One could be very anal and say you can understand the point of the scene without understanding the point of the chant. The chant is not the scene, it is an element of the scene. You meant to say:
“And I always assumed everyone understood the point of this chant.”
But yes, very anal.
there is an interesting reversal in Casualties of War in which Sgt. Meserve (played by Sean Penn) says:
“This is my rifle (grabs penis), this is my gun (grabs rifle)… this is for fighting (penis), this is for fun (rifle)”
Outside of that ridiculous ditty, after nearly 3 years in the army, I never heard the word “gun” used for a penis. The gun/rifle disciplining procedure is a way of humiliating a soldier, nothing more. It’s a lot like fraternity hazing, only more serious.
Nitpick: The defining factor of a rifle is it’s rifled barrel and the fact that it’s fired from the shoulder. A lot of artillery pieces have rifled barrels as well; rifling works just as well with a 120mm round as with a 7.62 NATO. The “genus” point is “firearm designed to be fired from the shoulder, with a rifled barrel.” After that, you’re getting into subgroups. (Assault rifle, battle rifle, carbine rifle, sniper rifle, etc, etc.)
FWIW, I always interpreted the scene to as a way to instill the marines with a proper relationship with their weapon. (Along the lines of the bedtime chat to the rifle.)
Nitpick: I think you mean positive punishment? Negative reinforcement is to get you to do something more by withdrawing something unpleasant (the alarm clock beeps and you hit snooze–it’s a negative reinforcer). Positive punishment is to get you to decrease a behavior by adding something unpleasant.
I’m also curious about what the OP means. And I’m also curious about why he didn’t just tell us what he meant, rather than being all coy and “everyone knows what I mean, right?”
See, I didn’t know that. This is interesting to me.
Is it actually wrong to refer to a rifle as a gun, or is it just insufficiently specific to please the Marines? I tend to think of a rifle as one type of gun. I’d probably be the guy pointing to his crotch 100 times.
Me, too. Seems a little too ironic to bring up a movie scene that he claims is about proper communication, but then to go out of his way to NOT make his point clearly.
Okay, but why not explain THE POINT of THE SCENE instead?
Maybe the population in general didn’t understand what you were getting at. Can’t you just tell us?
Why? Do tell.
I think those count as a bipod. >_>
I always figured it was to drive home the need to be specific.
Civilian example scenario: Somebody posts to the SDMB with a computer problem and explains, “Every time I launch Adobe, my computer slows to a crawl. Does anybody else have this problem with Adobe? How do I fix it?”
(The question cannot be answered, because “Adobe” is the name of a software company that produces numerous, different applications, not the name of a program. The poster would need to specify which Adobe program was giving him trouble. Photoshop? Acrobat? What?)
*This is my Adobe Illustrator!
This is my Bezier Curve!
This one is for Scalable Vector Artwork!
This one is for Lurve…*
Just to confuse matters, in the terminology used at the time, HMS Warrior 1860 carried ten 110lb rifles.
If you think the filmmaker was trying to teach the audience military terminology, then you’re not understanding the point of this scene.
Thirded. It’s all a setup so the OP can swoop back into this thread full of neophytes and drop some :rolleyes: on us.
To answer your question, it is indeed actually wrong to refer to a rifle as a gun.
In the U.S. naval forces (comprised of the U.S. Navy and U.S. Marine Corps), a “rifle” is a type of small arm firearm designed to be fired from the shoulder, with a barrel that has a helical groove (“rifling”) cut into the barrel walls.
A “gun” is a crew-served weapon which includes land-based and sea-based artillery pieces (i.e. “cannon”). A gun may or may not be rifled.
It’s an important distinction, because as others have stated, precise terminology in the military is critical. The point of the ditty is to to drive the point home. After being forced to walk around the barracks in boot camp singing the stupid ditty, a recruit will never, ever use the incorrect term after that.
Two more questions:
How do the Navy/Marines refer to non-rifled handheld or shoulder-supported firearms, such as shotguns, handguns, or machine guns?
Does the army also use the restricted (to crew-supported weapons) definition of “gun”?
The fact that the terminology chosen by the military is contrary to common usage - and what the recruits presumably associate with the terms - is surely relevant, I’d think. “Forget what you used to think the word ‘gun’ meant. Here’s what it means in the context of the Marines.”
All these names for various types of firearms were not handed down on stone tablets - they are at their core somewhat arbitrary (which is not a criticism).
From what follows, it seems to me your answer was really “just insufficiently specific to please the Marines.”
Still waiting to hear back from the OP. And try as I might, based on that clip, I don’t see what possible difference it makes that it’s a rifle as opposed to a shotgun. It seemed to me that the point of the scene was to compare weapons to penises and to make military types in Vietnam look like horny idiots firing their “guns” everywhere they could.
Huh? I took his answer to mean that, within the Navy/Marines, it’s wrong–they use a different (from civilian use) definition of gun which does not encompass rifles, or for that matter a lot of other things that civilians would normally refer to as a “gun”.
Which is the same thing.