Podcast Comments

[JohnJacobH]

Mr. Bane;
    Your comments about short slide .45's begin to alarm me.

 First, a disclaimer, I tend to be a revolver guy. I have shot IDPA matches with factory Winchester Whitebox 110 grain .357 out of a 2 inch barrel S&W Model 19 with target sights.

But after I discovered Jeff Cooper's passionate advocacy for 1911's  I acquired a Series 70 Colt and a Springfield Armory Ultra Compact New-In-Box with an (American?) steel slide and a Brazil Manufacture aluminum frame #35****.

The Series 70 has been pressed into service as a trigger group for an aftermarket carbine upper which leaves me with the Springfield Armory for a carry gun out on the back forty where the feral dogs and coyotes roam.

As I plinked with it I discovered shortcomings no doubt well known to you- my revolver grasp did not transfer well to the grip safety, the slide would not always go into battery for any variety of reasons, and it just did not seem to shoot to point of aim like my S&W four inch barrel or my beloved
Dan Wesson.

Now as I listen to your podcasts, I am led to believe the only reliable .45 is a Sig Sauer 226 and even a new S&W 1911 that you sucessfully ran
2,000 rounds through is still completely rebuilt with a new trigger assembly?

The most recent discovery I made with my new-in-box Springfield is the firing pin does not strike the primer dead center-just about the only weapon
I own with such a deficiency.

I can accept the necessity of duct taping the grip safety flat, but good grief, how is an ordinary Joe supposed to acquire a reasonably accurate, reasonably reliable firearm if state-of-the-art is $3,000 in modifications and improvements not to mention legal and regulatory flaming hoops that increase by the minute?

Maybe Red Dawn will come in my lifetime, but short of that I just need to shoot the occasional critter or be ready to comply with Swiss Army Operations Order Number 2.

Do you have any comments for people who just own one or two pistols and see no joy in shipping them around the world for months at a time in order to get them into satisfactory operational condition?

Best regards,

[texcaliber]

Maybe Red Dawn will come in my lifetime, but short of that I just need to shoot the occasional critter or be ready to comply with Swiss Army Operations Order Number 2.

I apoligize for my ingorance in advance but i have to know what Order #2 is?
Tex

[JohnJacobH]

I apoligize for my ingorance in advance but i have to know what Order #2 is?
Tex

A great story that should be repeated around campfires everywhere.


As long as a man has another cartridge or hand weapon to use, he does
not yield

By Vin Suprynowicz
web posted August 1998

Those who would blithely abandon the greatest safeguard of liberty --
the right of the individual citizen to keep and bear military-style
arms -- aren't real strong on consistency.

Aiming to gradually erode the quality of arms we have "permission" to
bear -- back to the level of the muzzle-loading flintlock, if not the
slingshot -- they have been disingenuously mewing for 60 years that
they have no objection to arms "for which there is a legitimate
sporting use."

Of course, the Constitution says nothing about hunting or skeet
shooting. Rather, it says we must be allowed to keep our arms -- no
"infringement" whatsoever, no tax, no registration, no "application
for permit" -- because the citizens constitute the militia, the most
powerful armed force in any free state.

The gun-grabbers sneer that this is an out-of-date notion, that a
bunch of farmers with deer rifles could hardly stand up to the 82nd
Airborne ... let along a Chinese invasion.

But the logical conclusion of that argument is surely that we should
encourage law-abiding citizens to keep machine guns and
rocket-launchers in the closet ... not ban AK-47s, with or without
pistol grips and bayonet lugs.

The victim disarmament extremists (those who would disarm law-abiding
rape victims, but not their assailants, who ignore all such laws)
ridicule this as the sheerest homicidal macho fantasy -- no modern
nation has ever thrown out a tyrant by the simple expedient of the
common folk rising up with their personal rifles, nor does any
civilized nation today allow its citizens to keep machine guns at home.

Wrong and wrong. Try placing a long-distance call to the American
military governor of Vietnam, or the Soviet military governor of
Afghanistan, to ask them how easy it was to suppress a nation of armed
peasants.

And as to the advisability of "allowing" citizen militias to keep
modern military arms with them at home -- yes, Sarah, the kind
"designed for no purpose but to kill large numbers of people" -- we
turn to Virginia attorney and Second Amendment expert Stephen P.
Halbrook, author of the new book "Target Switzerland: Swiss Armed
Neutrality in World War II," out this past spring from Sarpedon Press.

Writing in the January 1998 edition of the excellent magazine
Chronicles, Mr. Halbrook points out that "Since the origins of the
Swiss Confederation in 1291, it has been the duty of every male Swiss
citizen to be armed and to serve in the militia. Today, that arm is an
'assault rifle,' which is issued to every Swiss male and which must be
kept in the home. During Germany's Third Reich (1933-1945), that arm
was a bolt-action repeating rifle, which was highly effective in the
hands of Switzerland's many sharpshooters.

"Americans of the wartime generation were familiar with the fact that
brave and armed little Switzerland stood up to Hitler and made him
blink. As a map of Europe in 1942 shows, the Nazis had swallowed up
most of everything on the continent but this tiny speck that Hitler
called 'a pimple on the face of Europe.' The Fuhrer boasted that he
would be 'the butcher of the Swiss,' but the Wehrmacht was dissuaded
by a fully armed populace in the Alpine terrain. ...

