What Are Your Favorite Firearm Nicknames?

Like so many things in the world that are admired, web cherished or feared, firearms of various types have acquired nicknames over the years. Some  are specific to particular styles of guns based on who designed or made them or how they look, sound or were employed—a good example being the Thompson submachine gun. It’s been called everything from a “Tommy Gun” (after the inventor John T. Thompson,) the “Chicago Typewriter /Chicago Piano” (because of its popularity with Gangsters in the 1920s and 30s) and “Trench Broom” or “Trench Sweeper,” a more martial name it shares with the Winchester Model 1897 Trench shotgun.

Others are a bit more generic. Sometimes their derivation is obvious  like “Gat”  shortened from  the name “Gatling.”  Another handgun term from around the same time as “Gat” (probably the 1910s) is “Roscoe.” Some opine it was coined by writer Damon Runyon as a prop to be used by some of the gamblers and underworld types who populated his stories. Others feel it has a rather naughtier derivation—but as Sigmund Freud supposedly said, “sometimes a cigar’s merely a cigar.”-[source]