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Jeff Cooper's Commentaries
Previously Gunsite Gossip
Vol. 3, No. 13 November, 1995
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Indian Summer, 1995
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The annual Gunsite Reunion and Theodore Roosevelt Memorial held at
Whittington Center in honor of the great man's birthday was even more of a
success than in the past. The shooting, conducted by Rich Wyatt, John
Gannaway and David Kahn, was great fun. The declamations were inspiring, as
always, but perhaps the greatest exhilaration of the meeting was the sense
of unity and comradeship experienced by Orange Gunsite comrades, who in
many instances are forced by circumstance to dwell amongst the
unenlightened.
While most of our people were from various parts of the United States, we
had members from England, Switzerland, and even way up in Darkest New
England. It is a long, long way to Whittington, but it is worth it when you
get there. The weather was absolutely gorgeous, at the very peak of the
western autumn colors, and we were troubled by neither heat nor cold nor
wind until Sunday afternoon when we were breaking up.
With all the family hard at work shooting, it was impossible for me to
single out every distinguished performance, but a couple that stick in my
mind were Finn Aagaard's erasing of two helium balloons with one shot as
they lined up, and Marc Heim's impressive performance on clay birds with
his "Kansas City Special." (That's a 16-inch iron-sighted lever gun in
caliber 44 Magnum.) Dr. Manning Picket also showed off with his
open-sighted 350 Magnum, and daughter Lindy managed to break four in a row
on sporting clays.
We had occasion to break out the "Gunsite zeroing target" for the first
time on public display, and, not to my surprise, it worked very well. I
commend this target to all the faithful as the most efficient thing of its
kind I know.
Dan Dennehy treated us to his usual knife throwing demonstration, as well
as to his rendition of "The Lure of the Tropics."
Both Don Davis and Marc Heim showed us how to use a lever-gun from a
Condition 3 Ready, which is a technique not fully appreciated in the Age of
High Tech.
Lindy's poetry is developing to astonishing levels, and we are approaching
the point where a bound volume of her collected works may be in order.
Prior to that, however, her prose work, "Wisdom on Cooper," must be put to
bed, published and out on the market.
As always, the wildlife display at Whittington was delightful, with lots of
deer and elk, including one big bull, plus pronghorns and turkeys. Nobody
saw a cougar, but as these cats are becoming less and less secretive
year-by-year we may expect to sight one or more at the next event of
October '96.
The Whittington Center cannot accommodate as many of you as we might wish,
so fix the date for '96 and plan to join us then.
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On a T-shirt we saw at the reunion was displayed the pungent phrase,
"Visualize no Liberals!"
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I have had the opportunity now for a couple of years to evaluate the Glock
pistol with sufficient care to give me justification in an opinion. I have
not used one much myself, but just enough to know that it is not for me.
However, I have some good friends in law enforcement who have pretty much
set matters straight. My conclusion is that the Glock pistol is a very good
choice for hired hands, but not for serious pistoleros. Its proper place
lies in the public sector, and the dedicated shottist is rarely found
therein. (Note: That is shottist rather than shootist. Look it up.)
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It is with profound sorrow that we must report the death of our old friend
and comrade Milt Sparks, on 8 September 1995. Milt was a man of great
talent and he contributed measurably to American pistolcraft.
He was a good artisan, a good shot, and a good man. He is sadly missed.
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We learn that the Chicoms placed an order for 10 million copies of the AUG
with Steyr-Mannlicher. How interesting that the commies could dream up a
demand for 10 million 22-caliber squirt guns! Apparently we will not
discover what they wanted with those pieces since the Austrian government
queered the deal, but if we are now hunting around for the next war, we may
have some hints here. Incidentally, while the American law enforcement
establishment refers to the piece in question as the AUG (pronounced OG),
not too many of our people know what the letters stand for. AUG signifies
Armee Universal Gewehr, which may be an exaggeration, but no more so than
"high power" tacked onto the 9-millimeter Belgian Browning.
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The columnist Tony Snow offers us a good campaign slogan for the Billary
Gang in '96:
"We can't fool all the people all the time, but twice would be
nice."
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I have almost passed the point at which I can be shocked anymore, but I was
perhaps amazed at a report from England about a lawsuit brought by a woman
against an importer of toys because when her little boy flung a boomerang
it came back and hit him on the head. Apparently she holds that the package
in which the toy was packed should have contained a statement to the effect
that the instrument actually worked as designed. I suppose the next step is
for someone to sue a gunmaker because when the gun fired it made a loud
noise which startled him.
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Perhaps all is not lost. In Washington, D.C., of all places, family member
Bill O'Connor recently overheard the following comment from the driver of a
child-filled station wagon:
"There are more armed men in the woods on opening day of deer
season in Pennsylvania than there are federal agents, and that
gives me a feeling of great comfort."
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Note that the new issue Burris Scoutscope is distinguished by a slightly
enlarged bell at the front end. There are other structural differences as
well, and up til now, the new glass has demonstrated increased honesty over
previous products. An "honest" telescope is one that does what you tell it,
in both planes, every time. When you dial in "left 4, up 6" that is what
you should get, but all too often you do not. The new Burris, however, in
samples inspected, has been quite satisfactory so far. We wish it a bright
future.
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Sometimes I am convinced that the world is actually getting worse, and it
is not just my advanced age which makes it seem so. Consider the case
reported in the shooting industry magazine of a customer who bought a rifle
only to return it in a matter of days. He claimed that when he fired it and
opened the bolt a piece fell out, and he displayed an empty case to prove
it.
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From a recent issue of Tailhook magazine, we discover that Naval pilots
going into the Gulf War received no training nor familiarisation whatever
with sidearms. Furthermore, they were forbidden to bring their own. As one
post-modern bureaucrat sounded off, "This is war! You can't bring your own
guns!"
Of course it maybe adduced that if a flier loses a 30-million-dollar
airplane, the taxpayer really should not be concerned about whether or not
he can shoot his way to safety on the ground. It may, of course, be of some
concern to him.
Many years ago I was invited to a conference at the academy in Colorado
Springs on just this point. The colonels sat there and shot the breeze all
day without coming up with an answer to the question of what a combat pilot
needs a pistol for. One school holds that he should be able to sneak around
on the ground and put chickens in the pot. Another says he should stay on
top of his hill and threaten the bad guys at the bottom until the chopper