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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
can come and pick him up. As many of you know, G?ring's answer in World War
II was to supply his combat pilots with beautifully made "drillings,"
featuring two shotgun barrels and one rifle. I have no authoritative
accounts about how good an idea this was, but it is a lot different from
those manifest by the Navy in Desert Storm.
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As to the Vince Foster murder, Hillary does not want to hear any more about
it. So there!
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In re-reading McBride for perhaps the tenth time, we discover again that a
heart shot is by no means necessarily a quick stop. A beast shot through
the heart will always die, and a man nearly always, unless he is wheeled
into thoracic surgery within a couple of minutes, but he will not
necessarily drop when hit. An armed antagonist can frequently shoot back,
and a charging lion may easily bite you dead between the time the shot is
delivered and the victim is no longer able to fight.
From the collected writings I conclude that the larger the caliber the more
quickly a heart shot will stop the action, and this is a matter of some
interest in this day when the governments of the world seem determined to
reduce calibers as much as possible.
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At Whittington we had a long and thoughtful session about the matter of Spc
New, the soldier who maintains that he is not required to fight for the
United Nations. The issue here is the most important one that I can recall
during my lifetime. Can the Commander-in-Chief of American armed forces
order an American fighting man to obey orders issued by a foreign
sovereignty? In all the long history of mercenary soldiering it has been
accepted that a soldier may indeed fight for a foreign power, but only if
he volunteers for that duty. If we follow the example of the Swiss
mercenaries of the Renaissance we discover that the contract specifically
exempted the soldier from the obligation to fight against his own country.
I do not believe any of this has been taken up properly by the lawmen as of
yet. A soldier absolutely must do what he is told, but what happens if his
foreign commander orders him to fight against his own country?
It appears that our masters in Washington are doing their best to sweep
this matter under the rug, just as they have done with other recent federal
transgressions, but this is a matter of enormous importance, and we the
people must demand an answer.
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On the occasion of the recent demonstration in Washington, engineered by
Louis Farrakhan and others, one of his lieutenants (sporting the
unimaginative name of Khalid Mohammed) is quoted in Human Events as
shouting, "This is the time of blackman's rise and the whiteman's demise."
Being genetically placed on one side of that confrontation, I apparently
have no choice but to join the fray. This being the case I am reminded of
the statement attributed to John Parker at Lexington on 19 April 1775, to
wit: "If they mean to have a war, let it begin here!"
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Daughter Lindy's pseudo-Scout, constructed by Robbie Barrkman on a
Springfield base, worked very well for her at Whittington, except that the
shortened stock permitted the cocking piece to bang her on the cheek bone.
When I was a lad we were all intimately introduced to the 03 Springfield,
which naturally featured a stock short enough for even very close-coupled
soldiers. We got banged, though I did learn to keep my thumb over on the
right side of the stock out of the way, and to open my firing hand a tad so
that my fingernails would not gouge my chin. When the rifle is private
property, however, and not government issue, another solution maybe
somewhat better. Simply saw the cocking piece off.
It has long been claimed that the flared cocking piece on the 03, and the
Krag, and some other actions, is a safety feature in that it deflects hot
gas which may result from a punctured primer. I know from personal
experience on the 1917 action that if hot gas travels back along the
striker it ejects from the bolt an inch or so below the line of sight -
even an open sight. I sported a neat black tattoo on my right cheek for a
couple of months to illustrate this. When asked about it I found it very
macho to say casually, "Blown primer on my 30-06."
I have never worn a really good facial scar, but those who have are one up
on the rest of us, if their narrative is sufficiently dramatic. The actor,
George McCready, was able to say when asked about a clean white scar on his
jaw bone that he got it when he flipped his Bugatti at LeMans, which is
exactly what happened. (At this point I think the feminists in the group
will drop out of the conversation.)
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Arizona T-shirt sign:
"I will rope for beer."
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On the subject of Africa, it is not too soon to start setting up schedules.
We are committed to be on station in Pretoria by 19 March, and to be back
here in the states by 18 April. Just what happens in the interim is yet to
be worked out, but our African adventures have been so totally successful
in the past that we do not foresee any problems.
We are informed that the street scene in Johannesburg is bad and
degenerating, but that is true of any big city you can name. We expect to
get out into the country at once and thus be well clear of social strife,
if any.
As to that, one thing that we have always liked about Africa is that if you
are attacked you may legally defend yourself, which is not true of London
or Toronto or Tokyo.
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"The rifleman, being a hunter, naturally always has an eye, and
an ear, for game. The great game movement along the front took
place at night. That in the back areas, of course, could only be
deduced, from daytime observation, and at night became the
business of the artillery and machine guns. But no-man's-land, in
quiet times, was the scene of an almost purely nocturnal life.
