2/2 While my own law enforcing days are behind me, I still talk to a number of friends and old partners with whom I used to work. Recently, a woman I used to patrol with (who is still out there putting people away) told me about “packing” a gun; a phrase that also dates back to earlier times of that profession but is still in use today to indicate the regular or habitual wearing of a firearm. It’s a word that more relates to, rather than derives from, gun carrying. So perhaps it doesn’t quite fit into your concept of firearm terms either driving, or developing into, slang. But again to me, it too seems to be one of those more rewardingly graphic and colorful terms that enriches our lives and fills our mind’s eye with detailed images than do the ever-more-simplistic ones of today that are merely easier to Text or Tweet in our hurry to move on to the next item in our increasingly black and white lives. One last, glorious phrase that might also be more associated with being armed, rather than the arm itself is “Stand and Deliver”. It also reaches back into time. Perhaps nowhere near as far back as “heeled” but still back into the 16-and-1700’s as it conjures up strong images of larger-than-life highwaymen robbing the coaches they encountered in their travels along the English Countryside. But to another old partner with whom I arrested modern day descendents of such brigands, that phrase instead conjures up images of Lee Marvin in the role of a Wild West robber and thief when he utters those same words to an Overland Stage driver in John Ford’s “The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance”, setting the tone for not only the over-the-top character portrayed by Marvin but for the movie itself. A movie that examines (and deconstructs) both the characters within it and the myth-building process that such words and links to the past can actually create. Thank you Mr. Clapp for this untypical but still thought-provoking entry to your blog.

1/2 Mr. C: You are very right about slang making our “English” language so colorful and how much of relates to firearms but I would go one step further and posit that at least some of it relates to “England” itself. One of my favorite “Western” terms (another one heard in films & texts either from the Earp period you mention; if not on screen from Earp himself) is “heeled”: something that actually reaches further back in time than those days of frontier America and was a phrase that was still an expression being used (albeit for a slightly different reason) when I was a kid. Heeled is a very (very) old word that some people will tell you once meant that someone was “prepared” for certain situations with an understanding that it could also mean, more specifically, that such a condition was created by being “armed” (with a weapon of some sort; usually a firearm). Going about one’s business “heeled” certainly has a more intriguing sound to it than simply “carrying” and to me, it evokes the kind of images more associated with our country’s colorful past than “wearing” does in regard to our often mundane world of today. Other people will tell you (quite correctly) that the term comes out of one of the many versions of cockfighting. In this form of the activity, rather than sharpening the bird’s natural spurs, they are instead, fitted with metal ones. The winged combatants are, in essence, “heeled”. Parallel to, and overlapping with, this same concept is the term “well heeled”; also thought to have originated within (or at least been a part of) the world of bird fighting blood sports. Generally relating to a well equipped or well prepared animal, it too, was borrowed by certain segments of the general population and applied to well equipped & well prepared people. Finally, within these circles, and in ways I still remember from my youth, folks who were said to be “well heeled” were generally thought to be more than just “well prepared” but actually “well off” financially.