Gun Digest's Combat Shooting Skills of Famous Gunfighters eShort by Massad Ayoob

Author:Massad Ayoob [Ayoob, Massad]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 978-1-4402-3528-3
Publisher: F+W Media
Published: 2011-04-14T04:00:00+00:00

IN LARRY WILSON’S EXCELLENT BOOK The Peacemakers (Chartwell Books, 2004), we find this photo of Charlie Askins’ personalized New Service .38, with which he shot at least two men during WWII. Charlie donated it to his good friend John Bianchi for John’s museum.

Askins’ Techniques

When he was actively in the field, Askins seems to have almost always fired the sidearm one-handed. In his later years he would enthusiastically recommend two-hand positions for defense, but he was not an early advocate of the concept.

It would appear that in most of his shootings, Askins aimed rather than pointed. He practiced a good deal, drawing and firing from the point-shooter’s crouch position, but practiced more with a sight picture at arm’s length for the matches.

He wrote that during one 10-year period, he logged 334,000 practice shots. Though in some articles late in his career he had good things to say about point-shooting, I can find mention of only two such incidents in his personal reminiscences of gunfights.

One was a mistaken identity shooting in which he exchanged shots in an alley with a rifle-armed U.S. Customs agent. The distance was 10 yards. The man with the rifle fired twice and missed both times. Askins also fired twice; one shot missed, and one struck the other man’s rifle stock.

He point-fired (in that instance) because he had to; his gun that night was a Colt New Service .45 sixgun, its barrel chopped to two inches with no front sight.

He would write later, “To say that I took a ribbing was an understatement compared to the comments over firing two shots at another feller at 30 feet, down a narrow alley, and missing him. It was a disgrace which took a long time to live down!”

Charlie later mentioned that he had point-shot without a specific sight picture when he shot the man who was pistol-whipping his brother officer. Reading Askins’ own account, he seems mildly surprised that he hit him shooting like that.

He wrote, “Each time one of the big flat-nosed 240 grain slugs hit him, it brought forth a little puff of dust. This ‘bo had been riding the freight for several days and his clothing was full of dust. I cannot begin to tell you how happy it made me to see those bullets raise that dust! It made my day, believe me!”

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