Ten Commandments of Propaganda out in Polish Translation

I have invaded Europe.    My Ten Commandments of Propaganda has been translated and published in Polish.  Please see: http://www.granice.pl/ksiazka,10-przykazan-propagandy,2271570

American Gun and Book Review: Gun Control and the Third Reich

American Gun and Book Review: Gun Control = People Control

by 

Professor Brian Anse Patrick

University of Toledo

Gun Control in the Third Reich: Disarming the Jews and “Enemies of the State,” Stephen P. Halbrook, Independent Institute, 2014, 247 pages.

A few years ago the American voluntary association, Jews for the Preservation of Firearms Ownership, issued a poster showing Adolf Hitler giving the sieg heil salute and captioned: “All in favor of gun control raise your right hand.” A truism throughout America’s Gun Culture is that gun registration leads in time to confiscation, and confiscation to just about anything. Despite this generally held perception, few persons, however, are armed with particulars on how this slippery slope, lubricated by statist bureaucrats, came to operate under the centralized, collectivist state that we know as Nazi Germany. Since we Americans seem perhaps to be developing our own version of a collectivist state, it may benefit us to learn some lessons about how such things were done in the Fatherland.

            Dr. Stephen Halbrook’s well-researched book provides the dreadful particulars. Oppressive controls blossomed under the Nazi regime, excepting of course for ranking Nazis who were allowed to purchase, own and carry guns. This led not only to mass confiscations but also quite directly to imprisonment and death for many Jews and other designated enemies of the state, who were seen as potential terrorists or “politically unreliable.” For example, the Nazis imprisoned in concentration camps approximately 20,000 Jews in the immediate aftermath of the government sponsored home invasions and weapon searches that took place on Reichskristallnacht, aka the “Night of Broken Glass,” on November 9-10 of 1938.    

            Halbrook documents the Nazi gun and people-control agenda with the aid of numerous, mainly primary source documents: diaries, letters, arrest records and memoranda of German police and bureaucrat-regulators, as they legalistically took advantage of open-ended legislation and the existence of registration lists to disarm those whom they considered politically or socially suspect. This meant Social Democrats, Communists and especially Jews, all of whom were systematically identified from registration lists kept by police agencies, who acted under directives from higher officials. Gypsies and other “wandering peoples” were also banned from gun ownership. In addition to gun permits, Jews saw their hunting licenses revoked.

            All along, the Nazis had special plans for the Jews. The confiscation agenda included not only the searches of Jewish homes at or around Reichskristallnacht, but also Jewish homes and businesses were targeted by spontaneous “mobs” of the folk. In reality these were planned actions by SA (Sturmabteilung, aka Storm Troopers). Civil police had been ordered to stand aside, and did. Thousands of Jewish homes were searched for weapons and often looted by searchers. The fact that many Jews were German army military veterans of the First World War did not matter. Stabbing and hitting weapons, dirks, military swords, bayonets and even the knives used for kosher slaughter were banned and confiscated. The Nazis ever-legalistic officialdom had even engineered a devilish Catch 22 into the system: banned weapons became automatically property of the state, so that if a Jew had gotten rid of weapons that he once had, he was guilty of stealing from the state. In effect he couldn’t have a weapon and couldn’t not have it either.       

            Firearms banned under the earlier Weimer Republic gun controls included the military style assault weapons of the day, which in those days were Mauser 98 rifles and Luger Model 08 semiautomatic pistols. Much of this had to do with Germany’s uneasy political situation where communists, who had insurrection plans of their own, fought in the streets with nationalist factions. There was some provision for hunting and target weapons in the laws. Once the Nazis ascended, however, interpretations of the gun laws changed. Plus additional laws were decreed. Guns of all sorts were specifically banned for Jews. As of 1938 any Jew possessing a firearm was subject to 20 years imprisonment in a concentration camp, with no process of appeal, which meant, as Halbrook notes, that he would not be getting out until 1958 (if at all).

            Attempted cooperation did not engender mercy or rational treatment. Halbrook personalizes his dread history with the sad example of Mr. Alfred Flatow, an 1896 gymnastics Olympic gold medal winner for Germany, who, as a Jew, surrendered his registered handguns and 22 rounds of ammunition in obedience with new 1938 law, and was then taken into custody by the Gestapo at the police station (noted on the arrest reports as the scene of the crime). Flatow died of starvation in a concentration camp in 1942. He earned this punishment through trying to obey the law, and of course by being a Jew.

            It can’t happen here? Good question. Perhaps not in this exact same way, as a number of important differences exist between Nazi Germany and the U.S. political system, including a Bill of Rights and a Second Amendment, but there are worrisome similarities and trends too. Remember recently how the IRS acting apparently under orders of very high officials targeted conservative non-profit organizations for “special” treatment? Or how so-called Operation Choke Point has financially hampered businesses that have been administratively identified as suspect often, apparently, for the thought-crime of not agreeing with the social agendas of appointed officials? We also have at the moment an executive branch that enthusiastically enters into (hopefully) unratifiable treaties with centralist political organizations that oppose U.S. Constitutional rights, i.e., the U.N. Arms treaty.  

