Benjamin-Armada-PCP-Air-Rifle.jpg' alt='Download Air Gun Ballistic Program For Windows' title='Download Air Gun Ballistic Program For Windows' />Gun Metaphors Deeply Embedded In English Language NPRGun oriented language is so pervasive in American English that even Vice President Joe Biden, in a recent press conference about curbing gun violence, discussed shooting for a given deadline and the lack of a silver bullet. Melissa Block speaks with Katherine Connor Martin, head of U. S. dictionaries for Oxford University Press, about how American English came to be peppered with so many of the terms. MELISSA BLOCK, HOST In January, when Vice President Biden concluded a week of meetings at the White House over how to curb gun violence, listen to the words he chose to describe the complexity. VICE PRESIDENT JOSEPH BIDEN We know that it is there is no silver bullet. Established in 1975, the Institute for Legislative Action ILA is the lobbying arm of the National Rifle Association of America. ILA is responsible for preserving. BLOCK And as for when hed make his proposal BIDEN Im shooting for Tuesday. I hope I get it done by then. BLOCK No silver bullet. Shooting for Tuesday. Just two examples of how pervasive gun language is in our everyday speech. Gun Metaphors Deeply Embedded In English Language Gunoriented language is so pervasive in American English that even Vice President Joe Biden, in a recent. Create a lowcost Paintball Chronograph for less than 40 A ballistic chronograph is a device that records the velocity of a projectile. This particular. Download Air Gun Ballistic Program For PcThink about it We bite the bullet, sweat bullets, ride shotgun, stick to our guns, jump the gun, go ballistic, and shoot from the hip. If shes a straight shooter, hes a real pistol. Oh, hes a little gun shy. What a hot shot. Son of a gun. Well, to help decode some of this gun speak, Im joined by Katherine Connor Martin. Shes head of U. S. Oxford University Press. Welcome to the program. KATHERINE CONNOR MARTIN Thanks for having me, Melissa. BB guns are a type of air guns designed to shoot metallic round shot called BBs spherical metal projectiles of approximately the same size as the 0. Hawke is a British company providing high quality scopes and red dots. They have models for magnum air rifles, field target shooters and hunters. Interview Highlights. On the Bushmaster rifle found at Sandy Hook Elementary Its a variant of a type of gun called the AR15. BLOCK And, Katherine, youve been looking into when some of these phrases came into the lexicon. Why dont we start with silver bullet, what have you learned about that MARTIN There are references to silver bullets being used to kill mythological creatures, back to the 1. The major supernatural creature who was killed with a silver bullet was a werewolf. But the idea of using a silver bullet to solve a problem, other than a mythological creature, comes from the 2. BLOCK There are a lot of terms that spinoff the act of shooting parting shot, long shot, a scattershot approach, give it your best shot. What about the phrase Dont shoot the messengerMARTIN Dont shoot the messenger is really interesting because the sentiment, the idea that someone who is bringing bad news is likely to be punished or disliked as a result, goes back to time immemorial. Sophocles used it in Antigone no man loves the messenger of ill. However, we dont see this specific phrase, dont shoot or kill the messenger, until again in the mid 2. BLOCK When you sit back and think broadly about the kinds of gun metaphors that are used, the types of ways that this language is used in English, what do you see Whats the pattern MARTIN Well, conflict is a constant in the human experience, whether its on the battlefield or in the boardroom. And so we see a lot of cases in which gunfire is likened to verbal conflict or aggression. So, someone comes under fire, people are caught in the crossfire, a person shoots their mouth off. But there are other contexts as well. Often the firing of a gun seems to be likened to making a decision shoot from the hip, pull the trigger, quick on the trigger. You also see examples where the idea of force is expressed with both barrels or with guns blazing and there are phrases relating to significance. Important people are big guns, insignificant and trivial things are described as small bore. And as we saw with Joe Biden, theres this common use with the notion of aiming and targeting, shooting for something. BLOCK Setting your sights on something. MARTIN Setting your sights on something, yes, having something in your crosshairs. BLOCK You do wonder whether the literal meaning becomes devalued in a way, neutered. And I find Im often removing from copy the phrase come under fire because Im sort of like, that should be reserved for people who actually do come under literal fire. MARTIN Thats absolutely a phenomenon that exists, not just in this gun related language but with all metaphorical language, that over time, an expression becomes so thoroughly ensconced in our language that its totally disconnected from the original context. And, in fact, we can even lose track of what that original context was. A perfect example of this is the phrase, a flash in the pan. BLOCK And whats the derivation of that Where does that come fromMARTIN Well, it refers to a rudimentary gun technology back in the days when guns were fired with loose gun powder. And so, the flash in the pan is the explosion of gun power in the pan and when it doesnt ignite the charge in the actual barrel, I. E. the gun doesnt actually go off, its just a flash in the pan. We can use that now without any knowledge at all of the gun that it was related to. And, in fact, I think probably a lot of people are picturing a frying pan on the stove. BLOCK Sure. MARTIN Rather than any gun at all. BLOCK Katherine Connor Martin is head of U. S. dictionaries for the Oxford University Press. Katherine, thank you so much. MARTIN My pleasure. Thanks. Copyright 2. NPR. All rights reserved. Ubuntu Startup Disk Creator Deb. Visit our website terms of use and permissions pages at www. NPR transcripts are created on a rush deadline by Verb. Inc., an NPR contractor, and produced using a proprietary transcription process developed with NPR. This text may not be in its final form and may be updated or revised in the future. Accuracy and availability may vary. The authoritative record of NPRs programming is the audio record. Assault Style Weapons In The Civilian Market NPR. According to Tom Diaz of the Violence Policy Center, more people in the United States die every year from gun related incidents than have been killed in all terrorist attacks worldwide since