The sniper was lucky if, during the day, he spotted a couple of
Germans; but if he really cared for hunting he might have a dozen
pass within as many feet of him at night. He can well afford to
abandon his rifle for this - if he can still find time to get the
necessary sleep. There is nothing just like it for making one
feel at home in the trench areas. To spend the night in a funky
dugout or musty cellar, whether in the front line, supports or
reserves, is like closing the tent-fly at nightfall as soon as
you have made camp on the mountainside overlooking a pleasant -
and unknown - valley. Much better to get outside and see what's
happening."
from A Rifleman Went to War by Captain Herbert W. McBride
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Danie van Graan, our good friend from the Low Veldt, has just shown us an
interesting photograph of a Burris Scoutscope mounted on an Enfield Combat
Rifle. The assembly looks good. It is not a Scout, being overweight and
overlong, but it is handy, powerful and easy to feed. Since it has a
full-weight barrel the base may be fastened thereto with screws with no
need for a custom forward extrusion. We hope to play with this piece next
year in Africa, and we expect that it will prove out well.
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Family member Tom Berger sends us an extract from a piece of fiction called
"Flying Finish," by Dick Francis, which points up a peculiar aspect of
post-modern sociology that I had not thought about before. The idea is that
in an emasculated society there is no accepted outlet for the natural
combativeness of the young male, except in crime. Apparently it is
considered uncouth for a young man to say that he wants to fight, no matter
how much he does. This poses no problem for the counterculture, whose
members grow to adolescence with no ethical or moral base, but it becomes
an increasing affliction for young men brought up by decent parents. If
Louis Farrakhan gets his way, this difficulty may straighten itself out in
fairly short order.
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"This situation has turned congressional hearings into somewhat
of a joke and has made it obvious that federal law enforcement
cannot be expected to investigate itself."
Robert K. Brown
in Soldier of Fortune, December 1995
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"The government against which our ancestors took up arms was a
mild and distant irritant compared to the federal scourge that
rules us today. Constitutional restraints on tyranny are to our
masters only a hazy memory as they exercise powers beyond the
dreams of history's most famous dictators. Louis the XIV never
required an annual accounting of every centime every Frenchman
earned. He would never have dared then to demand a third of it in
yearly tribute. Ivan the Terrible never told Russian merchants
whom they could or could not hire, nor, heaven help us, where
they could have a smoke."
Jared Taylor, Louisville, Kentucky
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"If the wound is large, the weapon with which the patient has
been wounded should be anointed daily: otherwise every two or
three days. The weapon should be kept in pure linen and a warm
place, but not too hot to scald lest the patient suffer harm."
That was written in 1662, and after three hundred years some of our
legislators still insist on treating the weapon rather than the wound. (We
get this from David Kopel at a presentation at the University of Oklahoma.)
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Cross-eyed shooting - that is shooting right-handed and left-eyed, or vice
versa, is not difficult with a pistol, and it is not much of a problem in
slow-fire rifle shooting. It does become difficult with the rifle snapshot.
The shooter can dim his weaker eye by taping over his shooting glasses, or
by wearing a bandanna or eye patch, but while these expedients suffice for
the target range they are unlikely to be useful in the field. We can take
some comfort from observing that the snapshot with a rifle is a rare
occurrence, but the problem is still there and I do not have an answer for
it.
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All of this "whingeing" (British word) about our termination of the war in
the Pacific is interesting in view of McBride's observation about his
sniping in World War I. "We killed them when we could and we damned them
all to Hell. They started it and by God we finished it!" This calls to mind
the advice of Gunsite's Grand Patron Theodore Roosevelt to the effect that
you should never start a fight, but once you are in it you should finish
it. This is a principle which a series of recent American presidents seem
to have missed.
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Family member and military historian Barrett Tillman tells us that Jim
Coxen, who did a tour with the 5th Marines, has now been shooting with new
devices and new techniques for sport. He maintains that he wished he had a
Scout rifle up in I CORPS. He feels that he would definitely have bagged
more bad guys. Well sure! Wouldn't you prefer a properly set up Scout to an
M16?
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Despite the best efforts of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, we now
have access to a photograph of Lon Horiuchi, who shot Vickie Weaver in the
face but who still has not been brought to justice. Col. Bob Brown ran it
down in a West Point yearbook and it appears on page 38 of the December
issue of Soldier of Fortune magazine. It is not very clear, and it is
twenty years old, but it is better than nothing.
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An Indian Summer here in the Arizona highlands maybe assessed as evidence
of God's goodwill to men. We count our blessings.
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Please Note. These "Commentaries" are for personal use only. Not for
publication.
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