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Now that is just wrong, Guns?

Now hopefully you’ve gone through our style-guide post to get an idea where I’m going with this post.  The question is simple, is it a gun or weapon?  Is your rifle a gun or a weapon?  Is your pistol a gun, weapon or better yet, a handgun? 

According to my old-faithful Associate Press Stylebook under the word-entry guns, it states, “See weapons.”  So as I flip the pages over and land on weapon, I find,  “Gun is an acceptable term for any firearm.”  But the next sentence disturbs me, it states, “Note the following definitions and forms in dealing with weapons and ammunition….” 

When I served for over 8-years, active-duty, in the U.S. Army we did annual weapons qualifications.  It’s a mandate, you must qualify annually with your assigned, personal weapon to stay in the Army.  Notice I used the word weapon(s) twice, I never mentioned gun(s) even though I qualified with the M2HB Browning .50 Caliber Machine Gun.  In the Army, every firearm is a weapon and your personal weapon is never referred to as a gun. The only time we were allowed to use the word gun was when we were describing “crew-served” weapons.

From the minute I qualified as an expert with my first personal weapon, the M16 A1 rifle and even when we switched to the M16A2 rifle, the rules still didn’t change.  Later I’d qualify as an expert with the M1911 .45 Caliber Browning, Automatic Pistol followed by the M9, 9mm Semiautomatic Beretta Pistol.  The older M1911 was mis-labeled as automatic.    And when I was with the 3^rd Battalion, 8^th Infantry Division in Mainz, Germany (West Germany at the time), I even qualified and had a weapon’s card for the M3A1 .45 caliber (.45 ACP) submachine gun , known in the military as the grease gun.  

During my muddy boot days I also qualified and was responsible for the M60 7.62mm Machine Gun, but that was the only time we were allowed to use the word gun, when we described machine guns.  Our firearms were either called weapons, rifles or pistols and the only time we used the word gun was when the word machine  or submachine went in front of it.  If you violated this rule it cost at least 10 or 20 push-ups as your punishment for using the word gun in improper context.  It didn’t even change one weekend down in Koblenz, Germany when I earned a German Schutzenschnur shooting medal in bronze with the German Army.  Even with the German military we referred to our weapons appropriately as a machine gun, pistol and rifle as you must qualify with all three for the award. 

Now my dilemma, I live in Texas and we’re notorious for being perceived by people not native to Texas as gun-toting cowboys. Even though when I was younger I roped, branded, fixed barb-wired fences and even pear-burned cactus at our family’s ranch, I don’t carry guns.  Though I own boots, Wrangler jeans, a horse-hair belt, black-felt cowboy hat and store my weapons dry and oiled down.  I love my weapons, whether it’s the rifle my Grandfather handed down to me before he went to Heaven or my semi-automatic Browning, 12-guage pump shotgun.  For the record, I didn’t say I love my guns because I don’t own a machine gun, just a shotgun and if you noticed, machine guns are not spelled machinegun, shotguns are not spelled shot gun.

Yes, I posses and bear my firearms under the very Constitution of the United States I swore to defend and protect during my military service. Oh, and by the way, if you’re wondering, the Associated Press Stylebook states under the word firearm, “See weapons.”  Now I dare you…it’s your turn, what weapons do you own?  I dare you to call them guns even though the stylebook states you can…Thanks, Rolando

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