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Quotations from Chairman Jeff
A Look back at some of the best Cooperism's from the past 45 years.
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Of all G&A's legendary contributors, none--with the possible exception of Elmer Keith--had been more impervious to the vagaries of fad and fashion than Col. Jeff Cooper. Whether you loved Cooper or not, he was compulsively readable. Here are some selected insights from his storied career with Guns & Ammo.
GOOD BULLETS
January 1960--"Being a blackhearted reactionary, I've always been bitter about the loss of the great .30-caliber, 180-grain, boat-tailed, open-point-expanding bullet put out by Western before WW II. On my first big hunt I used it exclusively, and took moose, white goat, caribou and a 39x16-inch bighorn with exactly four shots."
SILHOUETTES
October 1960--"I have heard it proposed that we should never shoot at a silhouette, the idea of shooting at a man being too horrible to contemplate. Well now, are we suddenly unaware that there is such a thing as combat, or are we just trying to pretend that there isn't? This is a curious, latter-day parallel to the Victorian attitude about sex."
SPEED ON THE DRAW
April 1961--"All good combat shots are fast. Some are very fast indeed. But there is no point in asking whether they are faster or slower than a 'fast-draw' specialist. More pertinent is what the latter can hit, and with what, and how often."
THE GRIP SAFETY
June 1964--"A grip safety is just another excess moving part. I have never known one to prevent an accident, and moreover, it is difficult to postulate a circumstance in which it might."
SNAKE PISTOLS
September 1965--"Actually, the idea of a 'snake pistol' eludes me. If you see a dangerous snake first, stay out of his reach. If you don't, what good is your pistol?"
HOW FAR?
February 1966--"We know that a deer hunter's yard is not the same as a duck hunter's yard. A benchrest yard differs from a plinker's yard. A sheep hunter's yard is not a varminter's yard. And plain old English 36-inch yards are hardly used at all."
THE 1911
January 1968--"Pistols do not win wars, but they save the lives of the men who do. The noble 1911 is a mechanical marvel, whose ruggedness, dependability and ferocious power have comforted four issues of GIs, and which, unlike any other instrument you can name, is as much superior to its rivals as it was in 1917."
BACKUP PISTOLS
October 1969--"I have never felt that the idea of a 'back-up' pistol for a big-game hunter was a sound one. If you can't do the job with a .300 Winchester, I don't see how you can do it with any sort of pistol. This is rather like using a speed boat to back up a battleship."
.38S IN A .357
April 1971--"Any .357 will chamber and fire any .38 Special cartridge without damage to the gun. What can be disastrous is the practice of carrying a .357 for combat use with reduced loads in the chambers. This can get a man killed. I know of a case in which it did."
BEARS
April 1973--"Much as I favor the 1911, I wear a .44 Magnum in bear country."
FRONT SIGHTS
August 1973--"A good general range rule for pistols is that, if what you want to hit appears larger than your front sight, you are within range."
DOUBLE-ACTION AUTOS
October 1973--"Double action in an auto pistol seems to me an ingenious solution to a non-existent problem."
VIOLENCE
January 1975--"One bleeding-heart type asked me in a recent interview if I did not agree that 'violence begets violence.' I told him that it is my earnest endeavor to see that it does. I would like very much to ensure--and in some cases I have--that any man who offers violence to his fellow citizen begets a whole lot more in return than he can enjoy."
DERRINGERS
May 1975--"I am negative about Derringers, which are useless, dangerous and generally poorly constructed. Better get something a little bigger and a lot more efficient."
THE 9MM
August 1975--"The 9mm Parabellum cartridge cannot be considered a reliable fight stopper--with any load. I have three recent cases of multiple torso wounds (four hits, four hits and seven hits) that did not shut the subject down, and each was with a different load."
HALF-COCK
January 1976--"Half-cock is a very dangerous way to carry a Browning-type automatic pistol, in that the piece may easily be forced in that condition and fire. It is much harder to force at full-cock, because of the position of the tang and the direction of the blow required, besides which, if it is forced from full-cock, it will fall to half-cock and not fire. This is all very obvious and need not be the subject of an argument."
MARINE BIOLOGY
January 1987--"On our recent Southern California boat ride, we dredged up a shocking creature. Though we spent most of our boyhood in the waters around Catalina Island, we had never heard of it. The beast is technically a "Mantis shrimp," but we prefer to call it an attack shrimp. It was about eight inches long and beautifully colored in orange and blue, with horrid science-fiction-type eyes on stalks. It looked roughly like the rear end of a lobster, without head, claws or legs, but in front it brandished a set of the meanest mandibles we have ever seen. These are powered by a curious set of telescopic muscles, which drives them with unheard-of power. A big one--say, 12 to 14 inches long--is said to be able to take off a man's finger with one snap. Hemingway was right--there are things down there!
BAD GUNHANDLING
June 1987--"One anecdote we heard down in the Andes referred to a Sandinista general who is fond of playing with his P35. Having used the ejection port to open a bottle of beer, he then sought to scratch his scalp with the muzzle, at which point--being ignorant of Rule 3--he touched the piece off. The result was considerable brain damage, but it is said that people who know the general cannot detect any difference in his behavior."
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