burner

n. a gun, especially a handgun. Subjects: English, United States, Firearms, Slang

3 Comments | Cites | Permalink | Tell a Friend

Citations: 1988 Sari Horwitz Washington Post (Apr. 24) “A Drug-Selling Machine That Was All Business” p. A1: In another seizure, police recovered a crude, handwritten drug-trade manual from a PCP ring.…It listed the “workers” and the “deliverers,” assigning beepers, walkie-talkies, police scanners and “burners” (guns) to them. 1989 Bill Nichols, Mike McQueen USA Today (1A) (Apr. 25) “D.C. crack street fights to survive”: Burner A gun, usually a handgun. 1992 Sue Anne Pressley, Keith Harriston Washington Post (Feb. 2) “A Crazed Fascination With Guns” p. A1: The inmates talked about their crimes in a generally easy manner, some with a lingo that focused on “beefs,” or disputes, and then getting “a burner,” or gun, to settle the score. 2004 Alex Wood Journal Inquirer (Manchester, Conn.) (Dec. 11) “Man who shot at cops says he was scared”: He said he had had an altercation on Zion Street the previous morning with a man who had threatened him, saying, “You better keep your burner on you tonight.” “Burner” is a slang expression for a gun. 2005 Curtis Johnson Herald-Dispatch (Huntington, W.V.) (Apr. 21) “Witness points finger at Fields”: “He asked Justin to get him his burner, because he was going to murk that bitch,” White said. In testimony, White said “burner” was a word meaning “pistol, gun” and “murk” meant to “murder, kill.”

Posted 6 Jan 05 | Permalink | Tell a Friend

Reader comments:

On HBO’s “The Wire” the term burner is used to describe prepaid cell phones the drug dealers use and discard when the minutes run out, to circumvent the possibility of wire-tapping.

by burny5 12 Jan 05, 0104 GMT

That’s a good use of “burner,” a clear off-shoot of the old phreaking days when all cell phones were analog and it was easier to clone them. A “burner” then was a cell phone you “burned” with the new identifying information stolen from elsewhere, which you had to do because there were no SIM chips. There was a bit of reinforcement of the word because you “burned right through” those phones: you used them as long as you thought they were safe, then threw out the info and burned new info into the chip.

by Grant Barrett 12 Jan 05, 0125 GMT

I see the connection between the handgun and cell phone. In both cases you throw them away after use so that they cannot be later found on you and traced back to the crime.

by Eric 31 Mar 08, 0607 GMT