Spray & Pray

In the very exciting New Jersey section of the Sunday New York Times, the article Go to the Mattresses (No, It's Not a Mob War), contributed to the Times' reputation for not knowing much about weapons.

The article is about multi-player, multi-day e-gaming tournaments conducted over LANs. The error occurs in this quoted exchange:

If the office IT guys ever threw a rave, it would probably look something like this.

"Warlord, where are you? Get out of there."

"I'm almost out of health."

"Dad, did you like the way I killed you?"

"My health's, like, really gone."

"Spray and prey, spray and prey. Beautiful."

"Well, I'm dead."

Obviously, the phrase: "Spray and prey, spray and prey" should have read "Spray and pray, spray and pray" which refers to a technique for shooting automatic weapons in which a shooter cuts loose in a wildly uncontrolled fashion and prays that he'll hit something. This is in contrast to aimed fire.

Google:

Spray and pray = 12,900 hits

Spray and prey = 1,450 hits

I checked with the author and he admitted the mistake but it hasn't been changed yet.