"The Swiss federal shooting festival, which remains the largest rifle
competition in the world, was held in Luzern in June 1939. Hitler's
takeover of Austria and Czechoslovakia was complete, both countries
had been surrendered by tiny political elites who guaranteed that
there would be no resistance. Swiss President Philipp Etter spoke at
the festival, stressing that something far more serious than sport was
the purpose of their activity. His comments demonstrated the
connection between national defense and the armed citizen:

" 'There is probably no other country that, like Switzerland, gives
the soldier his weapon to keep in the home. The Swiss always has his
rifle at hand. It belongs to the furnishings of his home. ... That
corresponds to ancient Swiss tradition. As the citizen with his sword
steps into the ring in the cantons which have the Landsgemeinde
(government by public meeting), so the Swiss soldier lives in constant
companionship with his rifle. He knows what that means. With this
rifle, he is liable every hour, if the country calls, to defend his
hearth, his home, his family, his birthplace. The weapon is to him a
pledge and sign of honor and freedom. The Swiss does not part with his
rifle.'

Mr. Halbrook continues: "On September 1, 1939, Hitler launched World
War II by attacking Poland. Within a day or two, Switzerland had about
half a million militiamen mobilized out of a population of just over
four million. General Henri Cuisan, commander in chief of the Swiss
militia, responded with Operations Order No. 2:

" 'At the border and between the border and army position, the border
troops and advance guard persistently delay the advance of the enemy.
The garrisons at the border and between the border and the works and
positions making up the defensive front continue resistance up to the
last cartridge, even if they find themselves completely alone.'

"This astonishing order was the opposite of the policies of the other
European countries, which either surrendered to Hitler without a fight
or surrendered after a brief resistance. For example, in April 1940,
Denmark's king surrendered the country after a meeting with the Nazis
and instructed his forces not to resist. Norway resisted, although
'unlike Switzerland' it had no armed populace and was ill- prepared
for combat.

"In response to the invasions of small neutral countries, Switzerland
issued its 'directions concerning the conduct of the soldiers not
under arms in event of attack.' Intended as a warning to Germany, it
was pasted on walls all over the country. It prescribed the reaction
against surprise attack and against the fifth column as follows:

" 'All soldiers and those with them are to attack with ruthlessness
parachutists, airborne infantry and saboteurs. Where no officers and
noncommissioned officers are present, each soldier acts under exertion
of all powers of his own initiative.'

"This command for the individual to act on his own initiative was an
ancient Swiss tradition which reflected the political and military
leadership's staunch confidence in the ordinary man. This command was
possible, of course, only in a society where every man had his rifle
at home.

" 'Under no condition,' the order continued, 'would any surrender be
forthcoming, and any pretense of a surrender must be ignored: If by
radio, leaflets or other media any information is transmitted doubting
the will of the Federal Council or of the Army High Command to resist
an attacker. this information must be regarded as the lies of enemy
propaganda. Our country will resist aggression with all means in its
power and to the death.' ...

"France collapsed in June, 1940 after only a few weeks of fighting.
Paris was taken without a shot being fired. The Nazis promptly
proclaimed the death penalty for possession of firearms in France and
other occupied countries.

"In contrast, Cuisan recalled the high duty of the soldier to resist:

" 'Everywhere, where the order is to hold, it is the duty of
conscience of each fighter, even if he depends on himself alone, to
fight at his assigned position. The riflemen, if overtaken or
surrounded, fight in their position until no more ammunition exists.
Then cold steel is next. ... The machine gunners, the cannoneers of
heavy weapons, the artillerymen, if in the bunker or on the field, do
not abandon or destroy their weapons, or allow the enemy to seize
them. Then the crews fight further like riflemen. As long as a man has
another cartridge or hand weapons to use, he does not yield. ..."

Even old men and children were issued armbands, identifying them as
Ortswehren (local defense) so they could not be shot as partisans
under international law, when the time came for them to shoot any
invader they saw.

Hitler never invaded Switzerland. Would you have?

Nor has any dictator -- military or otherwise -- ever attempted to
rule the Swiss cantons by "executive order" ... like the one Bill
Clinton haughtily signed to outlaw the import of AK-47 variants which
his own ATF had found to be in full compliance with current law.

"There was no holocaust on Swiss soil," Mr. Halbrook concludes. "Swiss
Jews served in the militia side by side with their fellow citizens,
and kept rifles in their homes just like everyone else. It is hard to
believe that there could have been a holocaust had the Jews of
Germany, Poland, and France had the same privilege."

Vin Suprynowicz is the assistant editorial page editor of the Las
Vegas Review-Journal. Readers may contact him via e-mail at
vin@.... The web site for the Suprynowicz column is at
http://www.nguworld.com/vindex/. The column is syndicated in the
United States and Canada via Mountain Media Syndications, P.O. Box
4422, Las Vegas Nev. 89127.

© 1996 - 2000, Enter Stage Right and/or its creators. All rights
reserved.

[Teresa Heilevang]

Amen...................................................

[gunman42782]

OUTSTANDING!

[Sponsor]

[JohnJacobH]

Now as I listen to your podcasts, I am led to believe the only reliable .45 is a Sig Sauer 226 and even a new S&W 1911 that you sucessfully ran
2,000 rounds through is still completely rebuilt with a new trigger assembly?

Gads! The correct pistol as described by Mr. Bane should be Sig Sauer 220! Apologies for the typo!

Best regards,

[texcaliber]

JohnJacobH thanks for the info man and it was W E L L worth the read man.
Tex

[BigSaucy]

Wow! Great post. That should be required reading in the public school system.

[Dharmaeye]

Just posted on:

http://www.packing.org/community/

[JohnJacobH]

A great story that should be repeated around campfires everywhere.


As long as a man has another cartridge or hand weapon to use, he does
not yield

Terrific! I have hijacked my own post! If anyone has comments about short slide compact .45's I would be grateful for the insight.

Best regards,