The following is an independent submission to Real Guns and does not reflect the views or opinions of Real Guns. There is a brief Real Guns Editorial perspective at the close –
Every six months or so, when the mood strikes me, I like to take my guns down to the range and do a little shooting. I find it very relaxing, the way some men put together complex ship models or tie trout flies. It gives me a chance to spend a few hours outdoors, in a shady rural place, and concentrate on the meticulous and totally absorbing activity of firing at distant bits of paper. I suppose there is a practical purpose, as well. I have no interest in competitive target shooting, and I do not particularly enjoy killing animals, although I’m not in the slightest bit squeamish about doing so if there is a good reason for it. My purpose is simply to exercise my firearms and to renew my acquaintance with them. I keep guns for self-defense, and if they should ever need to be employed for that purpose, their use should be completely instinctive and automatic. One is not likely to be too calm and collected in a fight to the death, and the relationship to the weapon must be autonomic, not intellectual.
So I take my pistols and rifle to Markham Park, a beautiful island of landscaping right next to the Everglades, and go through several hundred rounds of ammunition. It’s not an inexpensive hobby, it’s more like spitting quarters out the barrel every time you pull the trigger, but I can afford it. You pay the man a few dollars for admission, and buy the official NRA competition rifle and pistol targets there as well, and I get the opportunity to show off my little case where I keep my shooting equipment and supplies neatly organized.
The range consists of a wide field, with a high earthen embankment downrange, and a long open-air shed with tables and benches for the convenience of the shooter at the other. The whole operation is supervised by the range master, always a hard-of-hearing crusty and foul-tempered old coot at every range I’ve ever shot at, and Markham is no different. Today, we are all required to wear eye and ear protection, as befits our paranoid age. The range master’s function is to sell shooter’s aids and to enforce safety regulations, which are scrupulously enforced and conscientiously observed by all the participants. The targets are taped to metal frames erected at various measured distances from the firing line, and the frames may be moved to the station appropriate for your shooting requirements. There are places to mount them at 15, 50 and 100 yards. Periodically during the shooting, the range master will call for everyone to lay down their arms, unloaded and opened, and step away from them. After he is satisfied the range is safe, we are all allowed to go out and service our targets. Only after everyone has cleared the range and has stepped behind the firing line, away from his piece, does he give the order to resume firing. Each shooter has his own station where he can place his gear out of the way and get comfortable while he shoots.
I usually fire my pistols first, two .45 caliber automatics. I bought my first .45 in 1972, right after I returned from overseas. It is a beautiful machine, still almost new in appearance. I purchased it for three reasons, it is deadly, but not so powerful I cannot handle it confidently; it is mechanically robust and simple to operate with some very intuitive mechanical and safety features, and I trained extensively with it in the military, so I am familiar with its properties and use. It is also a very interesting article in its own right from an industrial design standpoint. The Colt .45 auto was designed to replace the older .38 caliber revolver used by our soldiers in the Philippines during the Spanish American War and in the subsequent native rebellion that followed it. The .38, according to a probably apocryphal legend, proved inadequate to stop a charging, drug-crazed native with a machete. The .45 was developed to do exactly that with seven very large bullets packed into a quickly-replaceable magazine. It was finally adopted in its final form in 1911, and served GIs through two World Wars, Korea, Vietnam, and innumerable minor conflicts throughout the twentieth century. It was only replaced as the standard American military sidearm by the 9mm Beretta in the 1990s, primarily for the purpose of standardization with NATO munitions. Like the Model T, the DC-3, and the Singer sewing machine, it is one of those machines that can truly be said to have changed the world. It is easy to use and maintain, extremely sturdy, reliable, efficient and safe to operate, and horrifically effective. It hasn’t really been improved significantly in almost a century, and all modern automatic pistols are simply variations on this basic design. My other pistol is also a .45, but not a shiny, blued, short-barreled version. It is the Government Model, dull-finished and strictly business. It’s the one I keep fully loaded on my nightstand.
