By CJ Songer,
Contributing Editor

"Gunsite is Mecca.

"Other people can bow to the East, if they want to-gun cognoscenti bow towards the high desert in Arizona, towards a small town called Paulden that's five thousand feet above the Arizona plains.

"It was there, some twenty-nine years ago, that Lt. Colonel Jeff Cooper, retired Marine, established his shooting school, the first of its kind. He and a cadre of like-minded souls had come out of World War II and Korea concerned that the accurate use of small firearms was becoming a bygone skill. Jeff had set up a competition, held at his place in the mountains of Big Bear, California, during the 50s and60s, where some of the premier trainers and instructors came to participate, to analyze the art of the "quick draw," to test different modes and methods of gun carry, of handling. This group became first the Bear Valley Gunslingers, holding monthly competitions that were open to anyone, and then the Southwest Combat Pistol League, setting up timed pistol matches and courses of fire-a much more organized effort to determine the best way to achieve capable gun handling than had ever been undertaken before.

"A deputy sheriff named Jack Weaver smoked the competition with his two-handed hold. Up until then most practitioners of the pistol held and shot it one-handed, a leftover custom from the days of the cavalry, when riders needed the other hand to rein in their steeds. Do you know how hard it is to shoot a handgun from the back of a revved-up, fighting warhorse? The pistol was truly a close-quarter weapon then, a self-defense tool of almost last resort.

"Accuracy?

"Huh.

"But accuracy was exactly what the Southwest Pistol League was interested in. People of the age were using a different kind of horsepower-you no longer needed to worry so much about handling a mount while you shot, as you needed to be sure of your shot. There was continual testing at those Leatherslap matches in Big Bear of what was coming to be called the Isosceles Stance versus the Weaver Stance. There were ongoing, sometimes-heated discussions of the merits of Colonel Rex Applegate's Point-And-Shoot Method against that of two-handed fire using the pistol sights-which one was faster, more accurate, which made it easier to acquire the weapon from a holster or from concealed carry, which was better to teach?

"Underlying all of this was the fear, very real, that the people coming back from war to a pacific civilian population always face-that the next generation's having it easy, that they're not learning the skills to survive because they think they don't have to, that they don't understand the sacrifices made by the warriors who fought for and bought them this moment of peace. The fear is that when the current crop of warriors is gone, the soft underbelly of their descendants will lie open for the gouging by other civilizations that aren't taking it easy, by the Barbarians, the Huns.

"The Sixties was the time of Free Love, of "Do your own thing," of Flower Power and LSD, of sit-ins and protests and burning the American flag because your Constitution allows it-anathema to the generation that had fought through the Second War-to-End-All-Wars to preserve those same freedoms.

"The Leatherslap contests were fun, they were rowdy, but they were serious competitions. The methods that were distilled there-the isometric two-handed grip with its push-pull to help control weapon recoil, the Weaver stance, the use of practical application and courses of fire to mimic as closely as possible real-life situations-all of these came to embody what is known today as the Modern Technique of the Pistol. Many of the best-known handgun practitioners of the day were involved in its evolution, men such as Jack Weaver, Ray Chapman, Elden Carl, Leonard Knight and Thell Reed, but Lt. Colonel Jeff Cooper was the force behind it, the publicizer, the organizer, the relentless mover-and-shaker."

(Author's Note: Gunsite is now entering its 29th year of operation. It has large, modern buildings, and twenty-seven different ranges, with multiple indoor and outdoor simulators that include a mock-up of a 727 airplane. Its fine staff of instructors train thousands of civilian and military people annually, both onsite and off. Please see www.gunsite.com for more information about their current class schedule and facilities.)