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Jeff Cooper's Commentaries
Previously Gunsite Gossip

Vol. 2, No. 15
December, 1994

Troubled times indeed!

Here at the Gunsite Sconce we are involved in a very large correspondence.
This means that 1 communicate with a great many different people, though
possibly their political diversification may not be great. As it happens,
however, the people I talk to, both in person and by mail, seem to be divided
into three categories. In the first are those who feel that the United States
and Western civilization in general are in trouble. The second is composed of
people who feel that we are all involved in very deep trouble. And the third
group feels that we are tottering on the brink of disaster. No one, of course,
can predict the future, but when we, as a nation, have placed our faith in
democracy - a form of government which depends essentially upon the virtue of
the people - what hope is there when such virtue no longer exists? We should
not be pessimistic, especially at this time of year, but the republic, as well
as our culture at large, is in for rough times - and rougher ahead. Let us
hope that we are worthy of the sacrifices of our forefathers!

                    *     *     *

Recently in the waiting room of an office in Prescott we heard a customer,
looking at us, remark, "The man has a pistol." My response was, "Yea, we just
won the election!" I do not know if the customer got the point, but I did
enjoy the exchange.

                    *     *     *

The Revolution of `94 went quite well, as everyone is pleased to see. It is
now up to the new team in Washington to take advantage of the mood of the
times. The Billary Administration must remain in the saddle for another two
years, of course, but having lost both stirrups and one rein, it may be that
the horse has more to say about the direction of travel than the rider.

It is vital that we must not go limp simply because we won a battle. That was
not the whole war, and much fighting remains ahead. In the pursuit of liberty
we can never relax.

                    *     *     *

You all noticed that the part played by the NRA in the Revolution of `94 was
significant. Some of the losers claim that it was decisive. May it be so! Most
of the press, and even some of our own membership, have recently taken the
view that the NRA is a paper tiger, unable to make any difference where it
counts. This is just not so, and the shooters of this country remain a
political force to contend with despite the complaints of the limp left. Sign
up a new member every month! Only by doing so can you discharge your duty to
the republic.

                    *     *     *

A correspondent recently attempted to convince us that the Bureau of Alcohol,
Tobacco and Firearms should now be referred to as "ATF" rather than BATF. We
disagree strongly. As long as this nefarious branch of the federal ninja may
be referred to as the "BATmen," we have a certain semantic advantage.

                    *     *     *

We note the announcement of the new "450 Rigby" cartridge. This is a
proprietary round suitable (for the present) only in the 450 Rigby rifle. Its
ballistics are just a tad short of those of Baby, throwing a 45-caliber bullet
at a starting velocity of 2350. I do not know why this cartridge is needed
when we now have a good assortment of practical heavy cartridges for
bolt-action rifles, but need has never been an important factor in cartridge
design. The combination of rifle and cartridge should do very well indeed for
those fortunate enough to be able to hunt heavy animals. We wish the
combination all success.

                    *     *     *

After much juggling around it now appears that our rifle class at Whittington
Center is set for 3-8 April, and that is just one session. If the demand
appears, we will schedule another.

(Future pistol sessions are not yet firm.)

                    *     *     *

The following material is from "National Review" for November 21, 1994.

     "We simply do not understand. Assault rifles were banned by the crime
     bill.  The crime bill passed. Even Republicans voted for it. It was
     signed into law.  Assault weapons are illegal. You cannot have one.
     Nobody has one. They are all gone. They will never bother the decent
     citizens of this country again. Crime has ended. We outlawed crime.
     Nobody could have shot at the White House with an assault weapon.
     Clinton flacks must have made up the whole incident.

"Of course it wasn't an `assault rifle,' but a Chinese automatic. That's okay:
half the people who supported the crime bill didn't know the difference
either."

                    *     *     *

Those of you who wondered what "PPC" signified in the design of some new
cartridges may stop wondering. Those three letters stand for Pindell Palmsano
Canucce. Now you can relax.

                    *     *     *

While assisting in zeroing operations for the current elk season, we
discovered again, as if we had ever forgotten, that almost the first thing one
should check when taking out a rifle which has been out of use for some time
is the solidity of the telescope mounting system. All telescope mounting
screws should be locked tight and checked for that before any attempt is made
to zero the piece. Three of us forgot that last month and were much
embarrassed at the result.

                    *     *     *

Those of you who feel the need should note that Don Mitchell is now offering a
10-round magazine for the 1911 pistol. You can inquire about this from
Mitchell Arms, 3400 West MacArthur Blvd, Santa Ana, CA 92704.

                    *     *     *

You may have missed it, but a memorial was recently set up to honor the memory
of the four ninja who died in the Waco massacre (by whose hand is not clear).
It did not last long. It has been removed by persons unknown and not yet
rediscovered.

