[ExI] lock-and-load

[Damien Broderick]

At 03:12 PM 5/15/2009 -0700, the spikester wrote:

>The right guard will
>do whatever it is that they do, the lock-and-load crowd will... I suppose
>lock and load

As a don't-have-a-gun guy, I've always been puzzled by this phrase. 
Wikipedia doesn't help. Is it possible to first lock and then load 
something? Take a car, for example: standing outside the supermarket 
with all the doors and the back hatch locked, I'd find it quite 
difficult to load my goods. Do you lock some part of a gun to prevent 
its going off in your face while you load the ammo? Or do you load 
the bits that fly out the end and through the air and only then 
"lock" some part of the mechanism to stop you shooting your dick off? 
In which case, shouldn't the manly cry be "load and lock!"?

Oh, wait--Wiktionary says:

<to lock and load

    1. (US) A military command to put a weapon's safety catch on, and 
load it with ammunition. >

Must try one of those gadgets some day, I hear they're heaps of fun.

Damien Broderick