Words have power. Even the ordering of words can have dire consequences. As the ancient Greek philosopher George Carlin used to say, “It’s OK to prick your finger, but don’t finger your…” Well, you get the idea. Careful use of words is always prudent.
As a freedom-loving liberty champion, banning things goes against my grain. But just this once, I suppose I could take a lesson from the anti-gunners and be OK with bans as long as it’s something I agree with. A little hypocrisy never hurt anyone, right?
So if I did fall off the anti-hypocrisy wagon, I might consider supporting a ban on these gun-related words…
Knockdown power
A couple of months back I wrote about the fallacy of “knockdown power.” I take this term at face value as to its meaning. It implies that a gun can fire a projectile that has enough force to literally knock someone down. It works in the movies so it must be real, right?
When things are shot, they go down, drop down, spring down, fall down, jump or do nothing at all – just to name a few of the possible outcomes. A bullet from a normal handgun simply does not have enough momentum to physically knock someone down. Try shooting a 150 pound object that contains no nerves, pain receptors, organs or capacity for fear response and you’ll see that it does not fly across the room when struck. Heck, it won’t even fall down unless you balance it precariously.
How about if we all agree to replace the word “knockdown power” with something more accurate? Perhaps “Hey! This really hurts!” power. Or maybe “encourage someone to stop whatever bad thing they’re doing” power? If we want to be descriptive, we could use “ability to make holes” power. These are just a few ideas and I’m always open to suggestions.
Operator
Every time I hear the word operator I feel like I’m watching an episode of General Hospital. I get the word “operative” because it’s been used in old spy books and movies forever. Operatives are people who wear tuxedos, crash exclusive parties with style, and get all the girls. They’re sneaking around and operating spy gadgets like exploding fountain pens. But operator? I’m just not feeling the love with that one.
If any of you reading this are, in fact, operators for your full-time profession, help me understand why you’re called operators. Why not something more descriptive like warrior ninjas, Action Jackson’s, or Imperial Storm Troopers?
Tactical
Some words have lost all rational meaning through overuse. I understand the word tactical and have no beef with its correct and original use. According to the Google machine:
tac·ti·cal (adjective)
of, relating to, or constituting actions carefully planned to gain a specific military end.
Makes total sense to me. But applying that label to things like pizza cutters, meat cleavers, and tactical balls is a bit much for me. Yes, I get than an army succeeds on its stomach but is a pizza cutter really part of the tactical advantage? With all the tactical clothes, classes, and products, you’d think we were living in ancient Sparta.
Just to be really clear, I have no beef whatsoever with the name of CMMG’s Tactical Bacon. Because bacon. I said before that I was OK with a bit of hypocrisy as long as I agreed with the premise.
Those terms are here to stay dude :)..at least the three you describe in your article. The other ones in your scrabble pic are a little more confusing…what’s “pill” and “gunsense”? BTW love the scrabble throwback!
I agree on knock down power, Operator…that’s what they call themselves, so be it, Tactical….you ain’t gettin rid of that one…..that there makes money!