Miscellaneous desk
< June 11	<< May \| June \| Jul >>	June 13 >

Welcome to the Wikipedia Miscellaneous Reference Desk Archives
The page you are currently viewing is an archive page. While you can leave answers for any questions shown below, please ask new questions on one of the current reference desk pages.

June 12

21 gun salute

I believe you need to check your facts as well as the history of this honor. Firearms are NOT guns. Firearms are hand held weapons designed to fire a projectile. A rifle (firearm) squad firing volleys at a military funeral may consist of a number of rifles (more than one and less than nine)firing three volleys. Even if there are seven rifles firing three volleys each, for a total of 21 shots, a 21 GUN salute has not been fired. Semantics? Yes, but accurate. As a veteran and a member of a veteran's Honor Guard this distinction is important to me. 75.130.21.50 (talk) — Preceding undated comment added 17:01, 12 June 2015 (UTC) — 75.130.21.50 (talk) has made few or no other edits outside this topic. [reply]

I assume you're talking about the article 21-gun salute? While, of course a firearm is a gun in the general sense and in the common usage that we must recognize in the encyclopedia, I agree that in the sense of the salute that firearm ≠ gun. Perhaps you could take this up at Talk:21-gun salute where it will be more readily associated with the topic, taking care to define your case in the restricted sense context of gun salute versus firearm volley to avoid getting down in the weeds about a firearm not being a gun in the general sense. Acroterion (talk) 17:12, 12 June 2015 (UTC)[reply]

(ec) Well you could have changed the page yourself, to remove the uncited text. I've removed the word firearms, as the hatnote specifically says "This is about the cannon salute". I'm not entirely sure my substitution of the word "artillery" is technically correct. Rojomoke (talk) 17:15, 12 June 2015 (UTC)[reply]

There's a difference between common usage, where a handgun is indeed a gun, and the military. However, the term "21-gun salute" is an old one, and may have predated those distinctions in the military. StuRat (talk) 17:56, 12 June 2015 (UTC)[reply]

The hatnote does make the distinction between a true artillery salute and a rifle volley. The firing of a true 21-gun salute or 19-gun salute at the United States Capitol Building can be heard for more than a mile. If you didn't start counting, you can't tell whether it is a 21-gun salute or a 19-gun salute, and it doesn't really matter much. It really depends on the governmental system of the nation whose head of government is visiting. (Visits from royalty or parliamentary presidents are less common than visits from prime ministers.) Either way, a state dinner in the evening is likely. If you think that the wording should be clarified, discuss on the article talk page. Robert McClenon (talk) 18:05, 12 June 2015 (UTC)[reply]

The military has specific usages for these terms. This, for example. But in general usage, guns are indeed firearms.[1][2] A firearm is "Anything which expels a missile by combustion of gunpowder (or a similar substance), from a pistol to a cannon." ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 21:48, 12 June 2015 (UTC)[reply]

The question is not whether guns are firearms, but whether all firearms are guns. Rojomoke (talk) 04:49, 13 June 2015 (UTC)[reply]

The OP didn't say that. He said firearms are not guns. That's like saying cars are not Fords. Some cars are not Fords, and some cars are Fords. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 08:51, 13 June 2015 (UTC)[reply]

As an aside, I would assume they are firing blanks, as firing artillery in a built up area is going to cause casualties, if not just structural damage. Even a rifle can cause casualties, because when the bullet goes into the air, it may lose its explosive potential, but when it comes down, it still has its momentum.

KägeTorä - (影 虎) (もしもし！)

10:05, 13 June 2015 (UTC)[reply]

From my experience in a brief career as a gunner (Canadian, ca. 1980) the rounds used for salutes were indeed blanks—but we had a tradition of tossing a few pennies in the last one. I don’t know how far they’d carry, after knocking a few leaves out of the treetops in front of the gun, but there was nothing but parks and the river for several hundred metres downrange of the position.—Odysseus 1479 07:06, 14 June 2015 (UTC)[reply]

They would not be firing live ammo. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 15:39, 13 June 2015 (UTC)[reply]

In 1985, at a Navy funeral, the empty shell cases were placed in the flag that had been used to cover the casket, which was then neatly folded up and ceremonially handed to the eldest daughter (in accordance with precise rules as to precedence of survivors). They were, as we said, firing blanks. The rounds used in either an artillery salute or a rifle volley are blank rounds, at least in the United States. (Firing light weapons into the air in celebration is a custom in some countries, but it does sometimes result in injury.) Robert McClenon (talk) 16:19, 13 June 2015 (UTC)[reply]

They used to fire powder and shot, according to this. Mikenorton (talk) 19:17, 13 June 2015 (UTC)[reply]

The firing of shot by ships would have been much less likely to cause injury than the firing of live artillery rounds at a palace or hall or the firing of live rifle rounds at a funeral. As the reference notes, the firing of live rounds at sea has also been discontinued by the Royal Navy. Robert McClenon (talk) 19:23, 13 June 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Artillery salutes have been fired at the Tower of london since the middle ages and ~~for several centuries~~ since 1924 have been fired by the Honourable Artillery Company. If solid shot would have been used it would cause no end of damage to buildings on the opposite bank of the Thames, City Hall, the glassy home of the Greater London Assembly is nowadays directly opposite. Alansplodge (talk) 14:41, 14 June 2015 (UTC)[reply]