Book Reviews for July 2019

A wise man once told me, “If you want to be a leader, you have to be a reader”.

I have found this good advice.  Here are some of the books I have been reading lately, not necessarily in any type of order.

No Second Place Winner,  by Bill Jordan, published in 1965.  This is a classic that everyone should read.  You will find lots of pictures of Jordan shooting one- handed, from the hip, pipe in his mouth, and cowboy hat firmly on his head.  Shooting styles surely have changed, but there is no getting around the fact that this man was an expert with a handgun, who had shot his way out of more than a couple of scrapes in his day.  Interestingly, for all the emphasis on shot- from- the- hip fast draw, Jordan recommends bringing the gun up into the line of sight at distances of seven yards and greater (as Applegate did with his point shooting method), and actually using the sights beyond 15 yards.  This book has lots of quotable passages, but my favorite is: “For ninety percent of your practice, draw from the holster, and fire one shot. It’s that first shot that’s important, and it is the one that is most difficult to place accurately.” True words.

The Complete Book of Combat Handgunning, By Chuck Taylor, published in 1982.  This really is a comprehensive book, covering gear and ammunition selection, weapon maintenance tactics, and strategy.  Taylor is one of the influential shooters from the early days of the Modern Technique of the pistol, and despite what a lot of current trainers like to say about the gun fighting in the post 9-11 world, not much has changed from the techniques Taylor demonstrates in this book (with excellent photographs).  The same cannot be said for handguns, ammunition, and holsters, all of which have improved considerably from the selection that was available in 1982.  The best part of this book, to me, is the section of recommended dryfire and live fire drills.  He recommends 30-45 minutes of dry practice, daily. He considers this a basic level, for more advanced practice, he adds an additional 20 minutes daily.  The live fire drills are challenging, and I would urge anyone who is serious about the pistol to find this book, and try the drills. Chuck Taylor went on to develop the Hand Gun combat master certification which is near legendary in its difficulty.

If Jordan and Taylor were interested in mastering the pistol, Karl Rehn and Jon Daub are at the opposite spectrum, with their newly published book, Strategies and Standards for Defensive Handgun Training. Rehn and Daub recognize that far from spending 45 minutes a day dry practicing with their hand guns, or practicing fast draw by shooting up thousands of specially hand loaded, paraffin wax projectiles, (as Jordan recommends) most civilian pistol carriers will, at best, show up for one, four- hour class per year.  Rehn and Daub try to establish what a minimum standard of skill should be, and how to get a student to that level, in the time that they are willing to spend.  This book is a trove of good information, filled with useful statistics. They even make an attempt to categorize the difficulty level of various common drills.  As much as I like this book, it could have used a better editor.  The information is a bit disorganized, and they have an annoying habit of referencing a drill, but not describing it, advising readers to “look it up on the internet”.  If I wanted to do that, I wouldn’t have had to buy the book, not to mention that many drills are not standardized, and it is difficult to know if the version of, say, the “Casino drill”, which you can find online, is the same one that the authors are referencing.  If you do any handgun instruction at all, you should read this book; if you don’t teach, you probably won’t find it interesting.

I like to read a lot of first person accounts by regular G.I.s, and Jumping From Helicopters, by John Stillman, is just one of the most recent I have found.  It contains a good, firsthand account of a paratrooper in Vietnam.

The Farnam Method of Defensive Handgunning, By John S. Farnam, published in 2000, is yet another gun-fighting manual, but it contains very little information that is redundant to the similar books I have already mentioned here.  Aside from excellent coverage of gun handling and self- defense, this book covers: dealing with law enforcement, confronting criminals, use- of- force considerations, and even touches on first aid.  The best part, for me, was Farnam’s extensive coverage of the traditional, double action pistol; a system that doesn’t get much coverage from serious gun writers, in spite of its popularity with police and militaries around the world. Farnam loves charts, comparing the various attributes of different pistols and ammunitions, and I found the chart comparing the workings of various traditional, double action pistols to be quite enlightening.  Many of these systems are very different from each other, in spite of being classified as the same.

If you are interested in a deeper dive into military history, Martin Van Creveld’s The Culture of War, and his History of Strategy: From Sun Tzu to William S. Lind, are a pair of books that I have recently read.  Van Creveld writes succinctly, with an easy- to- read style, which, layman though I am, I found easy to understand.  His books are filled with a dry humor (at one point, he refers to T. E. Lawrence as “a typical British Eccentric”).  I have only recently discovered this author, and plan to read more of his works in the future.

Another recent discovery, for me, is Tony Hillerman, who wrote detective fiction set on the Navajo reservation, and starring Lieutenant Joe Leaphorn.  The mysteries are clever, the characters interesting, and Hillerman weaves in a lot of detail about Navajo culture, history, and religion that I find fascinating.  I’ve read four of these, and immensely enjoyed every one, although Sacred Clowns is my favorite so far.