As to that, it seems to me that a monument to the eighty-odd innocents who
perished at the hands of the feds at Waco might be in order. It seems likely
that money for such an operation could be easily amassed, and think what a
blow that would be for the cause of liberty at this time!

                    *     *     *

Our man in the megalopolis informs us that the word is now out that Aristide
has offered to send troops to Washington in order to maintain the Clintons in
power.

                    *     *     *

"The Boers knocked us silly at a mile." I am a great admirer of Mr. Rudyard
Kipling, but the notion that the Boers were spectacular "long shooters" is
without accurate foundation. The Boers were hunters who lived by their rifles.
Any hunter knows that the rule is to get closer if you can. The difference
between a deadly shot and a lesser man is concentration. When an experienced
hunter presses the trigger he knows that he has a clean kill. Too often a
soldier shoots only to make noise or to provide "suppressive fire," which, as
the saying goes, "doesn't." A spectacular example of this occurred on the
summit of Majuba Hill in 1881. The two sides enjoyed no particular difference
in efficiency of armament, but where the British fired by volley, the Boers
shot to kill. The range varied from 75 to 25 meters (we walked it!), and the
effect of carefully delivered fire at short range was simply appalling. The
panic that ensued has been minimized in the journalistic accounts written in
English, but anyone can go to the site and relive the experience on the
ground, if he so wishes.

We were once told personally by General Robert Cushman, Commandant of the
Marine Corps, that the only thing that really scared him was the one occasion
in the South Pacific when he encountered carefully aimed rifle fire from the
Nips. He told me that he thanked God that this was the only occasion on which
the Nips seemed to be able to deliver it.

Only hits count. Perhaps we forgot to preach that in the past.

                    *     *     *

In our concentration on Lon Horiuchi, the man who shot Vicky Weaver in the
face while she was holding her baby, we must not forget that he was not the
only one involved. One Richard Rogers, of the FBI hostage rescue organization,
is the man who set the rules of engagement both at the Randy Weaver ranch and
at Waco. As far as I can determine, he is the man who gave the orders that
Horiuchi carried out. Richard Rogers - this is a name to bear in mind.

                    *     *     *

As procedures for implementing the new concealed-carry law in Arizona proceed,
we are amused by the provision that the applicant must be exposed to sixteen
hours of qualified instruction before being certified. So how do you suppose
the good people in the state house came up with sixteen hours? Our guess is
that they took the number of days in the shortest month in the year and
subtracted from that the number of months in the year. Alternatively they
could have taken the number of hoofs on a cow and multiplied it by the number
of paws on a dog. It should be obvious even to a legislator that the number of
hours one is exposed to instruction has nothing whatever to do with the amount
of information imparted. A man can sleep through sixteen hours of instruction
just as well as he can sleep through thirty minutes thereof. However this is
not important. The important thing is, in the words of Patrick Henry, "That
every man be armed." As long as we screen out the loonies, the rest will take
care of themselves.

In that connection I should point out that at least one certifying officer in
Arizona uses our film "Liberty's Teeth" as part of the sixteen-hour session
necessary for certification. Applicants can sleep through that too, but we
would like to think that we hold their attention for at least some of the
period.

                    *     *     *

We are informed by our man in Guatemala that the BATmen are now active there.
Just what excuse there is for funding these unpleasant people in their
activities overseas is not clear. The sooner the BATF is abolished, the
better. Why on earth it now seems necessary to send these people overseas to
look after the record-keeping for American citizens seems ludicrous. It is
clear that once an organization is founded and funded at the federal level, it
looses sight of its purpose in life and simply seeks to perpetuate itself - at
whatever costs the taxpayers. Let us pray that the new boys in Washington
understand that!

                    *     *     *

"Judging from Waco and the Weavers, the feds are almost one hundred times more
likely to kill an innocent person than a guilty one."

                                         Jack Bucluniller

                    *     *     *

We have recently been reading up on the life and times of Nathan Bedford
Forrest, CSA, properly termed the "Tiger of Tennessee." This was an amazing
man, declared by no less authority than U.S. Grant to be the finest general of
the Confederacy. When our Civil War broke out there was a lot of enthusiasm
but little organization, and one of the things most notably missing on the
Southern side was simply the firearm. This did not bother Forrest very much
since he simply stipulated that anyone who wished to join him must furnish his
own horse and "gun." The result was that the majority of Forrest's troopers in
the early part of the war were armed with double-barreled shotguns. This
traditional fowling piece may certainly not be the ideal personal weapon for
the infantry, but in the hands of a bunch of howling horsemen attacking
suddenly out of the dark it was decisively effective. Always outnumbered,
Forrest attacked mainly at night, and at night a shotgun has a great deal to
be said for it.