the 1. Stock. Photo. hide captiontoggle caption. Stock. Photo. According to Tom Diaz of the Violence Policy Center, more people in the United States die every year from gun related incidents than have been killed in all terrorist attacks worldwide since the 1. Stock. Photo. As the country reels after Fridays massacre in Newtown, Conn., the question of how assault rifles like the one used at Sandy Hook Elementary School entered the civilian market is front and center. The semi automatic weapon found at the site where Adam Lanza shot to death 2. Vietnam. It is one of a variety of assault rifles that militaries of the world developed, Tom Diaz, a policy analyst for the Violence Policy Center, tells Fresh Airs Terry Gross, when they realized that most soldiers do not, when theyre engaged in combat. Soldiers are not marksmen, and they tend to just fire in bursts at ambiguous targets and, in fact, most battlefield injuries are the result of just being where the bullet is and not someone actually aiming at you. Diaz who is also the author of the forthcoming book The Last Gun, about changes in the gun industry and gun violence and his colleagues have conducted extensive research on gun violence in the United States and have written reports on assault weapons, as well as on the National Rifle Association and the corporations that fund it. What gun manufacturers have done to rejuvenate their markets, Diaz tells Fresh Airs Terry Gross, is to emphasize military derived semi automatic guns and, in marketing, appeal to the inner soldier, the insurrectionist feelings and high tech desires to market these military style guns. The only difference, Diaz says, between the semi automatic rifles sold on the civilian market and those issued to soldiers is that the purely military rifle is capable of firing whats called fully automatic fire, meaning the gun will continue to fire until it expends all of the ammunition in its magazine. Tom Diaz is a senior analyst for the Violence Policy Center and the author of Making A Killing The Business of Guns in America. Violence Policy Center. Violence Policy Center. Tom Diaz is a senior analyst for the Violence Policy Center and the author of Making A Killing The Business of Guns in America. Violence Policy Center. When it comes to potential bills that could be introduced in Congress in the wake of the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting, Diaz says its crucial to focus on this question of magazine capacity. Lawmakers must ask, Diaz says, What actually are the design features What are the real functions of assault weaponsCan you put a high capacity magazine into this gun that will hold 2. And, if thats true, then its an assault rifle and we will not allow their manufacture or import. Interview Highlights. On the Bushmaster rifle found at Sandy Hook Elementary Its a variant of a type of gun called the AR 1. Vietnam War period. It is one of a variety of assault rifles that militaries of the world developed when they realized that most soldiers do not when theyre engaged in combat do not take accurate aim, do not fire at long distances, but rather just spray bullets in the general direction of the enemy at short to medium range. When the military accepted this as a fact that soldiers are not marksmen, and they tend to just fire in bursts at ambiguous targets, and in fact most battlefield injuries are the result of just being where the bullet is and not someone actually aiming at you the militaries of the world said, OK, we need a type of gun to give our soldiers that will do just that. This was the genesis of the assault rifle. The first one was developed by the Germans in 1. It was called the St. G 4. 4. The Soviet army quickly. AK 4. 7, probably the most widely used rifle in the world. On how the 1. Assault Weapons Ban defined a semi automatic weaponIt defined a semi automatic assault weapon in terms of a gun that had at least two of certain features. One of them was the actual crucial feature, which is the ability to take a high capacity magazine. The others were. The requirement that you have at least two of those meant that gun manufactures could say, Aha, we can keep the ability to take the high capacity magazine and just knock off the rest of these bells and whistles and we still have essentially the same gun,. And thats what Bushmaster figured out. They actually rose to prominence after the 1. On Berettas marketing strategy for a semi automatic pistol that entered civilian marketPrior to the early to mid 1. United States, including those used by law enforcement officers, were the old fashioned revolver, which had a capacity of about six rounds relatively cumbersome. In the 1. 98. 0s, Beretta, an Italian company, decided to compete to replace the U. S. military standard sidearm. Dating back to 1. Colt Model 1. 91. So there was a competition and Beretta actually won the competition for its. Beretta executives later in interviews on public record which weve documented. Look, our strategy was this. What we want to do is get the cache of military sales so that we can then turn to the much bigger, much more profitable American civilian market and make a lot more money doing that. And thats precisely what they did. Berettas advertising strategy to this day. This is a gun that we sell to the military. Its made for them but you can use it. On the FN 5. It was specifically designed for use by counterterrorism teams because it fires a very small but very high velocity bullet that will penetrate body armor what people call ballistic vests or bullet proof vests. When FN first manufactured this gun, they recognized how dangerous it would be on a civilian market and they claimed they would never sell it to civilians, that it would only be for police and counterterrorism units. In fact, its become a very popular gun on the American civilian market and is exported to Mexico, where its called the mata policia, or police killer, cop killer. On why he himself a former NRA member and gun owner switched sides on the debateWhen I worked for Congressman Chuck Schumer, who was then chairman of the House crime subcommittee about 1. I inherited the gun legislation account. And one of the things I had to do was generate a hearing on, we called it Kids and Guns, and, in the course of preparing a hearing, staff members such as I was would actually go and interview the witnesses. I talked to some of these children and I realized that their world had nothing whatever to do with this kind of mythical world of the National Rifle Association, and so that set me to thinking, and. I realized that I was living, frankly, in a dream world. I mean, I was living in the world of when I was a Boy Scout.