• Treczoks@lemmy.world
    775·
    4 days ago

    Not many countries had to arm the person next to the coach driver to fight off natives defending their country against foreign invaders.

      • bier@feddit.nl
        211·
        3 days ago

        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.

        ;-)

    • Bluewing@lemmy.world
      102·
      3 days ago

      No, but many needed to protect those passengers from bandits and other assorted outlaws.

      • ChickenLadyLovesLife@lemmy.worldEnglish
        9·
        3 days ago

        Fun fact: Joseph Stalin first became known to Lenin when he organized the successful robbery of a bank stagecoach in Russia. The stagecoaches were heavily protected by armed men riding on the outside of the coach as well as riding horses alongside, but Stalin observed that they tended to relax their guard upon reaching a densely-populated city, on the assumption that revolutionaries would not be willing to injure or kill innocent bystanders.

        This assumption was very wrong in Stalin’s case. He had his people lob satchel bombs at the coach and riders after they reached the city, killing most of the guards as well as nearly 100 innocent bystanders in the vicinity. They made off with a huge amount of money, and Lenin congratulated Stalin although he had only planned the operation and not participated in it. The importance of delegation!

        • ArcaneSlime@lemmy.dbzer0.comBanned from community
          113·
          3 days ago

          Huh, who knew that violent bank robbers who indiscriminately kill bystanders would do a bunch of genocide after their violent takeover complete with secret police and gulags I mean create the best goverbmont in history, praise USSR or something.

              • outhouseperilous@lemmy.dbzer0.com
                21·
                1 day ago

                money where your mouth is

                I’m actually unbanked!

                innocent

                Totally. Killing innocent people isnt morally sound.

                at a bank

                So you mean coerced into complicity?

                absolutely morally uncomplicated and good to simple binary morality

                That is what cool means, yes. Learn to cope with complexity before getting pissy. If you’re going to get precious about innocent dead, maybe talk more about cops and oligarchs.

    • trxxruraxvr@lemmy.world
      101·
      3 days ago

      I’m the times coaches like that became common it wasn’t really safe to travel in most parts of the world.

      • Saleh@feddit.org
        8·
        3 days ago

        Weren’t these coaches a thing in the 19th century US, from which time the term comes? From what i could find quickly, Highway robbery became less of a thing in the UK and mainland Europe by the end of the 18th century.

    • uienia@lemmy.world
      51·
      3 days ago

      There was once a theory that the reason for the difference in which side a vehicle is driving on the road today, stems from whether a country had many stretches of untamed wilderness with lots of bandits. So if there was a high likelihood that whoever you met on the road was a danger, the horsecart driver preferred passing them on the side of their sword arm (right hand as default), while if you did not have to take that into account, you would pass them on the left hand side.

      The theory has now largely been abandonded as spurious, but it does remain a fact that there were dangerous stretches of roads in older times in Europe as well.

    • Wilco@lemmy.zip
      47·
      3 days ago

      That’s not what it was for. They fired a shotgun before turning onto a road. If two wagons came head to head on a crappy old western road it could cause hours of delay because the horses would have to be hitched to the back of one of the wagons a pull it all the way back to the crossroad.

  • brisk@aussie.zone
    8·
    3 days ago

    In Australia: yes and it’s commonplace. But like 70% of our media is American so unsurprising.

    • vivendi@programming.devEnglish
      19·
      3 days ago

      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

      • Jankatarch@lemmy.world
        82·
        3 days ago

        The shotgun Georg, who uses a small motorbike to jump inside 80,000 cars on highway and bites whoever is in the shotgun seat anually; is an outlier and their victims should be excluded from this survey.

      • pishadoot@sh.itjust.works
        1·
        3 days ago

        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

    • pseudo@jlai.lu
      31·
      3 days ago

      La place du mort, c’est pas le siège du milieu a l’arrière ?

  • S_H_K@lemmy.dbzer0.com
    15·
    3 days ago

    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…

    • oatscoop@midwest.social
      14·
      3 days ago

      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.

  • Uriel238 [all pronouns]@lemmy.blahaj.zone
    9·
    3 days ago

    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

  • Geodad@lemmy.world
    101·
    3 days ago

    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 did.

  • rumba@lemmy.zipEnglish
    7·
    3 days ago

    That’s like an amazing American showerthought, I never even considered it

  • lime!@feddit.nuEnglish
    20·
    4 days ago

    you know, it just never comes up. mostly because i’m over 190cm so there’s no question of where i get to sit when not driving…

  • redwattlebird@lemmings.world
    7·
    3 days ago

    This phrase has confused me so much when I heard it in one of Taylor Swift’s songs.

    Then my Texan cousins explained it to me on a visit one day. I was still confused. Now I’ve found out it’s a stage coach thing. Interesting.

  • Lyra_Lycan@lemmy.blahaj.zoneEnglish
    101·
    4 days ago

    Well, for my world it’s interesting because the passenger seat is just that. But before the evolution of tech and everything else heavily affected travel, the front passenger seat held importance in that the one who sits there can assist in reading a map, adjusting the passenger wing mirror, monitoring the side directly while parking or other tight manoeuvres, emotional support for police stops, handling a drink so the driver can hydrate without endangering anyone, an extra pair of eyes on the less vital areas etc… Now these benefits of a primary passenger are almost nonexistent, as better driver-side controls, digital maps, GPS and TTS, and stricter road safety laws (banning consumption while driving) reduce the need for an assistant driver.

