Fighting Handguns

By Jeff Cooper

In Fighting Handguns, author Jeff Cooper not only takes the reader through the development of this weapon from its beginnings in mid-16th-century Europe through the various iterations of single- and double-action revolvers and semiautomatic pistols, he also discusses some important aspects of carrying and shooting a fighting handgun under combat conditions.

“For good or ill, man is a fighting animal. While most feel that this is an unmitigated evil, it may, like most aspects of nature, have its positive side. Certainly man’s combative nature is responsible for most of the massive tragedy of history, but it’s possible that history of any sort just wouldn’t have happened had it not been characteristic of the race to struggle against its environment. And man’s environment, of course, includes man. A placid, gentle, contented creature—a koala, for instance—is nice to contemplate but does not progress, and if it encounters a challenge it simply dies. Whether progress, at the price of a fighting disposition, is worth it is a question, but it’s a bit on the academic side. Man is the way he is, and gets along as he must. Being human, we are involved in strife. Much as we may deplore this, we must master the techniques of strife or perish.

“This book is devoted to one of these techniques—the one-hand firearm as used by man against man.”—Jeff Cooper

• Language: English
• Publisher: Valmy Publishing
• Release date: Dec 1, 2018
• ISBN: 9781789124897

Jeff Cooper

Jeff Cooper is a law professor, lawyer, former Presidential candidate, and published author of both fiction and nonfiction.  A graduate of Harvard College, Yale Law School and New York University School of Law, he spent much of his career working in the law firms and trust banks fictionalized in his novels.  His nonfiction writing has been published in Law Journals across the country, excerpted in prominent legal casebooks and treatises, and reprinted both in the U.S. and abroad.  His debut novel was a finalist for The Daphne du Maurier Award for Excellence in Mystery/Suspense. Jeff was born and raised in New York and now lives in Greenwich, Connecticut, where he has served as an elected member of the Representative Town Meeting, a Justice of the Peace and a Director of several non-profit organizations.  He is married with three children.  When he’s not teaching or writing, he can be found on the golf course.

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Text originally published in 1958 under the same title.

© Valmy Publishing 2018, all rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted by any means, electrical, mechanical or otherwise without the written permission of the copyright holder.

Publisher’s Note

Although in most cases we have retained the Author’s original spelling and grammar to authentically reproduce the work of the Author and the original intent of such material, some additional notes and clarifications have been added for the modern reader’s benefit.

We have also made every effort to include all maps and illustrations of the original edition the limitations of formatting do not allow of including larger maps, we will upload as many of these maps as possible.

FIGHTING HANDGUNS

BY

JEFF COOPER

Television and motion picture actors (left to right) Wayde Preston, Will Hutchins, James Garner and Clint Walker re-enact a western gunfight scene.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Contents

