this post was submitted on 07 Aug 2025
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All the things you listed either shoot projectiles and/or have triggers. What else do you call trigger operated projectile launchers? Also Caulk guns legitimately look like old timey machine guns.
This is my perspective as an American looking in. In other languages there may be terminology used for these items that do not reference firearms.
I am curious if there is a language that calls a nail gun not a gun
Or pneumatic nailer
I don't think any of those things are referred to as a gun in French. Just essentially "stapler", "nailer", "gluer", ect
I might be biased by the question but I spontaneously thought of "pistolet à clous" as the most common term (which indeed translates to nail gun).
I agree with your other examples though, saying "staple gun" would be weird in french
Amazon and their copycats seem to be calling them 'nailers', probably because it's easier to filter out the constructive guns from destructive, prohibited ones. But Amazon is evil so it's probably unrelated
To be fair on this one, based on actual functionality 'air nailer' or 'power hammer' is more accurate than 'nail gun'' anyway. Outside of movies, you can't use it as a gun without enough modification that it's no longer the same tool.
Tell that to my .22 Ramset.
Ramsets use .22 blanks, not bullets, and would have the same issues being used as a pistol at range as any other powered hammer. Even if you override the safety, and either modify or practice with it enough to be reasonably accurate, you're just not going to do much damage if you're more than an arm's length or two away.
Nails have terrible ballistic performance, and there's nothing in a nailer meant to keep the nail going straight for more than 10cm or so. A nail launched into air (rather than a hard surface) from a nailer would start to tumble almost immediately.
You'd literally be more effective throwing the nailer at an attacker than trying to shoot them with it.
Pssst, the "bullet" is called a "nail" in a "nail gun."
37mms and 40mms also use a .38 blank (or a shotgun primer, depending) to launch, that not "gun" enough for you either just because the propellant and projectile are independent? What about flintlock?
And who says "gun" needs sub-MOA accuracy to be "gun?" The Liberator (both the George Hyde FP-45 produced by the OSS and the Cody Wilson 3d printed one) is notoriously inaccurate, meant to be basically pressed into a nazi back and fired to steal their firearm (or to simply exist as a working proof of concept for Cody's, really). Both still very "gun."
I took the time to watch some videos of people testing this.
Aside from all that, we're talking about a tool designed to push a fastener into material while in contact with said material. A gun is a tool designed to push a bullet into a target at a distance with some level of designed-in accuracy. These are not the same thing. A power nailer can certainly be used as a gun, but it can also be used as a step stool, a ruler, or a door stop. Usage outside intended purpose doesn't change the nature of an object.
Hey, if you want to call your PA nailer a nail gun, that's fine. There's no law requiring accuracy in speech, and of the entire power hammer category a PA nailer is probably closest.
I like < method of creating force > + hammer above nail gun but to your second point. Nail guns can be deadly without modification. Just close up work. They sell these and others like them at big box stores. This would be, in my favored naming convention, a gunpowder hammer.
Replacing "gun" with "press" for example.
Alternatively, caulker, stapler, nailer, gluer, tattooer, and finger pointers. Fingers also usually don't launch projectiles I think. It's just that gun culture is so embedded in your brain you couldn't think of an alternative.
Note how these are all construction tools, and construction is also usually worked by men there. Yet more traditionally feminine tools don't get the "gun" additive; most will say spray bottle for example rather than spray gun, even though it also has a trigger (a literal gun-like one in some cases) and shoots out a projectile.
I think press works for Caulk and glue. Stapler is used already for the machine that sits on a desk as opposed to the hand held construction style. Finger pointers is certainly descriptive but when people do "finger guns" the thumb usually mimics the hammer action. What else are they miming? Am I so inundated with gun culture I was unable to think of another use for the thumb?
I think bottles were around before firearms but Staple, nail and Caulk guns were not.
They're both staplers - one's just manual and the other isn't.
Spray bottles did not exist before guns, no.
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Kartuschenpresse aka cartridge press
Cool thx