            In the matter of centralized American record keeping, for example, there are good reasons why the National Instant Check System, the computerized FBI-run background check into all purchasers from gun dealers, does not, allegedly, by law keep permanent records of sales. But digital data being what they are—transmissible, storable, penetrable, hideable—one always wonders about their capacity to ever truly disappear. Incidentally, most people, and some gun owners, seem unaware of the existence of NICS, which has been in operation since 1998 and which has conducted more than 100 million background checks on gun purchasers (So much for the mythology behind the current antigun slogan of “universal background checks”: such checks have been done for years). NICS aside, many states and police departments also maintain records of gun owners, especially handgun owners. And then there are hunting licenses, which in many states are electronically linked to voter registration lists. The inviolability of gun owners’ privacy rights thus becomes a questionable proposition.

            The Nazis provide an early example of the avidity with which the bureaucratic minded seizes upon the latest data collection and processing methods.  An IBM subsidiary, Deutsche Hollerith Maschinen Gellsellschaft, provided the punch cards and sorting systems used to sift and collate data on every person in the Reich. For those of you too young to have seen a punch card, it was a piece of paper cardstock about 4X6 inches used to record and collate data by means of little rectangular holes punched in specified areas. Jewishness was indicated by a punched out hole 3.  Jews were also required to inventory their assets if they were over 5,000 marks, “yet another job for the punch card machines,” writes Halbrook. The Nazis even seized a Jewish owned firearms manufacturing firm.    

            Some leftist gun controllers have interpreted the German experience in astonishing ways. Authors Joshua Horowitz and Casey Anderson avowed that the big problem of Nazi Germany was lack of a strong centralized government that could have protected the Jews from the Nazis. This claim seems nonsensical on its face, i.e., instead of merely a totalitarian state would a mega-totalitarian state have achieved liberty?  They also try to claim that the 1938 law represented a liberalization of gun policy (which it did, but only for the Nazis). Such considerations apparently didn’t stop University of Michigan Press from publishing their book, Guns, Democracy, and the Insurrectionist Idea (2004). The authors pooh-pooh the notion that a Second Amendment-like right of insurrection could have protected Germany’s Jews from the Nazis. And possibly they are right to some extent in this regard. As some of Halbrook’s documentation reveals, however, the Nazis themselves feared armed Jews or, for that matter, any possible armed or even informed domestic opposition. This is exactly why the Nazis set about disarming them. Authors/attorneys Horowitz and Anderson are professionally associated with the anti-gun movement, however, so I read them as making sophistic arguments on behalf of their primary client. Their book seems to be an example of what might be called attached scholarship. Horowitz is or was executive director of the DC-based Coalition to Stop Gun Violence, although the book blurb merely identifies him as a visiting public health scholar at Johns Hopkins. Anderson, listed only as a DC lawyer in private practice, also happened to be CSGV’s public affairs director. We probably should not be surprised, then, if their arguments seem strained. 

            The Nazis not only feared guns in the hands of victims or the politically unreliable, they also loathed uncoordinated (by themselves) social action and organizations. In this latter regard they were much like their totalitarian counterparts in the Soviet Union. If you recollect, Hannah Arendt lucidly demonstrated in her landmark Origins of Totalitarianism, that the bullies of the alleged left in Russia and the bullies of the alleged right, the Nazis or so-called fascists, were really essentially the same kind of bully, i.e., collectivist statists. In The Road to Serfdom F.A. Hayek identified the collectivist statist mindset as an essentially Germanic innovation/hermeneutic that burgeoned during the Bismarckian era and diffused widely. Hayek, offended by the eclipse of liberty in the West, wrote, “Individualism is thus an attitude of humility . . . and of tolerance to other opinions and is the exact opposite of that intellectual hubris which is at the root of the demand for comprehensive direction of the social process.”  And there is little doubt that the Germans had more than their share of hubris.  And socialism, too.  

            Regarding the Nazi mania for centralization, we can correlate some of Halbrook’s findings with the observations of American social ethicist James Luther Adams, who wrote on the vitalizing central role of voluntary associations in American pluralistic society. Freedom of association is incorporated into the First Amendment precisely because it is the root the American social ethic. The Nazis of course, as well as their rival firm, Lenin, Stalin & Company, simply couldn’t abide freedom of association. If people were allowed to associate, to participate in reasonable democratic forums without overriding direction from above, why, anything might come of it!  Adams, who was present in Germany while the Nazis were grubbing for power, attributed the virtually unopposed Nazi rise to the lack of a meaningful tradition of voluntary association in Germany. Halbrook discusses the Nazi’s program of Gleichschaltung to bring all organizations and associations into alignment with the goals of the state. Even shooting clubs, essentially hobby groups, but some of which dated back to the Middle Ages, were reorganized and saddled with swastika emblems and leaders handpicked by the state. Clubs that resisted were suppressed. The Fuhrer Principle, Führerprinzip, required a brand of leadership that made sure that all was ultimately in service to the state.     Murdering Mao Tse-Tung, another of Collectivism’s famous goons, thought much the same way. The only time he tolerated freedom of association and the resultant articulation of ideas, was during the infamous 100 Flowers period of the Chinese revolution, when he cynically encouraged such association and expression in order to identify and later snuff out the sources, which he did through censure, imprisonment and death. Not only was the Party’s associational structure the only one tolerated, it was also linked firmly to guns, just as it was with the Nazis: “Power grows out of the barrel of a gun, our principle is that the Party commands the gun”, so it is written in Mao’s Little Red Book.

