A pal of mine attended one of Col. Cooper's schools and at dinner was invited to sit next to him which he graciously accepted only stipulating that it should be to Cooper's left,his explanation being that he didn't care for .45" brass landing in his soup ....
Had the privilege for taking a basic class at gun site and Louis Awerbuck was one of the trainers for it. At that time, I was using a Beretta 92FS. Being a young buck, I had some upgrades done to it including a barsto NM barrel gunsmith installed and some other goodies. Mr Cooper passed by during class and made the comment " still a 9mm, but as long as you shoot it well, it should do the job". I managed to bump into him at SHOT show a couple of times before his passing. He was always nice and pleasant to talk to and was still pretty sharp on modern firearms. Bless him.
Thanks for bringing back this knowledge and preserving it. I collect vintage training materials. Sometimes the current methods are superior, sometimes new fads are inferior to what they replace.
I first heard of Jeff Cooper in my freshman year in college in 1978. Since then i have tried to learn what i could from him as well as from other experts in the field, omnivorously grazing from anyone who was better than me to learn as much as I can. While controversial as to his actiual military service record, i was there to learn about marine operations but the use of a handgun. In that respect, he was one of the best.
An excellent and practical approach. Like Cooper himself, who did not necessarily invent any single practice, but gleaned useful techniques from the shooting world, and boiled them down into a proven teachable system. Many people who criticize Cooper today, are unaware of how much their own training is shaped by the offspring of his system.
I have read Cooper's books and magazine articles, and it seems like he did actually use a handgun in a defensive situation, rather than just spending his life training for a situation which never developed. And for sure many of his pupils had to use theirs!
I have searched. Unfortunately, I haven't found anything by Cooper discussing the scout or any others. I have commenters claiming to have knowledge, but I have not been able to confirm anything as fact.
I had the opportunity to train with him way before his death. I had heard about the Bren 10 But I had no idea he was the brain child behind it. When I asked him why he said he wanted something that the 45 could do but at a further distance.
Jeff Cooper was a great teacher in most ways, but I think he carried an exaugurated sense of danger. For God's sake, he had us sleep with our guns in bed with us. We're much more likely to die from illness or a car accident than physical attack.
@@user-nv1uz8qv4z I disagree. Cooper's system was purposeful, and no secret. He learned through his studies that awareness and mindset were the largest factors in survival. Being armed is of no use, if "this can't be happening" is your mental state in an emergency. For this reason, being prepared mentally is not fear, but the most vital component in a system designed to save life. Learning to use the physical tool is only one aspect. The unprepared mind is what loses a gunfight, and ignoring this would leave any firearms training woefully incomplete. Most people do not come away from that training with more fear, but less.
Watching this ( after coming of age in the late 70s) is like watching God himself descend from the heavens. So much has changed since this was made, but the fundamentals never change...