I have two .45s because I traded my older pistol, a 9mm Llama, for it with my father. He needed a lighter, smaller weapon he could conceal on his person, and I wanted to have the interchangeability of parts and ammunition of having two almost identical firearms. (You didn’t know I was a closet survivalist, did you?) I wish now I hadn’t gotten rid of the Llama, it was a sweet little pistol, light and quick, and with very little recoil. You’ve probably seen one before, when you lived abroad, they are the standard sidearm of Spain’s Guardia Civil. If I still had mine, I would have given it to you by now and taught you how to use it. It is perfect for a small person like you, and a woman living alone in America needs to be armed.
I recognize that a firearm is a coward’s weapon, it takes little skill to use, and unlike a knife or sword, it isolates the shooter from the consequences of his actions. It makes the ugly business of killing too easy and too accessible and our national obsession with it is rapidly making this country uninhabitable. It kills at a distance, it is the power of the gods: point and the thunderbolt destroys your enemies, with little requirement for skill, courage, or honor in its use. But I also recognize that I am not a naturally violent man, and in a world filled with predators, if I ever do need a gun I don’t want to find myself without one.
I was born and raised in the South, I am well aware of the peculiar fascination that guns seem to have for American men, particularly rural Southerners, and I know that legitimate sport and even self-defense have very little to do with it. Neither do I deny that I also share some of that fascination, and that even tempered with a natural masculine admiration for craftsmanship and clever mechanical design there is also a perverse and destructive aspect to it, manifested in the grotesque political justifications of the gun lobby. But I feel no need to make any apologies. He who refuses to live by the gun could still easily die by the gun.
But the firing range is not a place for political debate, or moral ambiguity. There is the gun and the target. Nothing else matters. Shooting requires a quiet methodical concentration, a single minded devotion to detail that is Zen-like in its simplicity and in its complexity. The body and the weapon become one and the world is reduced to the essentials of the laws of physics and the control of the flesh. It is difficult to say what actually contributes to marksmanship, but the body somehow knows it, because one does improve with practice, and the skill deteriorates if not frequently performed. The best marksmen almost seem to will their bullets towards their targets, and they manage to perform feats of control and precision which seem inconceivable. It is precisely because it is so simple, just point and shoot, that it is amazing how some people can be so much better at it than others, and how almost anyone can do better if they work at it. It affects others I see at the range much more so than I, they spend enormous amounts of money and effort on highly specialized firearms, totally impractical for anything but competition shooting, so that ascribing bloodthirsty or childish motives to them seems totally unfair. Their rifles and pistols are things of beauty which have slowly evolved through time to precisely fit their function, whether it be target shooting, armed combat under certain conditions, hunting a specific type of game in a specific environment, or even other, more esoteric uses (like those who enjoy replicas of 18th century firearms, black powder muzzle-loaders and flintlocks; or the collectors, or who specialize in advanced examples of the gunsmith’s art, or weapons of rarity or unusual historical interest which they keep in perfect operating condition and yet never actually fire them). Others load their own cartridges and even cast their own bullets. As with the Japanese sword, there is much more going on here than can be explained by merely considering the gun as a weapon, a killing machine.
I fire my pistols at 15 yards, about the maximum range I would expect to use it to defend my home, and about the maximum accurate range for an unmodified weapon and a typical marksman. I familiarize myself again with the physical experience, the flash, the report, the recoil, even the clatter of the spent shells ejected during firing. I drill the mechanical operations of the motions involved in combat, aiming, firing, ejecting the empty magazines and replacing them with full ones. If I were alone, I would probably also practice concealment, rapid firing, instinctive and reflex marksmanship, all the skills that would benefit the pistolero, but of course, these athletic motions would be unsafe at a crowded range. It is a martial art, although I make no claim to performing at that level of proficiency. I am a mediocre marksman but I am not incompetent. I can hit a torso-sized target every time, that is all that matters.
