To Ride, Shoot Straight, and Speak the Truth by Jeff Cooper

Author:Jeff Cooper
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: -
Publisher: BookBaby
Published: 2021-01-12T00:00:00+00:00

In a recent training operation we were conducting aversion of the venerable F.B.I. duel, with MP’s. The students naturally could not draw so it was not a “Walk ‘n’ Draw,” but the principle was the same, starting cocked-and-locked at high port. Advancing side-by-side from thirty meters the two duellists reached a tie, two points apiece, at perhaps twelve meters. For the deciding point I let them close right up to where the need for speed seemed overwhelming — and blew the whistle. Both men were using M-3’s and each had reloaded after the last point, with twenty rounds available. Such a clatter you would not believe! But no hits. The man on the left went dry, dropped his grease gun, stroked his 45 and won with one center hit. Consternation!

It is easy to say that with more or better training on the MP that could not have happened. Perhaps, but why bother perfecting one’s technique just for its own sake? To what end? The blow is the same.

This is just an echo of the early days of the Modern Technique, when I was working for another chief of state. On the final day of training, the great man dropped by in person, accompanied by two henchmen carrying MP’s. We set up a demonstration to show how much his boys had learned, and he seemed impressed. As a finale I matched the best of the pistol class against the better of the two MP men (as selected by the president). They were placed at fifteen meters and given six silhouettes apiece; the pistolero holstered in Condition One and the squirt-gunner cocked-and-locked at port arms. On the whistle the handgunner placed six nicely centered hits in about nine seconds. The MP went dry in twelve, having hit one target four times, two others once (with one edger), and missing the other three.

The president thereupon asked if I could train his MP people as well as his handgunners. I said that I certainly could, but that it would take some 2000 rounds per man instead of 400 and that the tactical effect would be about the same. “Because, Your Excellency, the two weapons strike the same blow.”

Tactical efficiency aside, there is the matter of false confidence. Hand a duffer an MP and he suddenly thinks he is an assault brigade. He’s got a machinegun, man, and look out for him! (We codgers recall Jimmy Cagney demonstrating this in The Public Enemy, back in 1492, or was it 1066?) He shoots too soon, he shoots too fast, and he shoots too much. And he often gets himself killed, if his antagonist is dangerous. (I know of two such cases, personally.) For this reason I much prefer that my enemies, if they have any firearms at all, have machine pistols. With a rusty old Mauser a man knows he has to hold and squeeze. With a nice new Uzi he feels that all he has to do is spray.

A man can become highly skilled with a squirt gun.

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