I know a lot of people who have snobbish disdain for fiction, usually characterizing their thoughts by saying, with words or demeanor, “I only have time to read serious books.”  This attitude is as sophomoric as it is stupid.  Oftentimes, more truth can be conveyed in a good work of fiction, than in an entire library of technical manuals, so don’t be ashamed to mix a little quality fiction into your reading.

We have more written material available to us than at any previous time in history, anything you want to know, someone has written a book about it.  While there is no substitute for hands on experience, we can gain a huge leg up by reading about the work of those who have gone before us.

Traditional Double Action Pistol

One of my goals for the year is to gain a basic proficiency with some weapon platforms that are unfamiliar to me, one of these being the traditional, double action pistol.  These are the pistols that were so popular in the nineties, where the first pull of the trigger cocks the hammer and fires the round, much like a double action revolver.  To fire subsequent rounds, the hammer was cocked by the slide, making the trigger pull closer to the short, light pull of a single action pistol.

Popular examples are the Smith and Wesson 5900 series pistols, which were adopted by many law enforcement agencies before the Glock became dominant in that market, and, of course, the M9, which was the official pistol of our armed services from 1990 until 2017.

A couple of years ago, I found a police trade- in Beretta 92, which is the civilian version of the M9.  I picked it up because it was a good deal, and because anything John McClane carried had to be good, right?  However, since buying it, I haven’t put more than a box of ammo through it.  I decided it was high time to change that.

anything John mcclane carried has to be good, right?

The traditional double actions are famously difficult to master.  Jeff Cooper once compared shooting a double action it to swimming the English Channel without flippers; it is possible, but not easy.  I think the colonel was speaking in hyperbole when he said that, but it underscores the truth: this is not an easy system to learn.

My goal with this project is not to achieve mastery,  which would take more time than I am willing to invest at this time.  My goal is to gain a basic level of skill with a system that is common, if not widely used anymore.

The chief difficulty with the TDA, is that you will have to learn two different trigger pulls.  To work on this, I used a version of the popular dot torture test made for this platform.

Dot-Torture-30-rd-version-small-dots-TDA

I found this to be a good drill for learning the trigger of the TDA.  After running it a couple of times, I felt ready to move on to some timed drills.

I decided to run the Hojutsu Short course. Based on the Alaska State Troopers Pistol Qualification, it is a well- rounded course covering a variety of practical skills, but using time allowances generous enough not to dissuade a beginner.

I ran this twice, and was able to score 90% on the second attempt.  Col. Cooper was right; this is a difficult gun to shoot in many ways, the trigger inconsistency being the greatest hangup.  That being said, the pistol was extremely accurate.  Recoil was as mild as I have ever experienced in a pistol, and I did not experience a single malfunction, even using some hand loads that my glock refused to eat.

One problem I had concerned the safety mechanism, so I did some research, and wrote to Jeff Hall explaining my difficulty.

“I have been running the safety as one would a 1911, wherein the safety comes off between 5 and 6 of the draw stroke, and goes back on when the gun comes to the guard position.

 I don’t see a lot of reference material on the double actions, a bit surprising considering that they were so popular for awhile, but one reference that does deal with them is Farnam’s Defensive Handgunning.  In it, he recommends the pistol be carried de-cocked, but with the safety off, something similar to a double action revolver.  The safety need not be taken off on the draw, and after shooting, the safety is switched on to de-cock the pistol, and then taken back off to holster and have at the ready for the next draw.

 What manual of arms do you recommend for this type of weapon?  Is there a reference that you recommend for this platform?”

He replied: “I carried a S&W double/single action, the 4006, for ten years with the Troopers. S&W does not call it a safety, they call it a de-cocker.

We did it just like John says. The gun is carried with a round in the chamber, de-cocked, with the de-cocker in the up (off safety) position. So, draw, point in, shoot as needed, decock as you come to guard, tac load and holster. It’s the same thing as a double-action revolver.”

When I shoot this gun next, I will try this method.  It would have saved me a couple of overtime penalties, when I forgot to lift the decocker, and  dropped the hammer on the safety bar.

If you are looking to gain some basic familiarity with a TDA pistol, give the course of fire I describe here a try.  You can shoot the Dot Torture and the Short course twice, and still only burn 156 rounds.

For more on the TDA pistol, I highly recommend John Farnam’s book, “Defensive Handgunning”.

Accuracy was good with the Beretta, but my unfamiliarity with the trigger cost a couple of over- times.

BaseBall and Bullets

I started teaching my children baseball this summer, just the basics: How to throw and catch a ball.  It got me thinking about the process of learning the basics.

“This is only basic rifle marksmanship that you are teaching!”  The student said it with something between derision and accusation.

“Yep, that is exactly what we are teaching,” I replied.

“I’m a sergeant, I already know this stuff.”

I shrugged, and let it pass.  He was grouping three inches at twenty five yards, with the aid of a bipod.