TABLE OF CONTENTS 6

The Beginning 7

Before the Revolver 14

Sam Colt and the first Revolvers 19

Metallic Cartridges and the Peacemaker 33

The Western Tradition 49

Double Action 58

SMITH & WESSON .44 MAGNUM 72

SMITH & WESSON .357 MAGNUM 74

SMITH & WESSON HIGHWAY PATROLMAN 75

SMITH & WESSON COMBAT MAGNUM 76

COLT PYTHON 77

COLT THREE-FIFTY-SEVEN 78

The Autoloading Pistol 79

THE MILITARY MAUSER 88

THE LUGER (P-08) 90

THE COLT 1911 92

THE COMMANDER 96

BROWNING HI-POWER (P-35) 98

WALTHER HEERES-PISTOLE (P-38) 101

NEUHAUSEN SIG PISTOL 104

SMITH & WESSON 105

MISCELLANEOUS 106

Pocket Pistols 108

Combat Pistol Techniques 120

GUN SELECTION 129

BIG BORE PRACTICE 136

POSITION SHOOTING 137

POINTER FIRE 138

HOLSTERS 142

DRAWING TO HIT 148

QUICK FIRE 152

RANGE ESTIMATION AND RELOADING 153

GAMES 156

COURSES AND COMPETITION 158

The Power of Pistols 164

THE 9 MM PARABELLUM (9 mm Luger) 169

THE SUPER .38 170

THE .38 SPECIAL (.38 Smith & Wesson Special) 171

THE .357 (.357 Smith & Wesson Magnum) 172

THE .44 SPECIAL (.44 Smith & Wesson Special) 174

THE .45 COLT (.45 Army) 175

.45 AUTOMATIC COLT PISTOL (.45 Auto, .45 acp) 176

THE .44 MAGNUM (.44 Remington Magnum) 178

Odds and Ends 180

FUTURE DEVELOPMENTS IN SIDEARMS 180

THE MACHINE PISTOL 181

THE COMBAT SHOTGUN 182

THE PISTOL AS A DEFENSE AGAINST ANIMALS 183

PISTOLS AND THE LAW 185

REQUEST FROM THE PUBLISHER 187

The Beginning

For good or ill, man is a fighting animal. While most feel that this is an unmitigated evil, it may, like most aspects of nature, have its positive side. Certainly man’s combative nature is responsible for most of the massive tragedy of history, but it’s possible that history of any sort just wouldn’t have happened had it not been characteristic of the race to struggle against its environment. And man’s environment, of course, includes man. A placid, gentle, contented creature—a koala, for instance—is nice to contemplate but does not progress, and if it encounters a challenge it simply dies. Whether progress, at the price of a fighting disposition, is worth it is a question, but it’s a bit on the academic side. Man is the way he is, and gets along as he must. Being human, we are involved in strife. Much as we may deplore this, we must master the techniques of strife or perish.

This book is devoted to one of these techniques—the one-hand firearm as used by man against man. Those who can’t bear the thought of mortal combat, or who apologize for the pistol because of its sporting possibilities, will not be interested in reading further, but the title should have discouraged such readers to begin with so I’ll worry no more about that.

The complete story of fighting pistols is a long one, fading back into a period where research trails off into insubstantial etymology, terminating in the ultimate absence of documentation-. Because of this I must cover the early part of the tale only briefly, placing most emphasis on that portion of it which we can and do understand—that is, on the fighting tools which are in general use today.

As an ardent small-arms enthusiast, I am often asked if I don’t believe that portable, one-man weapons are on the way out—that the apocalyptic destroyers now within man’s power must render all subsidiary killers trifling and pointless. This is clearly a shallow and ill-considered question, but it’s common enough to require an answer.

If we take the optimistic view that mass weapons are now so destructive that they cannot be used without wiping out the race, it’s clear that the contesting powers must seek their ends by other means. In peripheral fights between minor powers, or in the ugly games of subversion and political brawling, the means employed must remain pre-atomic. In all conflict where man is faced with man, individual weapons will continue to be significant. And man-against-man disputes don’t seem to be on the wane.

However, if we assume that the future holds the disaster of a really total war, we still must consider the role of small arms, since it will be with them that any survivors of the universal holocaust will settle the future of the human race.

And apart from international or political struggles, the maintenance of public order and the protection by the individual citizen of his person, family, and property will continue to require the use of small arms. I think it is safe to say that they are here to stay.

The pistol is a special purpose tool today, in that it is entirely defensive. This has not always been true, as we will see, but it is now. It’s possible, of course, to put it to offensive use, but only when other means are not available, and with less than optimum efficiency.

Considered in this light, the pistol is probably as far from obsolescent as any weapon we have. Even the most outré characters of futuristic fiction pack a belt gun of some kind in dangerous situations, and though it may be referred to as a blaster or something of the sort, our knowledge of portable power sources indicates that it will continue to be a missile weapon activated by internal chemical combustion for quite some time to come.

Pistols first appear in history almost as soon as gunpowder. There are those who hold that the Chinese invented the stuff but never understood its use as a missile propellant. It appears more likely that its actual discovery took place in Medieval Europe, and that its application to missile weapons was appreciated at once. The match-ignited cannon was immediately produced—changing very little in form for several hundred years—and the small types, mounted on the end of a staff, may be considered the first ancestors of the pistol.

The term pistol has obscure beginnings. It is often ascribed to the Italian town of Pistoia, where we have evidence that handguns were built as early as 1540. However, certain German cavalry units employed volley fire from one-hand firearms with decisive effect in the battle of Renty in 1544. It seems out of the question that a weapon could be invented, perfected, standardized, promoted, sold, and then used to equip large formations trained in its use and employing tactics based entirely upon it, all in four years. Even if this astonishing phenomenon could have happened, it is incredible that the town’s name, rather than that of the inventor, the troops who used it, or some more descriptive term, would have stuck permanently as the universal name of the weapon.

A more believable theory is based upon the Renaissance Italian term for the pommel of a saddle, which is pistallo. Since the whole idea of the earliest pistols was the employment of firearms by mounted men who had only one hand free, a weapon which was always carried slung over a saddle pommel might very well take its name from this fact.

