May 10 was the birthday of John Dean “Jeff” Cooper (1920-2006). For those of you who came late to the party, Jeff Cooper originated what has come to be called The Modern Technique of the Pistol. Simply put, it revolutionized the way we teach, practice, and deploy the handgun for defensive purposes.
There was a time when the military and police trained for combat using bullseye targets and target-shooting techniques. At the same time, sadly, there was absolutely no defensive training for legally armed citizens. Cooper changed all of that by taking a California cowboy fast-draw competition and turning it into a method for developing defensive life-saving shooting skills. Ultimately, he moved to Arizona and founded the American Pistol Institute at a location that he called Gunsite. It was the very first school that taught defensive skills to armed citizens and remains today as the oldest defensive firearms school in the world.
High points of the Modern Technique revolved around he use of a large caliber pistol, fired from an isometric push-pull system that he called the Weaver Stance. Cooper also taught an improved draw stroke, the flash sight picture and the surprise trigger break. In addition, he used a simple color code to teach defensive awareness and four simple, easy to remember safety rules. When you see someone handling a firearm with their trigger finger straight and out of the trigger guard, they owe that simple safety technique to Jeff Cooper.
The Modern Technique of the Pistol has become such a common practice that many people teach it without realizing where it came from. Virtually every decent defensive training school today uses most, or all, of Cooper’s techniques. Sadly, some instructors forget to give credit where credit is due and fail to mention Cooper’s contributions.
Jeff Cooper was a World War II Marine officer, a popular magazine author and a teacher. He was also an especially great gatherer of valuable defensive techniques and information. His greatest skill was the ability to pass what he had learned and developed on to others.
For all of that, Jeff Cooper was just a man, not a deity. Just like the rest of us, he had his faults. But history should, and will, remember him for the great impact that he had on the defensive shooting world. There is no possible way of telling how many of us are alive and breathing today because of the techniques that we first learned from Col. Jeff Cooper. And that, my friends, is quite a legacy.
