Site; A place, as in “Bob went to the job site” or “Joe spent a lot of time at the Boomershoot site this last weekend.”
Sight; Generally, vision or something you see, as in “Bob lost his sight in one eye while on the job site last year.” In the case particular to firearms; the aiming apparatus (or a part thereof, e.g. “front sight” or “rear sight”) of a firearm as in, “Bob lost the front sight from his rifle at the Boomershoot site last weekend.”
With the release of this secret knowledge, you are now well ahead of many firearms enthusiasts in the highly specialized and esoteric field of study that is firearms nomenclature. You’re welcome.
Next: “break”
Damn! Beat me to it! I’ve yet to see a muzzle actually break; damaged crown maybe, but never really broken. Muzzle brakes are everywhere, though.
I fixed it. See my comment. And that was before you made this comment.
Oh, Joe, I never even saw that … ** looks innocent **
*APPLAUSE*
A far site ahead, I’d say.
Now that’s a site… a site for soar eyes.
“soar I’s”
Fixed it for ewe, he said sheepishly.
Perhaps next we can discuss those well-nigh-indistinguishable homophones, ‘magazine’ and ‘clip’…
Not goin’ there. Any who seek the truth shall find it, and readily. I had a guy in the shop today referring to his magazines as clips, and I held my tongue. He owns several ARs too, and SKSs, and one would think that he’s therefore handled both magazines and clips, and would know that they are different things requiring different names.
And so I’m often torn between speech and silence, for those who wish to be corrected will have easily found the answers themselves, and those who wish to remain in the dark will shun, and recoil from the light that is shone in their eyes, finding it offensive.
I had another guy get all pissed at me this morning after I’d spent a great deal of time explaining via e-mail, the various reasons why his groups might have opened up. Maybe it was the section on possible shooter errors, and maybe the part about recommending he throw away a cheap (under fifty dollars) optic. I’ll never know because he didn’t point out any specific thing I said that made him all pissed. Other people are very appreciative, being that they approach me asking questions and they get detailed, often exhaustive, answers. Others apparently are looking for a particular answer, and are upset when they don’t get it. The very same answer; one guy’ll hate it and others will gush with appreciation.
Maybe it is that none, or very few, actually absorb the information and thereby benefit from it, but seek instead the feelings they might get when receiving the attention. In most cases I’ll never know.
I met a kid, many years ago. His mother brought him in, no doubt to ask questions. He’d ask, I’d answer, he’d ask something else and I’d answer.
It became obvious that the kid cared so little about the answers that we wasn’t even listening to the words. All he experienced was that he could stimulate me with a random question, and in response I’d jibber-jabber in some animated fashion at some length. It was like playing with a wind-up toy.
It has occurred to me that the majority of human conversation may be of that nature. And so a person does not always ask a question as a means of gathering information or ideas, or solving a specific problem, but to vie for a certain status or social standing, establish a position in the Authoritarian Chain of Command, or to put it simply, to exert control. Someone suddenly and unexpectedly faced with a conversation partner who’s interested in fleshing things out, or is otherwise genuinely interested in things, can become shocked, horrified or enraged and want to run away or make it stop.
So we come to the part where I say it can be a mistake to pay much attention to the words being bandied about in a conversation, for to do so would be to miss the point. I make fun of someone misusing words, and they could maybe just as well make fun of me for missing all the plotting and subterfuge going on around and beneath the words (if they could articulate such) and being stupid enough to take the conversation at what I see as face value. So it is a clash of worlds, each seeing the other (and correctly so from each point of view) as dolts.
I used to get impatient with my wife who likes to gibber-gabber whenever we have business interactions with someone in the community. If you’re dropping off the cow to be slaughtered and wrapped, why do you have to have a half-hour conversation about other things? Drop it off, pick it up and pay the man. My wife, who is a linguist and anthropologist, said that the conversations are how people tell if they can trust the other person, and if they have shared values.
The people who are asking questions may be just seeing if you are knowledgeable and are someone they want to do business with, but not really interested in the details of what you are saying. I avoid two-thirds of the gun shops in my area because they are obviously only interested in making as much money off me as possible.
The email stuff is weird. I would love a vendor who bothered to answer questions in depth, even if I didn’t like the answer.
I’ve seen people get more offended at their $50 Chinese optic being dissed than their skills being denigrated.
Many thanks for the long, well-reasoned reply, Lyle.
You may be right in re conversations, although I don’t think a majority would qualify. I think there’s a spectrum – some people genuinely want to hear what you have to say, others are thinking more about what THEY will say next than about your replies, others (as you said) aren’t listening at all, and so on . I’m not going to try to assign percentages.
And yes, some people are far more interested in the meta -conversation (what does he REALLY mean?), while others truly are trying to say what they mean and mean what they say. (I have teenagers at home.) The former, in my opinion, work way too hard, looking for something that often isn’t there. But they need to learn that for themselves.