Machine Gun
I've recently seen a couple of comments about the terms "machine" and "gun", as used for those devices we use to apply tattoos to your skin. On one side, there are those who feel the proper name for the device is "machine", and that anyone using the more colloquial "gun" is wrong. They also claim that you can tell who a "real" tattoo artist is by which word you use to identify your device.
On the other side, there's the rest of us.
Yes, we all know how the machine was invented by Thomas Edison in 1876 and received a US patent for it. So, therefore it's a machine, right? True. However, if we're going to be technical, it's actually a "Stencil-Pens". So, no "machine". Also, some argue that because it doesn't fire any projectile it can't be a gun. However, this argument doesn't take into account items such as a glue gun, which also does not fire projectiles. But then, what about the word "gun" being used for something that isn't a device at all, like a "young gun", which means an up-and-coming person in any given professional field. In this case, we should also probably be literal and refer to these people with the easier-to-remember term of "up-and-coming person in his or her professional field" instead of the incorrectly applied "young gun".
And while we're at it, since the proper name for the device is "machine" and not "gun", let's also make sure to pay due respect to all tattoo artists. Instead of improper nicknames like "Spike", "Jonesy" or "Frisco Sally", let's just use the artists' full given names. And let's just do away with any common nicknames for things. Don't grab a brew from the fridge, or jump in the car to grab fifty bucks from the ATM so you can run to the store. Instead, take a malted alcoholic beverage from the refrigerator, then seat yourself inside your horseless carriage so that you can extract fifty dollars from the Automatic Teller Machine and drive yourself to the market.
While we are at it, forget about inking some skin or even applying a tattoo to skin. We'll call it "application of a dermagraphic to dermis (or epidermis)".
Words are made up to express an idea, concept, emotion, thought or object. Every word in every language began as an amalgamation of sounds produced by the human mouth, created to help identify whatever the speaker needed to express to another. Words are arbitrarily assigned based on the whim of their creator, and history is full of examples of one word being used in another context. It's what is referred to as "poetic license", itself a euphemism which has nothing to do with either poetry or licensing.
The tattoo culture is built upon people who seek their own path, who carve their own niche, who like to stand out from the crowd. Without people who go against convention there would be no tattoo culture, since we would all leave the world as we entered it: ink-free. Strange that people who are active participants in such a culture would want to spend their time enforcing a rigid rule to determine membership to the club. I guess there's no catchphrase which reads "The only difference between tattooed people and non-tattooed people is tattooed people don't care what you call a hunk of metal with some coils on it".
On the other hand, I do agree with one point: you can tell who a "real" tattoo artist is by whether they spend their time arguing about what arbitrary word you must use to label a device. A real artist is too busy creating art to be so concerned with what to call one piece of equipment.
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