I sometimes start classes by stating: “We will be working a lot on basics today.”  I can accurately predict which students will do well, and which ones will perform poorly, based on their response.  The ones that say, “Great, I need basics”, excel.  The ones who look disappointed, or bored, do not.  Ironically, it is those students who embrace the basics, who are ready to move on to more advanced work more quickly.

The basics aren’t cool.  They don’t look good on Instagram, and basics won’t get you followers on YouTube.  Basics are hard, tedious work.  I have heard it said that ten thousand repetitions of a single movement are required to achieve mastery.  How long does it take to amass ten thousand trigger presses?  Or ten thousand draw strokes?

Everything fancy is just basics, faster, or from some inconvenient position.  To paraphrase one instructor I heard, “All you got to do is line up the sights, then don’t screw it up pulling the trigger.”

Yep, basics.

Next time you tune in the ball game, look at the highlights reel.  You will see those amazing triple plays, the slide into home plate, the fielder leaping to catch that would be home run, before it sails over the fence.  Then watch what the players do when they take the field.  Even though they are professionals, the very best players alive, they practice the basics, tossing the ball to each other, warming up for the inning.

They all started out as kids playing catch with their dad in the back yard, and even now, as pros making obscene amounts of money, they are still learning to catch and throw.  That’s why they are the best at what they do.

 

Un-Timed Drills

Only 18% of pistol shooters use a shot timer when they train, according to a survey by Concealedcarry .com. I believe that number may, in fact, be artificially high; very few of the gun owners I know have a shot timer.  With that in mind, I thought I would publish a few drills which can be run without at shot timer.  None of these are my own invention, and where I can recall, I will attribute the drill to the person who taught me.

One Hole Drill

At any distance (start at three yards), put five shots into one hole.  Resist the urge to fire a sixth or seventh shot to make up for a miss.  If you need to run a second time, re holster, take a breath, and then start over. This drill is about mental focus, sight picture, and trigger control. This is, perhaps, the most important drill you can practice, working on the fundamentals.  I learned this from Jeff Hall, founder of Hojutsu.  I run this drill two or three times, every time I shoot. No matter what I do, I like to end the session with a one hole drill.  It tends to bring me back to the fundamentals.

A very respectable one hole drill shot from 5 yards

Okey Dokey Drill

This is like the one hole drill, featuring five shots into one hole, with the single difference that you hold the pistol only with the thumb and middle finger of one hand.  Imagine holding your hand in the Okey-Dokey sign.  The purpose is to isolate the trigger from the grip.  If I have a student who has bad trigger control, an error he is trying to overcome by maintaining a death grip on his weapon, this will cure the problem. Likewise, if his trigger press is good, but his grip is torquing the weapon, this will also cure the problem. I was taught this technique by Lt. Col. Dave Grossman, who is most well known as an author, but is also an excellent pistol instructor.

Clover Leaf

This is yet another adaptation of the one hole drill (if you notice, I really like the one hole drill).  For this drill, fire three shots.  The first shot is fired with your normal, two handed grip.  The second shot uses strong hand only, and the third, weak hand only.  You want all three to touch; i.e., create a clover leaf pattern.  This drill is created to work on one hand trigger control.  I learned about this from Greg Ellifritz’s excellent blog, Active Response Training.  If you aren’t reading his blog, you are wrong.

The And Drill

 Any target will do for this drill, but try a ten inch plate at ten yards to start.  Point in on your target, and start counting: “One thousand and one, one thousand and two…”  Each time you get to the end of a number, press the trigger.  When you can keep five shots in a row on target, drop the thousands and just count, “One, and two, and…” with the trigger press at the end of each “D” in “and”.  Eventually, drop the numbers altogether, just using the word “and”. This is about tempo, coordinating sight picture with breath, and controlling recoil.  I learned this drill from D.C. Reed, of TAGtrainingllc.com

Three Steps Froward Three Steps Back

Using an IDPA sized or similar target, start at ten yards, and shoot five shots.  If they are all on target, move three steps back.   If you miss one, take three steps forward.  Eventually, you will settle into your maximum effective range for the size target you are using.  The goal is to increase your maximum effective range.  If you use a steel target for this be sure that you do not get too close to the target (most manufactures recommend no closer than ten yards).

 

A shot timer is a great tool, and well worth the investment. There are many skills that can only be developed with the use of a timer, but there are others that can only be mastered with slow, deliberate fire.  I use a shot timer every time I go to the range, but I still utilize a number of untimed drills, especially if I find myself becoming sloppy with my fundamentals.

