bang to rights

• banged to rights

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From bang (“completely”) +‎ to rights (“properly”). Originally US; attested from the start of the 20th century.^[1]

bang to rights (not generally comparable, comparative more bang to rights, superlative most bang to rights)

1. (now chiefly British, idiomatic) Red-handed, (caught) in the act.
   • 1910 December, George Allan England, “The Steeled Conscience”, in The Railroad Man’s Magazine, New York: Frank A. Munsey Co., page 188:

     We had a man once who got caught with a bundle of railroad stocks.
     They got him bang to rights and would have shoved him, only […] when he swore he’d found them, they couldn’t prove he hadn’t.

   • 1919 December 2, Charles W. Tyler, “Raw Silk”, in Detective Stories Magazine, volume XXVIII, New York: Street & Smith, page 29:

     The silk! Hide it! Throw it away! If they get us with that—we’re bang to rights.

   • 2012, Officer ‘A’, The Crime Factory: The Shocking True Story of a Front Line CID Detective, Edinburgh: Mainstream, page 218:

     Looking at the evidence, I’d assumed that the hapless pair was bang to rights and that we’d have little trouble placing him on remand and giving the law-abiding residents of Surrey a brief respite.

2. Used other than figuratively or idiomatically: see bang (adverb), to rights.
   • 2004, Brian S. McWilliams, Spam Kings, Sebastopol, California: O’Reilly Media, published 2005, →ISBN, page 69:

     Once, after a spammer trolled Nanae, accusing antis of having no life, Mad Pierre sarcastically responded that the spammer was correct. ¶ “Damn, you’ve got us bang to rights. We have no lives. None. At all.”

   • 2007, Neil Pearson, Obelisk: A History of Jack Kahane and the Obelisk Press, page 479:

     Tyler tries to dismiss Vidal's characterization of him as a pseudo-intellectual buffoon, but succeeds only in demonstrating that Vidal had him bang to rights.

   • 2008, James Buchan, The gate of air:

     He wished he were in London, where a girl in a minicab would set him bang to rights.

• dead to rights

From reinterpretation of bang (“completely”) as bang (“to handle noisily or violently”).

bang to rights (third-person singular simple present bangs to rights, present participle banging to rights, simple past and past participle banged to rights)

1. (rare, British, idiomatic) To have sufficient, indisputable evidence that a person's actions are generally perceived to be wrong; to catch red-handed.
   • 2006, Planning, numbers 1650–1666, page 8:

     I am as intent on banging them all to rights as the next bleeding heart middle-class liberal, but take a look at the record so far.

   • 2007 May 26, The Week, 615, 6:

     Good week for: Cyclists, after Britain's most prolific bicycle thief was banged to rights.

   • 2009 February 4, “Batman turns air blue in Terminator tantrum”, in Belfast Telegraph:

     His alter-ego Batman utters nothing more provocative than the occasional “holy smoke” as he bangs adversaries to rights

   • 2010, Peter James, Dead Simple:

     He'd been untouchable for the past decade, but now Roy Grace had finally banged him to rights.

• fair cop