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"ok, imagine a gun."
(sh.itjust.works)
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!"
I mean, it's still America.
I guess the location of the shooting has changed though. It should mean having your desk at the front of the classroom by the teacher's desk now.
The amount of naval terminology that has stuck around in English is mind boggling.
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The modern version would be "I call running the Spotify!"
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Gringo explaining a horse carriage: Imagine a gun
And the kids have been shouting shotgun from then on.
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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.
Not many countries had to arm the person next to the coach driver to fight off natives defending their country against foreign invaders.
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!
Bonus fun fact: part of the reason for their success might be that one of the local police informants was … Stalin.
I'm starting to think this Stalin guy has some red flags.
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.
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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.
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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...
My kids say "Chewbacca!"
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.
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NL here. "Shotgun" is a concept, though mostly through Pop Culture Osmosis.
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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.
This is my perspective as an American looking in. In other languages there may be terminology used for these items that do not reference firearms.
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Replacing "gun" with "press" for example.
Alternatively, caulker, stapler, nailer, gluer, tattooer, and finger pointers. Fingers also usually don't launch projectiles I think. It's just that gun culture is so embedded in your brain you couldn't think of an alternative.
Note how these are all construction tools, and construction is also usually worked by men there. Yet more traditionally feminine tools don't get the "gun" additive; most will say spray bottle for example rather than spray gun, even though it also has a trigger (a literal gun-like one in some cases) and shoots out a projectile.
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Bullseye.
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It's still relevant. I always hand my passengers a pistol before disembarking.
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.
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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
In Australia: yes and it's commonplace. But like 70% of our media is American so unsurprising.
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It's used in the UK too
Yes, because we invariably import whatever bollocks the US says or does.
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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.
That's like an amazing American showerthought, I never even considered it
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this post was submitted on 07 Aug 2025
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