Regardless of the origin of the name, the pistol first appears as a replacement for the lance and sword as the cavalryman’s assault weapon. The distance at which a foeman can be hit reliably with a pistol bullet when the shooter is mounted on a galloping horse is very, very short. Sir Winston Churchill, in his famed account of the cavalry charge at Omdurman, mentions the desirability of actually touching your enemy with the muzzle as you fire. Anyone who has run the old mounted pistol course of the U.S. Army knows that this is almost the only system which is really sure. One might wonder what advantage a pistol had over a sword, or especially a lance, for this work. The answer appears to be that a pistol ball, while somewhat less accurate than a sword or lance thrust when delivered from the upper deck of a running horse, cannot be deflected since it cannot be seen. Also, depending upon the load, it may have more penetrating power.

The German Ritters who won the battle of Renty, as well as others later, used the ancient alternating-rank system to sustain shock effect, and carried as many as four long-barrelled, all-steel, wheellock pistols; but the more usual tactic during the centuries which preceded the invention of the repeating pistol was to fire one round carefully just before matters became hand-to-hand, and then to employ cold steel, reserving your other pistol for subsequent emergencies. This routine was quite effective since if the enemy’s entire front rank was cut down just before impact the force of a charge was much greater. It is a military axiom that if each of your men accounts for just one of the enemy and stays on his feet, the fight is over. Trouble is, the enemy knows this too!

It is interesting that the edge of the pistol over the sword and lance for cavalry use was never entirely accepted until just before the demise of the horse as a military instrument. While Custer’s troops at the Little Big Horn had left their sabers behind, there are many to this day who believe that they might have cut their way out with what the Sioux called their long knives. An empty pistol is no match for a tomahawk in a brawl!

And Churchill tells us that he alone, of his regiment’s subalterns, used an automatic pistol at Omdurman, the others relying on the saber. This was in 1898!

But while the world’s cavalry was trying to decide about the real merits of the one-hand gun as the horseman’s main weapon, it became clear that it had other uses. The single-shot pistol, in spite of its now-or-never limitations, took a lot of the fun out of banditry, bullying, rapine, pillage and other sports enjoyed by the physically strong at the expense of the weak since the Stone Age, and presumably even before that. Suddenly it became actually risky to push people around, even if you stood 6ʹ 5ʺ, dressed in armor and carried a battle-axe. Some aged merchant or choice damsel might easily blow your head clean off with a little gadget you hadn’t noticed at all!

It wasn’t really an equalizer because, after that one round, everything slipped back into its primeval relationship, but it was a start. And very few bullies have any notion of getting killed just so their friends and followers can enjoy the loot.

Mechanically, the handgun passed through the same stages of development as other guns of all sizes. If we define pistols as firearms which can be aimed and fired with one hand, they did not exist in touchhole form since the non-pointing hand must put the match to the priming train. Matchlock pistols, however, were produced. Their usefulness was never really established, since it depended entirely upon adequate foreknowledge of combat. The matchlock is simply a system by which a lighted fuse (or match) may be thrust into the priming train with the same hand that holds the weapon. It still must be lighted shortly before discharge, and if you know there’s going to be a fight, you can usually equip yourself with something better than a matchlock pistol. A matchlock musket, for instance.

The wheellock, a close approximation of a modern cigarette lighter, changed this, and wheellock pistols were really practical, though they were subject to all the exasperating unreliability of their modern counterpart. It was just a short step from the wheellock to the flintlock, which brings us almost up to the present day. The flintlock was neater and simpler than the wheellock, and with its appearance agile minds began casting about for the obvious requirement, a pistol which could keep on shooting, and forever ruin the age-old advantage of numbers.

Flintlock revolvers were invented and can still be found in museums, but the complexity of a priming train for each chamber prevented their general use. As early as 1664, an English inventor tried to interest the Royal Society in a pistol which would use part of the force of discharge to reload, reprime, and recock—probably the first attempt at a semi-automatic pistol. But all such notions had to wait for an ignition system far superior to the crude flint-and-steel which was all that science could offer at the time.

The answer came from a Scottish clergyman, Alexander John Forsyth, who, in 1807, invented the percussion cap. Forsyth did not invent fulminates, which were known prior to 1700, but he was first to apply them to the ignition of firearms, and he changed the world.

Some persons invent without understanding what they have done. Others look at their inventions and ask so what? But still others have the imagination to apply inventions to practical use, and such minds have never been absent in those who love weapons. The percussion cap made all the difference, because it made the ignition system of firearms simple, reliable, compact and capable of being incorporated into moving mechanisms without loss of efficiency. It made possible Sam Colt’s revolver which, in