gunsel

"Osborne, an accomplished writer of fiction and nonfiction, has been asked to imagine a new case for Philip Marlowe and--have a smell from the barrel, all you gunsels and able grables--it crackles....

References to their sexuality are reserved for scented handkerchiefs and veiled references to 'gunsels'.

Amy Knight, "J'accuse!" Will Putin's Gunsels Play Chopin For Us?

12, 1980 (people who own guns for self-defense are "traitors"); Garry Wills, The Pope is Shot; the Gun Rules the Rulers, ANCHORAGE DAILY NEWS, May 14, 1981 at A-12 ("the sordid race of gunsels").

This was because I had been in Chicago that summer, as a reporter, when Hubert's gunsels scuttled across the convention floor to kill the compromise peace plank.

Not the coolest of gunsels, Manni panicked when he saw transit inspectors board the train.

The salesman hires a team of gunsels (including the ubiquitous Steve Buscemi, now competing with Joe Pesci as the cinema's resident psycho), whose sadism is far outstripped by their incompetence.

Particularly notable among those playing assorted gunsels, patsies, sleazeballs, wise-asses and loons were Rex McDowell as a mad Armenian hit-man, Robert Wright and David Pichette (poisonous lizard and rabid pekinese, respective) as businessman trafficking in non-standard merchandise, and David Mong as the mysterious Babcock, Ray's sunnily implacable doom.