                    *     *     *

We have scheduled an IPSC meeting at Las Vegas in connection with the SHOT
show to be held there in mid-January. The purpose of this meeting, which I am
to chair, is to settle upon a proper format in which to conduct practical
rifle competition in coming years. This procedure is complicated by the fact
that the governments of the world are in general opposed to the practical use
of the rifle by private citizens. There are other obstacles that will occur to
you. In any case, we intend to kick these matters around on 18 January and see
if we can come up with a workable consensus. May God defend the right!

                    *     *     *

We seldom go to the movies anymore, but I have always had a persistent taste
for Westerns, and it does not seem to be so very uncommon. During the
Thanksgiving festivities, it happens I caught two modern, big budget Westerns
largely to see how they had improved over the more traditional examples, if at
all.

I discovered some interesting things. The first, the weaponcraft has shown no
significant improvement. While the directors may be careful to use firearms
which are correctly assigned to the period under discussion, they do not
understand that Hollywood holsters are a development of the post war world. It
is interesting to see a gunfighter of the 1880s portrayed as drawing from a
1955 model holster.

The second point which intrudes is language. The conventional obscenity of the
1 960s and since was never used in the 19th century, as far as anyone can
determine from informal writings and conversation. On the other hand, there
are forbidden words today which were commonplace in the 19th century. The
result is the portrayal of people whose speech is totally unconvincing.

A third point, and probably the most critical, is that Hollywood has now
discovered "Post Operational Trauma"(POT). The notion that a man will get all
shook up after he has killed another is a post-Korean War development. Nobody
from Little David to George Patton was ever upset after he had killed a man
for a good reason. Furthermore, this POT business is not common today, as we
can tell by talking to participants in current violence. To have some
legendary "gunfighter" of the old West go all to pieces because he has just
shot the bad guy is ridiculous, but, like arugula, it is fashionable, so we
must not criticize it.

One good thing we noted about the Westerns was their demonstration of the
principle that Personal Unilateral Disarmament (sometimes referred to as "gun
control") is absolutely useless in the suppression of crime. "No guns in town"
has always been the first step of the oppressor.

                    *     *     *

I am sometimes asked why I do not do more literary work on the subject of
defensive pistolcraft. I hate to say it, but the answer is that I believe that
I have discovered what I need to know about defensive pistolcraft. I know what
works, and I have proved it. No subject of this sort may ever be considered
completely and finally closed, but I have not seen anything written nor heard
anything spoken within the last decade which has caused any fundamental change
in doctrine or equipment already discovered.

The subject of personal defense is far more psychological than technical. As
soon as you decide and insist that you will not be victimized, you have done
more than any weapon can to provide for your safety.

                    *     *     *

Bear in mind that a legal verdict of "innocent" does not mean that the accused
did not commit the felonious act. For example, Hinckley was found "innocent"
of shooting Reagan, but there is absolutely no question that he did. All a
verdict of "innocent" means is that the legal procedures in force at the
moment could not establish a fact "beyond a reasonable doubt." It now appears
that our football player may be found legally innocent of murdering his wife,
but he knows what he did - and so do his attorneys.

                    *     *     *

I say again, as forcefully as may be, that one should not go for buff on his
first time out. On your first African excursion you should go for antelope,
zebra and pigs, if you choose, but do not stake your whole enterprise on one
critical objective.

If you go to the right place you may indeed connect, but the buffalo
experience may or may not be the Wagnerian climax that you expect. It is quite
possible to deck a buffalo with no drama at all, and if you have saved and
saved, and planned and planned, and sacrificed and sacrificed to get to a
place where you get your buffalo, see him, fire one shot, and watch him drop
in his tracks, you may well get the notion that you have spent your life
hunting the wrong thing. Buffalo indeed can provide excitement, but a really
dramatic buffalo kill is about as probable as a really good bullfight. If you
do not work up to it, you may not even appreciate it if it happens.
The African experience should be enjoyed for its own sake and not for the sake
of any specific objective. The joy is in the hunt itself and not in the
trophy. The buffalo is grand, but he is by no means the only reason to go to
Africa.

                    *     *     *

The Scout rifle project has aroused a good deal of interest, but there is
still a bit of misunderstanding about the concept. Fundamentally, no one can
appreciate the merits of a Scout rifle until he has used it under field
conditions. One cannot make assumptions about it based upon theoretical
speculation, because a Scout rifle when properly set up constitutes an
accretion of increments which together constitute an object which is greater
than the sum of its parts - a synergism.

Thus one cannot build an approximation of a Scout and expect results. The job
should be done right or not at all.

                    *     *     *

"If I can't get within three football fields, it is not my rifle that needs
the work."

                                        Kevin Wilmeth

                    *     *     *

Comments can be sent directly to Jeff at:

Jeff Cooper
Gunsite Ranch
Paulden, Arizona 86334.


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