I kinda cringe at tacticool, but had I the freedom to gun I'd probably buy tacticool stuff too

hypocritical, maybe. But I'll own it

hey, we all make fun of rednecks and their toys.... but they do have some of the best toys

But to my question, I really wonder which came first. Did SF operator fashion culture influence the civilian sport shooting culture or the other way around. Maybe we will never know, but I always think of weird shit like that.

i technically answered that

hunters came first

Makes sense I suppose

I'll browse the current Bow Hunting magazines at my local barber shop and every person looks like they are ready to raid a building.

Commando gear came from the competition shooting groups in USA, then it got fashionable and came back into the sports

It's a back-and-forth that I'd guess has no particular definitive starting point

Competitions influence army gear, and army gear influences sports shooting

Yea, makes sense. It's trivial but I've always wondered that.

Oh I left out the hunters

They are in that cycle too. It is a triangle

Snipers of WW2 from USA were "competition hunters" that shot animals at great distances

Before them the concept of sniping as such was not that established in the firearm warfare

And fun fact: sniping comes from trying to hunt snipes (a type of bird, that is small and is a very agile flier that can change directions rapidly) from around 1770

It was an endeering term for an especially capable sharpshooter later on, and then became a term for a long-distance precision marksman (before that it pretty much meant a short range quick-draw skill)

i mean tbh its still used in that old way nowadays too in vidya games

ie "nice snipe" when u land a skillshot or just kill someone

I think I saw the snipe origin on a History channel show once.

Technically the official term is a "precision long range marksman" for the scoped warriors

So technically you can still call the quick-draw hard precision shots "snipes"

If anything particularly challenging skeet shooting competitions desreve the term "sniping" the most if we'd be the etymological nazis

But I digress, I don't particularly care how people prefer to utilise language

XD Etymological Nasis the best kind of nazis

I do appreciate people that know why "defence" has a "c" in it

But then again etymology is akin to a short-term cultural memory. People forget the derivative connotation in like two generations and treat a word as a standalone

>But I digress, I don't particularly care how people prefer to utilize language
You should.

finally getting to watchign that ken burns vietnam doc lol heard alot about how some rightys were butthurt about how much of a liberal bias it has lol

i shall report my results back

For the record, when I said hunters, I meant it much more broadly. I would count a soldier as a hunter. One of humans but a hunter none the less. So the gear came from the people who designed it to fit their need, then the wannabe hunters come and use it because it looks cool. "Look at me, I can totally do all the things these other people do!"

I am curious about the use of language, but I don't want to dicktate people how to use it

As for the left wordbending: they have nothing to offer when it comes to the official language

Official language exists for a reason and is backed with actual power and money, because people need to make deals that have no room for cheeky business and wordplay

Hence I am not too worried about it

the problem with language is that it is always changing

strictly enforcing rules kills it and prevents it from growing to describe new ideas or connections we have made

its why we made language, or one of the reasons, to take these thoughts and convey them to other people

and we have found many ways to do so

but you also cannot just make up your own stuff, at least not without explaining it.