2mo ago

"ok, imagine a gun."

115 comments

thats a stagecoach thing, right?
- Yeah it was bench seating so one guy had the reins and the other had a shotgun. Hence the name.
  
  its interesting the slang that persists...
  "i call getting to shoot people!"
  
  Gringo explaining a horse carriage: Imagine a gun
  
  And the kids have been shouting shotgun from then on.
  
  oh I thought it was from the moonshine age, I guess horse buggies make more sense lol
  
  In the time of horse drawn carriages, wouldn't the rifle be a more common weapon?
- 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
- I'd been told it was a gangster thing: passenger seat shoots out the window for a drive-by.
  
  I thought it was a US police thing, because the passenger seat is where the shotgun is commonly holstered.

Not many countries had to arm the person next to the coach driver to fight off natives defending their country against foreign invaders.
- I'm the times coaches like that became common it wasn't really safe to travel in most parts of the world.
  
  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.
- No, but many needed to protect those passengers from bandits and other assorted outlaws.
  
  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!
- 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.
- This obe didn't either. Staying home was usually an option.
- 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.
  
  What an interesting creative writing exercise

Now I'd like to know why in France it's la place du Mort, the seat of the dead...
- 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
  
  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.
  
  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
- Because they didn't have a shotgun.
- 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.

My kids say "Chewbacca!"

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...

NL here. "Shotgun" is a concept, though mostly through Pop Culture Osmosis.
- hi northernlion i love your videos

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...
- 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.
  
  After thw wedding is done the father goes "And kid you'd be no smoking anymore get me? I don't wanna hear you went to buy a pack or whatever..."

I don't get it
- 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..."
  
  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.
  
  Bullseye.
  
  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.
  
  I like the way you explained this.
  
  arr
  Pirate detected.
- 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.
- 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

It's still relevant. I always hand my passengers a pistol before disembarking.

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.
- wait, it's illegal to drink anything while driving in places? when did that happen?
  
  In some place that counts as distracted driving and you can get fined for it.

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

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.
- 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.
- n't.
- we have been using this in Poland at least for 10 years

In Australia: yes and it's commonplace. But like 70% of our media is American so unsurprising.
- You're basically americans with going outside instead of corn.

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

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.

It's used in the UK too
- Yes, because we invariably import whatever bollocks the US says or does.
  
  We don't even SAY bollocks in the US.
  
  Yep, and we thank you for the word soccer 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.

An American thing? Do people in other countries drive and hold the shotgun too?

Okk
- Yes? Ah sorry, misheard
  
  What?

115 comments