Speaking Of Guns

Guns Magazine, June, 2001 by Massad Ayoob

The gun culture has become part of the fabric of American values and even speech patterns. It's even more pervasive than most of us "gun people" realize. I never realized the gun connection with the phrase "the whole nine yards" until reader Ivan Shapiro explained it to me in an e-mail.

Says Shapiro, "The term the whole nine yards' came from World War II fighter pilots in the Pacific. When arming their airplanes on the ground, the .50 caliber machine gun ammo belts measured 27 feet, before being loaded into the fuselage. If the pilots fired all their ammo at a target, it got 'the whole nine yards.'"

The Clintons and Bradys et al go off half. cocked and shoot from the hip, with rapid-fire delivery that often misses the mark. This is because, even though they're trying to shoot to kill, their overbalance of hysterical emotion leaves them with hair-trigger tempers, often so wrought up that they're hotter than a two-dollar pistol.

Their logic frequently misfires. The debaters for our side prevail on logical grounds because we keep our powder dry, and have good enough timing that we hold our fire. We don't waste a debate point prematurely because we don't fire 'til we see the whites of their eyes, and we draw a fine bead when we do.

At that point in the heated point/counterpoint, when there's fire in the hole and a coup de grace is needed to put their weak, terminally flawed arguments Out of their misery, we hit 'em right between the eyes. And at that point, by golly, we do give 'em the whole nine yards. Figuratively speaking, of course.