    • moncharleskey@lemmy.zip
      492·
      4 days ago

      I’ll try and explain, but let me know if you don’t follow. In the US it’s common to claim the front passenger seat by saying “I call shotgun!” or simply “Shotgun!” The commenter is playing on a now common refrain where Americans use firearms and terminology to describe basic things. As far as I can tell, it’s true. For example: caulk gun, staple gun, nail gun, glue gun, tattoo gun, finger guns, ot phrases like “I’ll think about it before I pull the trigger on it.” Or “Shoot me your email and I’ll get you those photos.”

      I don’t know how prolific this type of thing is in other countries though, so I can only assume we Americans arr outliers due to how deeply ingrained guns are in our culture. Hope this clarifies things a bit, let me know if not.

      TLDR: Americans describing so many things: “So imagine a gun, but…”

      • WhiteOakBayou@lemmy.world
        203·
        4 days ago

        All the things you listed either shoot projectiles and/or have triggers. What else do you call trigger operated projectile launchers? Also Caulk guns legitimately look like old timey machine guns.

        • moncharleskey@lemmy.zip
          121·
          4 days ago

          This is my perspective as an American looking in. In other languages there may be terminology used for these items that do not reference firearms.

            • SGforce@lemmy.ca
              18·
              4 days ago

              Cloueuse pneumatique

              Or pneumatic nailer

              I don’t think any of those things are referred to as a gun in French. Just essentially “stapler”, “nailer”, “gluer”, ect

              • JohnAnthony@lemmy.dbzer0.com
                2·
                3 days ago

                I might be biased by the question but I spontaneously thought of “pistolet à clous” as the most common term (which indeed translates to nail gun).
                I agree with your other examples though, saying “staple gun” would be weird in french

            • Lyra_Lycan@lemmy.blahaj.zoneEnglish
              9·
              4 days ago

              Amazon and their copycats seem to be calling them ‘nailers’, probably because it’s easier to filter out the constructive guns from destructive, prohibited ones. But Amazon is evil so it’s probably unrelated

              • JustinTheGM@ttrpg.networkEnglish
                6·
                4 days ago

                To be fair on this one, based on actual functionality ‘air nailer’ or ‘power hammer’ is more accurate than ‘nail gun’’ anyway. Outside of movies, you can’t use it as a gun without enough modification that it’s no longer the same tool.

                • WhiteOakBayou@lemmy.world
                  2·
                  3 days ago

                  I like < method of creating force > + hammer above nail gun but to your second point. Nail guns can be deadly without modification. Just close up work. They sell these and others like them at big box stores. This would be, in my favored naming convention, a gunpowder hammer.

        • Lumisal@lemmy.world
          6·
          3 days ago

          Replacing “gun” with “press” for example.

          Alternatively, caulker, stapler, nailer, gluer, tattooer, and finger pointers. Fingers also usually don’t launch projectiles I think. It’s just that gun culture is so embedded in your brain you couldn’t think of an alternative.

          Note how these are all construction tools, and construction is also usually worked by men there. Yet more traditionally feminine tools don’t get the “gun” additive; most will say spray bottle for example rather than spray gun, even though it also has a trigger (a literal gun-like one in some cases) and shoots out a projectile.

          • WhiteOakBayou@lemmy.world
            42·
            3 days ago

            I think press works for Caulk and glue. Stapler is used already for the machine that sits on a desk as opposed to the hand held construction style. Finger pointers is certainly descriptive but when people do “finger guns” the thumb usually mimics the hammer action. What else are they miming? Am I so inundated with gun culture I was unable to think of another use for the thumb?

            I think bottles were around before firearms but Staple, nail and Caulk guns were not.

            • Lumisal@lemmy.world
              2·
              3 days ago

              They’re both staplers - one’s just manual and the other isn’t.

              Spray bottles did not exist before guns, no.

      • shalafi@lemmy.worldEnglish
        6·
        4 days ago

        First bit is true enough, but we call “shotgun” because that was the guy holding the coach gun for bandit defense. Wish I had a pic of mine, but they’re basically a short double-barreled shotgun for warding off robbers and Indians. Coach guns are quickly and easily aimed, powerful at short range, “get the fuck off of me” guns.

        The Wild West wasn’t as wild as movies make it out, but you were on your fucking own. LOL, no 911. While you’re driving the coach, best have a man whose job is looking around and blasting raiders.

        tl;dr: Calling shotgun means you’re taking the front passenger side in a (historically) defensive role.

        • shawn1122@sh.itjust.works
          2·
          3 days ago

          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.

          • shalafi@lemmy.worldEnglish
            1·
            3 days ago

            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.

            • shawn1122@sh.itjust.works
              1·
              3 days ago

              Sure but in this case there are numerous gun related phrases that have persisted in American culture because of this particular affinity.

    • chuckleslord@lemmy.world
      20·
      4 days ago

      They’re saying, no, it’s not common for other cultures to call it a gun thing. But in a humorous way, by drawing attention to the absurdity of the question.

    • Skullgrid@lemmy.world
      210·
      3 days ago

      The Yankee explaining riding in the passenger seat : imagine a gun

      EDIT : I’m literally translating the spanish to english.

      EDIT2 : Which I didn’t see in the post originally