“We make it look like the drug cartel could just cross the border, walk in there and buy ‘em and walk back across the border or really rotten Americans could walk into the gun stores, buy those guns, go to Mexico and sell them to the drug cartel. Yes, evil Americans could, and then people would die, and the conclusion is supposed to be, “See, we have got to have more control over guns. Look at what happened here.” That was the plan. Backfired.”
Hoist with your own petard
Meaning: Injured by the device that you intended to use to injure others.
Origin: The phrase ‘hoist with one’s own petar[d]’ is often cited as ‘hoist by one’s own petar[d]’. The two forms mean the same, although the former is strictly a more accurate version of the original source. A petard is, or rather was, as they have long since fallen out of use, a small engine of war used to blow breaches in gates or walls. They were originally metallic and bell-shaped but later cubical wooden boxes. Whatever the shape, the significant feature was that they were full of gunpowder - basically what we would now call a bomb.
The device was used by the military forces of all the major European fighting nations by the 16th century. In French and English - petar or petard, and in Spanish and Italian - petardo.
The dictionary maker John Florio defined them like this in 1598:
“Petardo - a squib or petard of gun powder used to burst vp gates or doores with.”
The French have the word ‘péter’ - to fart, which it’s hard to imagine is unrelated.
Petar was part of the everyday language around that time, as in this rather colourful line from Zackary Coke in his work Logick, 1654:
“The prayers of the Saints ascending with you, will Petarr your entrances through heavens Portcullis”.
Once the word is known, ‘hoist by your own petard’ is easy to fathom. It’s nice also to have a definitive source - no less than Shakespeare, who gives the line to Hamlet, 1602:
“For tis the sport to have the enginer Hoist with his owne petar”.
(Note: engineers were originally constructors of military engines.)
Meester Attorney General, male gigilo to Okra Whinnyfred, you wiper of animal food troughs—we peter in your general direction and take joy in your discomfiture, ha ha, ho ho!
The engineer was too valuable to risk doing this so the job fell to an apprentice engineer, one whose life expectancy was very short.
If he wasn't shot full of arrows or balls getting to and from the gate, sometimes a mistake was made in the fuse(by the head engineer of course, the guy who didn't have to fire it) and the petard blew up early, taking the apprentice with it, hence hoisting the apprentice with his own petard.
I find these little bits of historical trivia fascinating, don't you?