The Gun Digest Book of Combat Handgunnery. Massad Ayoob
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Название: The Gun Digest Book of Combat Handgunnery
Автор: Massad Ayoob
Издательство: Ingram
Жанр: Спорт, фитнес
isbn: 9781440218255
isbn:
There is a good reason for the Glock pistol’s predominance in the American law enforcement sector and, to a slightly lesser extent, the armed citizen sector. Quite simply, the product has earned it.
Today’s Double-Action Autos
Walther popularized the double-action auto with a de-cocking feature in the 1930s. It was seen at the time as a “faster” auto, the theory being that with a single-action auto like the Colt or Browning, you had to either move a safety lever, or cock a hammer, or jack a slide before firing. With the DA auto, it was thought, one could just carry it off safe and pull the trigger when needed, like a revolver.
At the time, most of America felt that if they wanted an auto that worked like a revolver, they would just carry one of their fine made-in-USA revolvers, thank you very much. In the middle of the 20th century, 1911 flag-bearer Jeff Cooper applied an engineer’s phrase that would stick to the double-action auto forever after. The concept was, he said, “an ingenious solution to a non-existent problem.”
Whether or not that was true at the time, a problem later came up to fit the solution. America had become, by the latter 20th century, the most litigious country in the world. With more lawyers per capita than any other nation, the United States became famous for tolerating utterly ridiculous lawsuits that, had they been brought in a country that followed the Napoleonic Code, would probably have ended up penalizing the plaintiff for having brought an unmeritorious case. Two elements of this would have impact on handgun selection in both police and private citizen sectors.
Gun control had joined abortion as one of the two most polarized debates in the land. Prosecutors were either elected by the same folks who elected the politicians, or appointed by elected politicians. Some of them found it expedient to “make examples” of politically incorrect shootings of bad guys by good guys. For this, they needed a hook.
Contrary to popular belief, prosecutors don’t get big occupation bonus points for winning a conviction for murder instead of manslaughter. If they get a conviction, they get credit, period. If they bring a case and lose, they lose credibility and political capital. This is why a good chance of a win on a lower charge beats a poor chance of conviction on a higher charge. To convince a dozen people with common sense sitting in a jury box that a good cop or a decent citizen has suddenly become a monstrous murderer is a pretty tough sell. But to convince them that a good person could have been careless for one second and made a mistake is an easy job, because every adult has done exactly that at some time. A murder conviction requires proving the element of malice, but a manslaughter conviction requires only proving that someone did something stupid. Thus, it came into vogue to attack politically incorrect justifiable homicide incidents with a charge of manslaughter.
A relic of the early 20th Century, the slide-mounted safety/de-cock lever of Walther PPK inspired designs of S&W, Beretta, and others much later in the “wondernine” period.
Ruger’s P90 beat every other double-action .45 tested and became the issue weapon for author’s police department in 1993, along with Safariland SS-III security holster.
It is common knowledge that a light trigger pull – what a lay person would call a “hair trigger” – is more conducive to the accidental discharge of a firearm than a long, heavy trigger pull that requires a deliberate action. Cocking a gun, or pointing an already cocked gun at a suspect, could therefore be seen as negligence. Now, the key ingredient of a manslaughter conviction was in place.
It reached a point where prosecutors would actually manufacture a “negligent hair trigger argument” even in cases where the gun was never cocked. One such case, State of Florida v. Officer Luis Alvarez, is mentioned elsewhere in this book. Alvarez’ department responded by rendering all the issue service revolvers double-action-only. Some saw this as a weak concession to political correctness. It must be pointed out, however, that if the double-action-only policy had been in place before the shooting, the prosecution never would have had that false hook on which to hang the case, to begin with.
And that was just in criminal courts. On the civil lawsuit side, something similar was happening. Plaintiffs’ lawyers realized that the deep pockets they were after belonged to insurance companies, not individual citizens who got involved in self-defense shootings. Almost everyone who shot an intruder had homeowner liability insurance, but such policies specifically exempt the underwriter from liability for a willful tort, that is, a deliberately inflicted act of harm. The lawyers could only collect if the homeowner shot the burglar by accident. Thus was born the heavy thrust of attacking guns with easy trigger pulls, and of literally fabricating the “cocked gun theory of the case.” Private citizens who kept guns for self-protection and were aware of these things began to see the advisability of double-action-only autos as well as revolvers for home defense and personal carry.
A two-pronged concern was now in place. Fear of accidental discharges of weapons with short trigger pulls, and fear of false accusation of the same. Police chiefs who had once authorized cocked and locked Colts and Brownings for officers now banned those guns. Detroit PD and Chicago PD are two examples. Many private citizens who carried guns and followed these matters saw the trend, and decided that a design that was double-action at least for the first shot might have an advantage.
Thus was born the interest in DA pistols. The compactness of the Walther .380 had already made it a popular concealed carry handgun. Smith & Wesson’s double-action Model 39, introduced in the mid-50s, had captured the attention of gun buffs. It was a good looking gun, slim and flat to carry in the waistband, with a beautiful feel in the hand, and it was endorsed by such top gun writers of the time as Col. Charles Askins, Jr., George Nonte, and Jan Stevenson.
The 1970s saw the development of high-capacity 9mm double-action designs, and of hollow-point 9mm ammo that got the caliber up off its knees. With expanding bullets, the 9mm Luger’s reputation as an impotent man-stopper in two world wars was rehabilitated to a significant degree.
These guns became known as “wondernines,” a term that was coined, I believe, by the late Robert Shimek. Known to gun magazine readers as an expert on handgun hunting and classic military-style small arms, Shimek was known only to a few as a career law enforcement officer who wore a 9mm SIG P226 to work every day.
These “wondernines” worked. In the late 70s and early 80s, the manufacturers refined the designs to meet the virtually 100 percent reliability requirements in the JSSAP (Joint Services Small Arms Project) tests that would determine the service pistol that would replace the ancient 1911 as the U.S. military sidearm. As a result, they were thoroughly “de-bugged.” The prospect of a giant, lucrative government contract proved to be a powerful incentive to “get the guns right.”
They would become the platforms of the .40 S&W cartridge in 1990, and of the subsequent .357 SIG cartridge. They would be enlarged, keeping the same key design features, to handle the .45 ACP and the 10mm Auto.
These were the guns that would change the face of the handgun America carried.