Brewer's: Guns

To blow great guns. To be very boisterous and windy. Noisy and boisterous as the reports of great guns.

To run away from their own guns.
To eat their own words; desert what is laid down as a principle. The allusion is obvious.

“The Government could not, of course, run away from their guns.” —Nineteenth Century, Feb., 1893, p. 193.

Source: Dictionary of Phrase and Fable, E. Cobham Brewer, 1894
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