You can find the article that inspired this post at https://www.concealedcarry.com/gear/shot-timer-survey-results/

Only a Game

Competition teaches problem solving under pressure

Competitive shooting isn’t real, it’s only a game.  Combat sports are just that: sports. In a real fight, it will be different.  In a real fight there won’t be boundaries, there won’t be safety officers, judges, and referees.  It won’t be Marquis of Queensbury rules.  Conditions will be austere. The reliability of your equipment will matter more than its accuracy, power, or round capacity.  The light will be too bright, or too dim.  The ground will be uneven, muddy, dusty, or hard.  Most importantly, your opponent will most likely be in the prime of his youth. He will most likely be stronger and faster than you. He probably had a harder childhood than you.  He will likely be under the influence of multiple drugs that will alter his reasoning, motivations, and pain tolerance to a state that you can only imagine.  Even if he is not tripping, he has probably experienced enough physical pain in his short life so as to be unimpressed by anything you can dish out.  He may be unwise, but he will be cunning, and he wants to win.  You have something he wants, and he will marshal all of the above- mentioned advantages to take it from you.  While he is at it, he will think up a couple of new angles that I haven’t thought of, and neither have you.  In order to prevail, you will have to solve problems on the fly, under pressure, and fast.

How do we train for this fight, when it is so different from a competition?

We compete.

Is that a contradiction? Yes and no.

What are the ways that we train?  All training can be grouped into one of three broad categories: Drill, Storytelling, and Play.

Drill is what you do when you practice your draw stroke, when a boxer punches a bag, and when the formation of Greek hoplites learned to march and maneuver around the battle field without breaking ranks.  It is, I suspect, the newest form of training; and aside from target practice with projectile weapons, probably wasn’t practiced until men started fighting in close order formations.  By utilizing drill, we learn to execute that prefect punch, and that precise shot.  We make the correct form a part of our nature, so that it can be executed under pressure, without thinking.  Drill does not teach us how to solve a problem, it simply frees up our mind from the difficulty of the basics, so that we can solve the problem.

Drill is how we practice a particular skill until it can executed without thought, freeing up the mind for other problems

Story telling is much older, and uniquely human.  Around the campfire, old men transmit the lessons from their battles to the young braves.  You carry around the experience of others, and take them into battle with you.  Story telling gives us the framework for solving problems.  If your problem looks like the one described in the story, try a solution that looks like the one from the story.

Consider the story of Mike Rousseau.  Rousseau was fighting in Mozambique when he found himself facing an adversary armed with an AK47. Rousseau drew his pistol, and shot his adversary twice in the chest.  When his enemy did not go down, he took a more careful aim, and shot him in the head.  He later had opportunity to tell the story of this battle to Jeff Cooper, who related it to many more people.  Literally thousands of people have learned from this story, and a great many have used it to their own benefit in combat.

Storytelling is how we learn what skills to apply to a given problem.

Finally, we learn by playing games.  Even animals play games.  Why does the cat give a half- dead mouse to her kittens to play with?  Why do those same kittens chase a ball of yarn, or each other, or even their own tails?  So that they will learn to hunt.  Our oldest sports were training for war.  Track and field, wrestling, and boxing are good examples.  The Nordic sports, especially biathlon, grew up in nations where men fought on skis.  American football, one of the newest sports, is a scale model of Napoleonic warfare.  Hunting and fishing have continued as sports for thousands of years after they were no longer necessary for food.  It is not a coincidence that hunting is always practiced by the societies’ warrior class, be they the impoverished farmers of Appalachia, or the landed gentry of Britain.

Games, sports, and competitions give us practice solving problems on the fly, and under pressure, against able- bodied, living, thinking opponents.  Whether we are calling a coyote into rifle range, stalking a trout, wrestling on the mat, sparring in the ring, or estimating the wind value in a high power match, we are practicing our problems solving skills, and pitting our brains and bodies against the other brains and bodies in the contest.

How does this square with everything I said in the opening paragraph about games, sports, and competitions not being “real”?  Of course they aren’t real, but that does not mean that they are without value.  In order to realize the full value of a game, we need to remember that is just a game.  The game is a problems solving exercise that will differ in multiple key ways from the real fight.  We identify those key differences through storytelling.  We execute the solutions through drill.

 

Every shot counts

Our patrol had walked into a nasty ambush, and it was not going well for us.  We were on the low ground, and our adversaries were raining down plunging fire from the top of a steep bluff.    Our patrol leader had determined that this was a near ambush, and ordered us to assault through the enemy position.  Juan, my fire team leader, led the charge up the slope.  It is hard to over- emphasize the confusion as we struggled through the thorns and rocks, near misses from the enemy buzzing our harness.  We almost immediately found ourselves channeled in a narrow draw that afforded the only footing up the slope.  Suddenly, an enemy head appeared at the crest of the hill. The young man beside me, Madison, raised his M4, fired over Juan’s back, and missed, “killing” Juan.  This was a training exercise utilizing blanks and miles gear, but the lessons are widely applicable.

Every bullet you fire hits something, even the shots that miss their intended target.

Read that sentence again, slowly, and think about it.

Newton’s law of gravity dictates that everything that goes up, comes back down.

Cooper’s fourth safety rule: Know your target; its foreground, and background.

