The Gunner's Blog

Sometimes I feel surprised at how old I have become. I am not sure when I aged. I was too busy to notice it happening, but here I am. Waiters and clerks ask me if I get the senior discount. I do: But at least they are asking not assuming. One of the things to astonish me is that the "Modern Technique of the Pistol" is now antiquated, at least in the eyes of marksmen priding themselves as au courant.  When I learned the technique, Col. Cooper and his methods were state of the art, and very influential upon police and military training programs. I feel a bit old fashioned when I put one foot forward, raise the pistol in a two-handed push-pull grip and catch view of the front sight as the gun rises.  Here is the thing, though. It still works. Because I am habituated to the process, it is probably what I will do if I need my pistol in earnest. About the only thing I do that is not Antiquated Modern Technique is that I now prefer guns without external safety cat...

There is in the Greek chorus of Internet gun didacts a claim that revolvers are not reliable; usually this buttresses with too much enthusiasm, not enough fact, the idea that automatics are plenty reliable: why, they're really more reliable than revolvers! Hmmm. Big hmmm. If you know how to do a preflight inspection on a revolver, and if you keep a small wire brush handy to deal with a few known problem areas where revolvers need to be kept fairly clean to work, the things are as reliable as doorknobs. Yes, sometimes doorknobs fail to work, but for reasons that are obvious matters of wear, parts breakage, or accumulated detritus (crud). A revolver combines two simple mechanical principles, those of the ratchet and the trip hammer, and works via the mechanical energy supplied by the hand of the user, not the firing of the cartridge, so you can spot arising difficulties by inspection. With an automatic, you sometimes need to shoot the gun to see what is wrong. The p...

YouTube is a silly place, at least when you are there looking at the channels about guns and shooting. Oh, there are some good ones here and there, but a lot of it is pompous bloviation. A case in point: A chap practically raving about how bad the Weaver stance is and why you should not use it, but use instead the competition-proven isosceles. His demonstration is a Weaver stance so bad that it amounts to a parody of the real thing. Well, if that were really what the Weaver is, I certainly would not recommend it either. The Weaver stance, provided that it is correctly executed, is a good one for recoil control. You appreciate it more with pistols that kick hard. (I do not think any of the common self-defense rounds, when fired in full sized pistols, kick hard.) It also improves trigger control when pressing through the long heavy cycle of a double action trigger. Moreover, the Weaver's body geometry comes naturally to riflemen, so that they have less to learn or remember when o...