As many of you know, “Gun Guru” Col. Jeff Cooper has died. Here’s his last column. He served in World War Two and Korea in the United States Marine Corps. Afterward, he became the “Gun Guru” that at least in part brought us countless concepts and practices, including the Modern Technique, propagating the Four Basic Firearm Safety Rules:
1. All guns are always loaded. Even if they are not, treat them as if they are.
2. Never let the muzzle cover anything you are not willing to destroy. (For those who insist that this particular gun is unloaded, see Rule 1.)
3. Keep your finger off the trigger till your sights are on the target. This is the Golden Rule. Its violation is directly responsible for about 60 percent of negligent discharges.
4. Identify your target, and what is behind it. Never shoot at anything that you have not positively identified;
The concept of the Scout Rifle, from which floweth (at least in my thinking) the SHTF rifle;
Col. Cooper also brought us a lifetime of wisdom in his books and as an Editor at Guns & Ammo Magazine. Cooper’s most influential thoughts for me are found in the introductions to his books. It’s so simple but yet in our day and age it needs to be restated. Here’s the beginning of Principles of Personal Defense:
Some people prey upon other people. Whether we like it or not, this is one of the facts of life. It has always been so and is not going to change… anyone who is aware of his environment knows that the peril of physical assault does exist, and that it exists everywhere and at all times. The police, furthermore, can protect you from it only occasionally.
The author assumes that the right of self-defense exists. Some people do not. This booklet is not for them. This is for those who feel that anyone who chooses physically to attack another human being does so at his own peril. In some jurisdictions it is held that the victim of an attacker must, above all, attempt to escape. This is a nice legalistic concept, but it is very often tactically unsound. By the time one has exhausted every means of avoiding conflict it may be too late to save his life. Laws vary, and cannot be memorized encyclopedically; in any case, we are not concerned here about jurisprudence – but about survival. If one lives through a fight, we will assume that he is better off than if he does not, even though he may be thereafter confronted with legal action.
Violent crime is feasible only if its victims are cowards. A victim who fights back makes the whole business impractical. It is true that a victim who fights back may suffer for it, but one who does not almost certainly will suffer for it. And suffer or not, the one who fights back retains his dignity and his self-respect. Any study of the atrocity list of recent years… shows immediately that the victims, by their appalling ineptitude and timidity, virtually assisted in their own murders.
Any man who is a man may not, in honor, submit to threats or violence. But many men who are not cowards are simply unprepared for the fact of human savagery. They have not thought about it,and they just don’t know what to do. When they look right into the face of depravity or violence, they are astonished and confounded. This can be corrected…
But the subject of this work is more basic than technique, being a study of the guiding principles of survival in the face of unprovoked violence on the part of extralegal human assailants. Strategy and tactics are subordinate to the principles of war, just as individual defensive combat is subordinate to the following principles of personal defense.
Read the rest. It’s a short read and very obvious, but instructive just the same. Without Jeff Cooper’s work and ideas, I daresay there are freedoms that would’ve been lost. Rest in peace.