We recently learned that the deputy who was killed in the shooting at the Border Lines bar was shot in the heart, not by the killer, but by another responding officer.  You can read about it here: https:

//losangeles.cbslocal.com/2018/12/07/sergeant-killed-in-borderline-shooting-struck-by-friendly-fire/

Fratricide (literally, the killing of brother) is far more common in combat than anyone wants to admit 1 and we see that mirrored regularly in force on force training at One Shepherd.  In spite of taking extensive measures to avoid “friendly fire” incidents, they still happen.  Most stem from a failure to identify the enemy properly. To my knowledge, the story I related regarding Juan and Madison is the only case I know of where someone was actually aiming at an enemy, and hit a friend.  The officers responding to the Border Line shooting were from separate departments. I doubt they had the opportunity to train together prior to that call, where they had to attack into a dark bar, crowded with innocents, with the exception of one homicidal maniac; bad luck all-around.

But what about a civilian gun fight? What is the likelihood that you will not have any innocent persons within the lethal range of your weapon? Think about the Sutherlands Springs church shooting. Fortunately, Stephen Willeford was able to confront the killer outside of the church; but what if he had been forced to shoot it out in the church?   In a spree killer/active shooter situation, the killer doesn’t care who he kills, only that he kills as many people as possible.  Any shot that misses you, and strikes a noncombatant, is a win in his evil game. Will you be able to position yourself in such a way that you have a solid back stop behind your bad guy?  Greg Ellifritz recently posted a very good article about this:

https://www.activeresponsetraining.net/when-misses-hit-a-look-at-real-world-backstop-issues

One of the antidotes he touches on lightly, but I think bears repeating, is marksmanship.  When you hit your target, you don’t have stray rounds.

Anyone who has studied under Soke Jeff Hall will recognize this doodle, the shooter has killed a parrot, this is an automatic failure to complete the test.

Perhaps the most controversial part of the Hojutsu pistol training system, is the no-miss policy. The shooting portion of the Hojutsu black belt test is 158 rounds of pistol shooting, from various positions and distances, all under time pressure, with 90% accuracy. Here is the catch: if any one of those 158 rounds misses the target, it is a failure to complete the test.  You could shoot a 99% score, and one miss would disqualify you.  I have seen more people walk away from the program because of this stringent no- miss policy, than for any other reason.  They tell me, “This is too hard, I’ll never make this”, and they give up.

The no- miss policy is not an arbitrary standard, intended to make the test more difficult.  It grows out of the cold, hard truth that every bullet you fire is lethal, and every bullet you fire hits something, or somebody.  If you are a cop you might be insulated from some of the civil and criminal liability stemming from killing or wounding an innocent with an errant shot (though civilians almost certainly will not), but the legal consequences pale in comparison to the emotional consequences of having to live with such a thing on your conscience.

Are there things you can do to mitigate the risk? The late Jim Cirrillo, of the NYPD Stakeout Squad, fought countless gun battles inside of crowded stores and banks. He was famous for shooting suspects in the hips, on the belief that the downward angle of the bullet would decrease the likelihood of injury to bystanders.  He reportedly shot so many perpetrators in their neither regions, that he gained the nickname “the Proctologist” among the NYPD, but even this denotes a high level of marksmanship. He was not aiming for “center mass”, but at a specific part of the anatomy.

Marksmanship tends to deteriorate when someone is shooting back at you. If you can’t make your hits on the one way firing range, don’t expect to be any better on the two way.

If you strive for a high goal, you will improve, even if you never make the goal.  What do you want: skill, or recognition?  Strive for the goal, go after the skill, and someday it may save the life of someone you love, or that of a complete stranger.

To attend a Hojutsu Seminar go to: https://hojutsu.com/blogs/seminars

To train with One Shepherd go to:https://1shepherd.com/

 

1 E. B. Sledge With the Old Breed at Peleliu, Charles B. MacDonald Company Commander, Robert Lecki Helmet for my Pillow all recount cases of fratricide, these are just a couple of many more I could sight.

Guns For The Homestead

Ah, the homestead: Plucky individuals building a small piece of domestic self-reliance, in tune with nature.  Of course, once you get started, you find that nature often whistles a different song than you had in mind.  Rabbits, deer, and squirrels wreak havoc on your garden; raccoons destroy the sweet corn, and birds harvest the fruit early.  Then there is the poultry. Here is just a short list of varmints that have killed my chickens over the years: opossums, raccoons, foxes, skunks, weasels, coyotes, feral dogs, black snakes, owls, and hawks.  I fully advocate passive measures like fences for keeping predators out, but sometimes only a bit of lead will stop a varmint with a taste for chicken; and nothing helps take pressure off the garden, while putting meat on the table, like thinning out the deer, rabbit, and squirrel population during the hunting season.  A gun is also handy come butcher day. Grandpa may have killed his hog every fall with a pole ax, but a .22 is much easier for the un-practiced.

