Now I’d like to know why in France it’s la place du Mort, the seat of the dead…
"ok, imagine a gun."
Submitted 2 days ago by TriflingToad@sh.itjust.works to [deleted]
https://sh.itjust.works/pictrs/image/a260db59-5bd2-49b3-b071-beea9e9936b1.png
Comments
Valmond@lemmy.world 1 day ago
vivendi@programming.dev 1 day 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 1 day ago
Victoms of the shotgun killer, who uses a small motorbike to jump inside 80,000 cars on highway and murders the person sitting in shotgun seat anually; is an outlier and the victims should be excluded from the survey.
pishadoot@sh.itjust.works 1 day 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
ivanafterall@lemmy.world 20 hours ago
Because they didn’t have a shotgun.
pseudo@jlai.lu 1 day ago
La place du mort, c’est pas le siège du milieu a l’arrière ?
Valmond@lemmy.world 1 day ago
Ben j’ai toujours pensé que c’est la place du passager.
S_H_K@lemmy.dbzer0.com 1 day 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 1 day ago
That is 100% the origin of the phrase.
Iron_Lynx@lemmy.world 1 day ago
NL here. “Shotgun” is a concept, though mostly through Pop Culture Osmosis.
pyre@lemmy.world 22 hours ago
hi northernlion i love your videos
elucubra@sopuli.xyz 1 day ago
My kids say “Chewbacca!”
railcar@midwest.social 1 day ago
It’s still relevant. I always hand my passengers a pistol before disembarking.
Geodad@lemmy.world 1 day ago
That is purely an American thing.
Not saying my family had someone in the passenger sear with a shotgun to protect their batch of white lightning…also not saying they did.
Jamablaya@lemmy.world 19 hours ago
Nope. Canada had stagecoach and shotguns too. So did Mexico.
ivanafterall@lemmy.world 20 hours ago
n’t.
brisk@aussie.zone 21 hours ago
In Australia: yes and it’s commonplace. But like 70% of our media is American so unsurprising.
uriel238@lemmy.blahaj.zone 1 day 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
lime@feddit.nu 2 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…
rumba@lemmy.zip 1 day ago
That’s like an amazing American showerthought, I never even considered it
SendMePhotos@lemmy.world 2 days ago
I don’t get it
moncharleskey@lemmy.zip 1 day 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 1 day 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.
ivanafterall@lemmy.world 1 day ago
Bullseye.
shalafi@lemmy.world 1 day 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.
miked@sh.itjust.works 1 day ago
I like the way you explained this.
chuckleslord@lemmy.world 1 day 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 1 day ago
The Yankee explaining riding in the passenger seat : imagine a gun
Lyra_Lycan@lemmy.blahaj.zone 1 day 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
HeyThisIsntTheYMCA@lemmy.world 1 day ago
wait, it’s illegal to drink anything while driving in places? when did that happen?
trxxruraxvr@lemmy.world 1 day ago
In some place that counts as distracted driving and you can get fined for it.
redwattlebird@lemmings.world 1 day ago
This phrase has confused me so much even 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.
HonoraryMancunian@lemmy.world 1 day ago
It’s used in the UK too
tiramichu@sh.itjust.works 1 day ago
Yes, because we invariably import whatever bollocks the US says or does.
dream_weasel@sh.itjust.works 1 day ago
We don’t even SAY bollocks in the US.
Bluewing@lemmy.world 1 day ago
Yep, and we thank you for the word soccer too.
haych@feddit.uk 1 day ago
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.
Hikermick@lemmy.world 17 hours ago
An American thing? Do people in other countries drive and hold the shotgun too?
Treczoks@lemmy.world 1 day ago
Not many countries had to arm the person next to the coach driver to fight off natives defending their country against foreign invaders.
burgerpocalyse@lemmy.world 1 day ago
lets not pretend that the US sprouted up out of nothing from nowhere and decide on a whim to slaughter native people. the American continent exists as it does today because of European colonial projects, and the brutal treatment of natives was official policy of the pope
bier@feddit.nl 1 day 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 1 day ago
No, but many needed to protect those passengers from bandits and other assorted outlaws.
ChickenLadyLovesLife@lemmy.world 1 day 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!
trxxruraxvr@lemmy.world 1 day 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 1 day 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.
Wilco@lemmy.zip 1 day 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.
DragonTypeWyvern@midwest.social 1 day ago
What an interesting creative writing exercise
uienia@lemmy.world 1 day 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.