloquial term for the front passenger seat.
I have no idea how true this is, but it makes for an interesting story.
In Europe it was because of Napoleon. In the US is was because of how wagons were made, according to this article:
https://www.cnn.com/2024/03/02/business/why-americans-drive-on-the-right-and-the-british-on-the-left
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No, no, no, this is all wrong. When we discuss immigration and the current situation in the US all Americans are European immigrants.
When we talk about the genocide of the natives Americans, it was done by Americans, Europeans had nothing to do with it.
Technically 85% correct now, after brexit
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In Australia: yes and it's commonplace. But like 70% of our media is American so unsurprising.
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Now I'd like to know why in France it's la place du Mort, the seat of the dead...
Because they didn't have a shotgun.
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Tell that to my .22 Ramset.
Ramsets use .22 blanks, not bullets, and would have the same issues being used as a pistol at range as any other powered hammer. Even if you override the safety, and either modify or practice with it enough to be reasonably accurate, you're just not going to do much damage if you're more than an arm's length or two away.
Nails have terrible ballistic performance, and there's nothing in a nailer meant to keep the nail going straight for more than 10cm or so. A nail launched into air (rather than a hard surface) from a nailer would start to tumble almost immediately.
You'd literally be more effective throwing the nailer at an attacker than trying to shoot them with it.
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That is purely an American thing.
Not saying my family had someone in the passenger seat with a shotgun to protect their batch of white lightning...also not saying they didn't.
wrote last edited by [email protected]Nope. Canada had stagecoach and shotguns too. So did Mexico. The Sundance Kid owned a bar in Calgary at one point, and worked out at the Bar U ranch near Calgary before that.
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Ramsets use .22 blanks, not bullets, and would have the same issues being used as a pistol at range as any other powered hammer. Even if you override the safety, and either modify or practice with it enough to be reasonably accurate, you're just not going to do much damage if you're more than an arm's length or two away.
Nails have terrible ballistic performance, and there's nothing in a nailer meant to keep the nail going straight for more than 10cm or so. A nail launched into air (rather than a hard surface) from a nailer would start to tumble almost immediately.
You'd literally be more effective throwing the nailer at an attacker than trying to shoot them with it.
Pssst, the "bullet" is called a "nail" in a "nail gun."
37mms and 40mms also use a .38 blank (or a shotgun primer, depending) to launch, that not "gun" enough for you either just because the propellant and projectile are independent? What about flintlock?
And who says "gun" needs sub-MOA accuracy to be "gun?" The Liberator (both the George Hyde FP-45 produced by the OSS and the Cody Wilson 3d printed one) is notoriously inaccurate, meant to be basically pressed into a nazi back and fired to steal their firearm (or to simply exist as a working proof of concept for Cody's, really). Both still very "gun."
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An American thing? Do people in other countries drive and hold the shotgun too?