My first recommendation for the homesteader is a .22 rifle. A good example would be Marlin model 60.  I have found this auto- loading rifle to be accurate and reliable.  The .22 is affordable to shoot, and well suited for dispatching varmints in the garden or the hen house.  I have often used a .22 rifle to stun beeves, hogs, and sheep on butcher day.  With proper shot placement, the .22 will incapacitate a fourteen hundred- pound steer instantaneously.  While we are talking about putting meat on the table, we can’t forget small game hunting, at which the Marlin model 60 excels.  The iron sights that come with the rifle are perfectly adequate; but for hunting, I would install a fixed, four power scope.  Fixed power scopes are lighter, cheaper, and more durable than comparable variable power scopes; and four power is plenty of magnification for hunting small game.  This rifle can be bought brand new for one- hundred sixty dollars or so, but I often see them used for one hundred.

This 22 autoloader holds 14 rounds and is great for hunting and pest control.

My next recommendation would be a single shot shotgun, chambered in 20 gauge.  I recommend the 20 gauge because it has much less recoil than a 12 gauge, and out of a light weight single shot, the 12 has a pronounced kick.  The shot gun is much more powerful than the .22, and is highly versatile.  When loaded with bird shot, this is another good piece for defending the homestead against varmints or hunting small game, wing shooting doves and pheasants, or even turkey hunting.  When loaded with slugs, it is a good deer gun, as long as you don’t need to make any long shots.  I keep shells in an inexpensive but cuff on my shotgun; this way, I always have the ammunition at the ready when a coyote comes prowling.  Speaking of extra ammunition, why a single shot? Would a double barrel or a pump action be better?  Yes, there is a definite advantage to having more than one shot, but the price of these other types of shotguns is usually three times as much as you would pay for a single shot, which can be bought new for one-hundred twenty dollars, and even less for a used one.  I don’t really have any brand to recommend when it comes to single shot shotguns. My family has owned a number of them over the years; none made by companies that were memorable. One shotgun I had didn’t even have a manufacturer’s name stamped on it.  These were almost generic guns, but the simple mechanism worked reliably in all of them.

The shot gun might be the most versatile weapon available, note the ammunition stored at the ready on the stock.

Those two guns would probably handle most of the needs of a homesteader, but it is hard to keep a long gun within reach all the time.  I often like to keep a .22 revolver on my belt when I work around the farm. This way I can keep my hands free to work, and still be ready when the chickens start squawking.

A 22 handgun is much easier to keep at the ready than the rifle. This one is one of the most affordable models I am aware of.

For very close range shots at snakes, bird shot is good.  My dad used to carry a .22 revolver loaded with bird shot when fishing.  At one- hundred fifty dollars, the Heritage Rough Rider is about the best value in .22 revolvers right now.  It’s a single action (meaning you have to cock the hammer to fire), with an old west look to it.  While it doesn’t have the fit and finish of a Colt or Ruger, it’s a very serviceable piece for the money.

.22 shotshells are good for small pest like snakes and rats at very close range.

My emphasis in all of these recommendations has been hunting and defense against varmints, and not self-defense against violent humans.  Fortunately, crime rates are much lower in rural areas than in the cities. The flip side is that police response times are dramatically slower, and there are fewer bystanders to aid a crime victim.  While each of these guns I mention are better than nothing when dealing with two legged predators, none of them are ideal.  For home defense, I would add a police trade- in hand gun; either a revolver or an automatic will do.  Police departments issue reliable, rugged guns, like the Glock and Smith and Wesson; they also trade them in for new models regularly.  Police guns are often battered and worn on the outside from daily carry, but shot very little.  Police trade in pistols usually run two- to three- hundred fifty, making them the most expensive guns in this list, but when dealing with a potentially life threatening situation, I would not cut corners on quality.  For more on choosing a hand gun, see my previous post.

Another option for home defense would be to upgrade the single shotgun to a pump action. The Remington 870 and the Mossberg 500 are both reliable enough for defensive use.  Right now, the Mossberg starts out around three- hundred fifty new, and the Remington will be a little more expensive.

When putting this list together, I endeavored to keep things affordable and practical. There are definitely fancier options for every model on this list, but homesteaders are a thrifty lot, so I have focused on value.

New to Handguns? What to Look For

I frequently have novice shooters ask me to recommend a first handgun for them.  There is no handgun that is best for everyone; every person’s needs are unique.  I can’t make a recommendation without knowing a person’s individual situation, but I can provide some pointers that may help.