The .45 roars with authority, the trigger releases the cocked hammer which strikes the firing pin and sends it plunging into the cap at the end of the cartridge, detonating the powder charge. The rapidly expanding gases of combustion force the bullet out the chamber where helical grooves machined inside the barrel impart a spin to the projectile, giving it stability as it races towards the target. The recoil forces the slide back in a blinding fast motion, extracting the spent cartridge and forcing it onto the ejector which guides it out the opening port and expels the hot, empty brass hull clear. The backward motion of the slide, checked by a strong spring, cocks the hammer and on the return trip a fresh cartridge, pushed up from the spring in the handle clip, is forced into the chamber. The slide slams into the receiver, forming a gas tight seal, and the weapon is ready to discharge again. It will do this as fast as you can pull the trigger, eight times if you started with one in the chamber. When the last round is fired, the mechanism senses that it is empty and the slide locks in the rear position, alerting the shooter the weapon is safe. A touch of the thumb on the magazine release and the empty clip falls out, ready to be replaced by a fresh one. After it is rammed home, a quick thumb motion to the release lever allows the slide to race forward on its powerful spring, stripping the top cartridge off the clip and into the chamber, the weapon is already cocked and ready to fire. Except for the insertion of the fresh clip, all is done with one hand. A century-old technology, brutally efficient and mechanically elegant, this is how Americans have killed their enemies, face-to face, for almost a hundred years.
It’s not all sturm und drang. I also have a Marlin .22 Magnum rifle, which fires a smaller, lighter, and inexpensive bullet with almost no recoil. I originally bought it for hunting wild turkey when I lived in Pennsylvania many years ago. That caliber is legal there for hunting the wily gobbler, but I never got around to using it for it’s intended purpose; I shoot it now strictly for recreation. It’s a handsome rifle, all hand-rubbed walnut and shiny black metal, with a beautiful leather sling. Unlike the automatic pistols, it is a bolt action weapon, and a fresh round must manually be chambered by operating a lever. I like to prop it up on a bench on top of a couple of sandbags and fire it at a hundred yards. It’s a totally different sport, involving sight picture, breath control, and trigger squeeze. I can put all 12 rounds in the magazine into a six-inch circle, but I don’t doubt the rifle can shoot straighter than I can. One day I’ll have it drilled and tapped and have a cheap scope put on it, and if I show any talent for it I may indulge myself in a more powerful piece and seriously get into some precision target work.
After the day’s shooting is done, I take my guns home and spend the evening cleaning and lubricating them, stripping them down and carefully removing the day’s soil and grit before I reassemble them and put them away. The Government Model goes by my bed, fully loaded, with one in the chamber. It leaves me strangely relaxed and at peace. The smell of the cordite and the cleaning fluid stays with me for a long time afterward.
Author, HRC- Florida
Real Guns Editorial Perspective
Several times each month I receive independent submissions to Real Guns. Sometimes they are published on the site, sometimes they make it to the letters section, most of the times they are rejected. When they are rejected it is mostly because the work closely duplicates printed publication new product coverage and offer nothing original, or they are extreme anti gun rhetoric with no redeeming qualities. Sometimes they are just poorly written, and I already have that type of content covered.
I elected to publish this piece because I think it is reflective of a certain type of mentality that permeates a good number of message boards that are more theoretical and cultural than focused on hardware, ballistics and hunting. There seems to be a developing lack of understanding of the utility of a firearm; displaced with a more dramatic, almost romantic association, something that normally goes away the first time someone is involved in organized competition, or sticks a knife into a downed deer, or tries to take cover behind a hydrant when it is the only object close by and shots are being fired. A gun really is just a tool with multiple purposes.
“I recognize that a firearm is a coward’s weapon, it takes little skill to use, and unlike a knife or sword, it isolates the shooter from the consequences of his actions.” is not a problem with the writer, but one that is much larger in scope. Too many people have been spared the task of ensuring their own survival, at war or as a consequence of living in New Jersey. There are boxers and there are street and bar fighters, rules apply only where rules prevail. I’m glad the writer owns firearms, I hope he develops a more full understanding through more broad exposure to firearms and the shooting community. Maybe get out to the range and join a Cowboy Action group – a bunch of very normal people, having all sorts of fun, and there is probably not a coward in the bunch, or a human shot. – Joe D’Alessandro, Sunnyvale, California.
07/13/04
Thanks,
Joe
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