Learn English – Why is “You’ve brought a knife to a gun fight” considered to be a mixed metaphor

idiomsmetaphors

In my reading today, I came across this phrase:

Pardon the mixed metaphor, but you’ve brought a knife to a gun fight. [Link]

The (longtime) columnist was saying the person was outmatched. I understand that "gunfight" for a conflict is a metaphor, but I don't understand why the entirety is a mixed metaphor.

A mixed metaphor is mixing parts of two metaphors to make a, well, not a known metaphor or one that's ridiculous, e.g. to talk a very long time without significant results can be expressed by saying,

talk until you're blue in the face/until your face turns blue

and,

until the cows come home

Both are common metaphors. Mixing them would produce, say,

Talk until the cows turn blue.

I tried Googling variants of the supposedly mixed metaphor to see if there was a more established version. I could not find one.

There were references to the origin of the above idiom, my favorite (supported here as well) being from the movie, The Untouchables, wherein Sean Connery utters with contempt, "Isn't that just like a [racist for Italian]… brings a knife to a gun fight." (There were others but none earlier.)

The following, first appearing in print in 2008, might be considered a mixed metaphor:

Those who live by the sword get shot by those that don't.

But I can't understand the idiom in question as a mixed metaphor. Can someone tell me what I am missing?

Edited to add an example, and in case I was unclear: if it is a mixed metaphor, which are the two metaphors it's mixing?

Best Answer

To understand the mixed metaphor in this case, I believe you need to expand the scope of the article you are interested in (emphasis mine):

If anything, you are underthinking this, perhaps dangerously so.

You’re uncomfortable with the communication; you don’t want it; you don’t buy his rationale for it; you have indicated by typical “polite” means — asserting your commitment to your marriage then ignoring his texts and calls — that you aren’t receptive to his attention; and he is running through these red lights as if they aren’t even there.

Even in the rosiest of interpretations, his actions point to a person who is operating outside the norms of healthy behavior.

You, however, are trying your best to stay within them — and flustered that it hasn’t worked. Pardon the mixed metaphor, but you’ve brought a knife to a gunfight.

The author has used two unrelated metaphors to describe the same situation: one to describe the man's behavior, and another to describe the woman's. Though this doesn't produce "a ridiculous effect" as required by the definition of "mixed metaphors", and the author's use does make this confusing, since the metaphors are two paragraphs apart, I do believe this is the author's intent.

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