1. If you haven’t heard of it before, don’t buy it. The most reputable gun companies have been in business for decades, some for over a century. Names like Colt, Smith&Wesson, Ruger, Springfield Armory, and Glock, to name a few, are well known to even non- gun people.  Many excellent new companies start up all the time, but for a new shooter, I recommend an established manufacturer with a reputation for quality.
2. Get a gun with a simple manual of arms. How many knobs, buttons, levers and safeties does it have?  I once owned a pistol that had a mag release button, slide stop/release button, decocker, safety, hammer, take down lever; and, of course, a trigger.  There was really nothing wrong with that pistol; it was an accurate, reliable gun; but for a new shooter starting out, less is often more.
3. Get a caliber that is not too powerful, not too weak, not too rare, and not too expensive. There are only a handful of calibers I would recommend to a new shooter: 9mm and 40 S&W for auto loaders, and 357 magnum and 38 special for revolvers.  45ACP, 380 auto can also be good in the correct pistol, which brings me to:
4. Make sure that caliber is well suited to the size of the gun. Large calibers are harder to shoot than small calibers, large pistols are easier to shot than small pistols.  In the Olympics you will see athletes with huge guns chambered in the tiny, weak 22LR. That’s because it’s easiest to shoot a small a caliber in a large, heavy gun.  On the other hand, a small pistol chambered in a large caliber can be downright challenging, even for an experienced shooter.  The Springfield XDs, chambered in 45 ACP, is an example of a pistol that, while of good quality, is just a difficult pairing of a big caliber with a small pistol.  The 380, on the other hand, is a much weaker round, but it is often chambered in pistols that are so very small that they remain difficult to shoot for many people.
5. Take a class with a borrowed gun before you buy one of your own. Over and over again, I see people change their ideas about what gun works for them once they take a class.  Sign up to take a basic pistol class with a reputable instructor. Contact him or her ahead of time, and ask if you can borrow a pistol to take the class. Explain that you really don’t know what will work best for you, and want to get a little training and experience before you invest in a pistol of your own.  Every instructor I know is eager to help a student in this way. They have all experienced students struggling with guns and equipment that are ill-suited to them.
6. Think about whether you will want to carry it, and how. Do you want this simply for home defense? Or will you carry this?  Will you carry every day?  Will you carry in a belt holster, a pocket, or a purse?  You will want a gun that is carried on your person to be lighter and slimmer than one that you keep for home defense.
7. Remember that all advice is tainted (even mine). Take advice with a grain of salt, especially if it is offered without much knowledge of your experience, lifestyle, or intended use. Many gun owners have an almost evangelistic devotion to their favorite pistol. Uncle Bob may love the 1911 because he was issued one in the service, back in 1967, and it has served him well. He is sure that what is good for him is good for everybody. Bob’s 1911 is truly an excellent pistol, but it is definitely not the best for everybody (I fully expect to get hate mail for saying that). Similarly, when you ask the guy at the gun shop, “What pistol is best for me?”, he hears ,“Of all the pistols in this display case, which is best for me?” Note the subtle difference.

 

Hopefully these tips will be useful when shopping for a first gun, and they may even be helpful for experienced shooters to keep in mind, when a friend asks for advice.

This Smith&Wesson model 64 is a good example of a balance of cartridge power to gun size.  The 38 special is very easy to shoot out of this mid size steel frame revolver.  Out of smaller alloy framed guns it can be a handful.

Do You Really Need That Much Ammunition?

Do you carry a reload?

 Not long ago, nearly all the experts on firearms recommended carrying at least one reload. With the advent of greater magazine capacity and more reliable firearms, the advice on how much ammunition to carry has shifted, some of the current experts don’t recommend carrying a reload at all.  However, an experience I had at a recent force- on- force exercise with One Shepherd made me think of a reason for carrying a reload that I had never heard expounded by the experts.

We were one hour into the three day exercise and we were already locked into an intense and brutal firefight.  With only a five man team, we were outnumbered almost two to one, and defending a front nearly three hundred meters wide.  Fortunately, we had enough depth to fight a delaying action, and that was our patrol leader’s strategy: trade space for time. Our orders were to hold them off for 24 hours.  Unfortunately, the opposition was aggressively driving a hard bargain, and although we inflicted heavy casualties on the enemy, we had to fall back much too quickly, and were completely overrun in six hours’ time.

Falling back to lick our wounds and reassess our readiness for the next mission, we found nearly everyone on our team was amber on ammunition.  We had started the exercise with seven magazines apiece, now we were down to two.  These two magazines per man had to last for the next 42 hours of fighting.

As our team transitioned from the defense to the attack, the entire tempo of the battlefield shifted. We conducted small scale reconnaissance patrols and probing attacks. We waited, gathering intelligence for nearly thirty hours before launching a full assault.

Patrol leader Cole performs an emergency reload behind cover, Photo by Brenda Chaffe

There were multiple considerations that went in to our patrol leader’s decision to proceed with caution, but a large part was our lack of ammunition.  Nothing quite saps confidence like going into a fight with a severely limited supply of ammunition.

The situation reminded me a little bit of my youth hunting deer with a flintlock rifle. I would watch, wait, and stalk deer for hours, waiting for that perfect shot, knowing I would only get one chance.  Now that I hunt with modern rifles, I am more likely to take that chancy shot, knowing that I can drop the quarry with a quick follow-up, if necessary.

Self-defense is not greenside patrolling, neither is it deer hunting, but I think a lesson can be drawn from these two experiences that applies to a CCW situation.

