Cooper on Handguns: Complete Guidebook to Handguns

Cooper observed that one of his competitors, Jack Weaver, used a peculiar shooting stance that enabled Weaver to fire his double-action revolver surprisingly fast—yet accurately. (Weaver was one of the few wheelgunners in the League; most favored the M1911.) Cooper digested Weaver’s stance of a bent elbow on the support arm and refined it for the 1911. He named it the Weaver Stance and advocated it above any other technique when he later became a full-time shooting instructor. That development came in 1976 when Cooper founded Gunsite, a ranch in northern Arizona dedicated to propagating the full body of knowledge he had, by now, codified as the “Modern Technique,” based largely on what he’d learned at those Big Bear “leather slaps.” Simple to describe yet multi-faceted in its nuances, the Modern Technique begins with four rules of safe gun handling. We’ve all seen these very same rules, in precisely the wording Cooper originally articulated, displayed on signs in police shooting ranges, military ranges, civilian ranges, gun shops and even on business cards. Every gun owner should commit them to memory: Rule One: All guns are always loaded. Rule Two: Never let the muzzle cover anything which you are not willing to destroy. Rule Three: Keep your finger off the trigger until your sights are on the target. Rule Four: Always be sure of your target.