This is not to denigrate the Italians, who have indeed designed some wonderful weapons, but the art of the handgun has always been essentially an American concept, and to see us drop the subject in favor of the Europeans is not cheerful. We are by no means chauvinistic in this. We admire German and Italian cars excessively, and we are particularly fond of South African wines and Germanic rifles, but the art of the handgun has always been an almost exclusively American achievement, and it is indeed a pity to see that era vanish. Colonel Bob Young is just back from Saudi Arabia, where he found that the elite Arabs are much fonder of small calibers and minor cartridges than they are of the battle-tested 308. It seems that the 308 bumps them when they shoot it.
Research indicates that the word can mean almost anything one wants it to mean.
It is really no longer possible to elevate anyone by referring to him as a hero. The most commonplace examples are entertainers. A hired entertainer is worth whatever the lord of the manor wishes to pay him, but the fact that he performs his entertainments well does in no way establish him as a hero. Thus no professional athlete can be correctly termed a hero for doing what he is paid to do excessively well. A true hero performs noble purposes of great difficulty at immediate risk of his life.