There are lots of good reasons to carry a reload, but one I have never heard discussed is that it can instill confidence to engage a threat.  Most self-defense shootings occur and end very quickly, but some, like active killer and terrorist- type attacks, can last several minutes; moreover, the moment you begin engaging one of these types of murderers, you will draw the attention of a foe who is almost certainly better armed than you will be. Ammunition equals time in a gunfight, and active killers do most of their murdering in the four to five minutes that it takes to mount a police response. Even if you do not manage to kill him, having enough ammunition to keep a villain busy until the police arrive can save lives.

Col. Jeff Cooper was famous for saying: “The only reason for carrying a lot of ammunition is if you plan to miss a lot”.  His point is well taken. We are responsible for every round we fire, and every round that does not hit the bad guy has the possibility of hitting an innocent person. What I am talking about here is not having enough ammunition for indiscriminate firing, but having enough ammunition to give you the confidence that you can finish the fight.

If your everyday carry is a Glock 26 with a 10 round magazine, will you feel more confident knowing you have another ten or twenty more rounds in reserve?  I’m sure I would.

In the training exercise I relate at the beginning of this article, we were granted an unexpected resupply of two magazines per person. After the exercise was ended, and everyone turned in their left over ammunition to supply, the count showed that we had turned in exactly two full magazines per person. In other words, we’d had enough for the fight all along, but we needed the resupply to give us the confidence to attack.

 

For more information about One Shepherd go to:https://1shepherd.com/what-is-one-shepherd/

Federal HST Ammunition Test

When I first became interested in handguns, revolvers were in their twilight, but they were still very much the norm.  The old guys who mentored me were suspicious of automatics in general, and plastic guns in particular.  The root of their skepticism lay in the inherent reliability of revolvers, and the undependability of the auto loaders.  As late as the mid-nineties, this fear was not without justification.  Manufacturing tolerances tended to be sloppy, both for firearms and ammunition, not to mention the problem of magazines.  Moreover, a great many auto loaders of those days (particularly the 1911s), were never designed to cycle anything but ball ammunition, to the extent that it was once common practice to load a single hollow point in the chamber, and ball ammunition in the magazine.

The old rule of thumb (and I don’t remember which old timer passed it on to me), was not to depend on any ammunition as a defensive load, until I had run one hundred rounds through my pistol without a single stoppage.  Any time I got new ammunition, I was advised to test it in combination with the gun I planned to carry, even if it was only a different lot number of the same brand.

Times have changed for the better.  Modern manufacturing practices and techniques have made high quality, reliable autoloaders affordable.  More importantly, ammunition has become far more consistent and reliable.  I still test my carry ammunition, more as a rule of old habit than out of expectation of finding a problem.

I try to change out my carry ammunition once a year, even though it will keep much longer.  This is an expensive proposition, as I thus need to buy enough quality, hollow point ammunition to run one hundred rounds each through the three handguns I regularly carry, and have enough left over to charge three magazines for each, plus a few rounds to replace the top round of each magazine periodically.*  I have, on occasion, been tempted to shortcut the testing phase. In the years I have been doing this, I have never run into an ammunition that would not feed and function reliably… until now.

This year, I decided to go to a 147 +P gr Federal HST. This is a premium ammunition, which performs well in all the ballistic tests I have been able to find.  I bought a case and began feeding it to my two Glocks and my Smith and Wesson Shield.  The Glocks devoured it with no problems, but the Shield simply does not like this ammo.  I experience a failure to feed, such that the shell gets stuck partway up the feed ramp, or it chambers but will not go into battery. This happens about every fifteen to twenty rounds.  I gave a box each to two friends of mine, who also run the Shield. Neither experienced a single problem with their guns.  I called S&W customer service, and was informed that the Shield is not made to cycle anything heavier that the 124 gr.  I thought this was odd, as I did not remember reading anything about this in the manual, so I dug it out, and sure enough, no mention was made of recommended ammunition weight.  I called them again, and the second service rep I spoke to explained that they only test with 124 gr., but any SAAMI spec ammunition should work fine. Moreover, he told me he runs the exact Federal 147 gr HST in his personal Shield, and it works fine.  He then asked how many rounds I had run through the pistol.  At the time I had about two hundred. He recommend a three- to five- hundred round break- in period, followed trying again.  Four hundred rounds of ball later, and still the HST does not feed.

This gun feeds ball ammo flawlessly, and did fine with 124 gr Hornady XTP Hollow points.

The moral of the story is this: Some combinations of handgun and ammo simply do not work, even when both are of good quality, with a history of working well together.  If you are depending on ammunition to defend yourself and those you love in an emergency, make sure you test it. It turns out those old times are still right about that.

 

*If a round is chambered and ejected repeatedly, as happens with the top round in the magazine of a carry gun, the bullet will eventually become seated deeper and deeper in the case, which can result in dangerously high pressures when the round is finally fired. It is advisable to replace the top round periodically with a fresh one.