            The only negative aspects that I see in the book owe to the essential ugliness of its subject matter. Seeing the bureaucratic maw at work is not for the fainthearted. Halbrook has undertaken the description of the social anatomy of an objectionable process.  The book cites numerous memos and letters to and from grey little men whose nit nattering decisions, in the end, destroyed Life, Love and Liberty. It reminds in so many ways of Hannah Arendt’s famous description when she beheld Adolph Eichmann, the banality of evil, as embodied by the grey little Nazi accountant of Death that the Israelis kidnapped from Argentina and hanged in Israel in 1962 after a fair and necessary show trial. Also troubling, are the polysyllabic fortifications, the conceptual jargon, behind which evil shelters and legitimizes its doings, terms like Gleichshaltung and Führerprinzip.   

            An important thing to bear in mind about Nazi Germany is that the Germans were undoubtedly the most civilized, literate, educated, technically advanced and cultured people in the world.  And they knew it, just like Americans today.  So it can’t happen here. Yeah, right. History seems to show that the collectivist bureaucratic mind is always seeking human grist for its mill.

Second Edition of Rise of Anti-Media by Professor Brian Anse Patrick in Print

The new affordable print version will be available on Amazon very soon. This 2014 edition also contains a new foreword by the author.    

Negroes and the Gun: American Gun and Book Review

American Book and Gun Review

by

Professor Brian Anse Patrick

University of Toledo  

Negroes and the Gun: The Black Tradition of Arms. Nicholas Johnson, Amherst, New York: Prometheus Books, 379 pages, 2014.

In response to a nonviolent civil rights worker who was surprised to see a firearm in the house of a well known black southern civil rights activist, the activist explained, “That’s a non-violent gun.” 

This is one of scores of telling incidents and historical events documented by Professor Nicholas Johnson as he traces the American black tradition of gun ownership from its painful beginnings in slave days, through the Reconstruction and Jim Crow eras, the black diaspora to the industrial north, to the Civil Rights movement and on into the present.

The black tradition of arms is a neglected and, to some, perhaps, an inconvenient history. Although many will find it inspiring, modern progressives will probably wish to swish it away because it doesn’t align with their characteristic approach to social regulation, i.e., “We the government/elite will save you.” The progressive social cartoon poises black people as victims of the gun rather than proponents of the gun for personal defense and freedom. But history as revealed by Johnson says otherwise. American Blacks by necessity took up arms. They used them often and responsibly, and the presence of guns in black hands averted more violence than it caused, although as always the gun is a tool as well as a symbol, and taking up a gun can cause unforeseen (but not unforeseeable) problems.  

Frederick Douglass counseled, “A good revolver, a steady hand and a determination to shoot,” as a way for former slaves to counter the man-hunters who attempted to seize blacks who had escaped to the North. Free state blacks often resisted and repelled incursions of slavers who came to reclaim what was then legally viewed as lost property. Armed groups of black men assembled at times to interdict slavers. Harriet Tubman of Underground Railroad fame was well known for carrying firearms and is often depicted rifle in hand.  Many white southerners could not abide the idea of armed, independent black voters. This too much resembled true citizenship. After the Civil War when southern militias and nightriders attempted to disarm blacks, many of whom had been federal soldiers, there was often armed resistance. The subsequently adopted 14^th Amendment attempted to assure that the rights, immunities and privileges of citizenship as guaranteed by the U.S. Constitution also applied to the residents of the various American states, especially the new black citizens. Amazingly, in recent times in Chicago, the 14^th Amendment had to be invoked once again in defense of the 2^nd Amendment, a battle refought in a manner of speaking, in McDonald v Chicago, where a black man, the late Otis McDonald, had to go to all the way to the Supreme court to plead his right to own a gun in the city of Chicago. McDonald won. But Chicago, much like the southern Democrats of the Reconstruction Era, is still spending taxpayer money to impede the 2^nd Amendment rights of good citizens.  And as Johnson makes clear, there is also no doubt that many gun control laws of the last century-and-a-half were largely aimed at blacks.

And back in the Reconstruction Era South, the 14^th Amendment, lawful authorities and the federal system were often a long way away, especially at night in the countryside.  And as some of accounts documented by Johnson reveal, when blacks resisted armed terrorists, it sometimes it turned out after the sun rose that the bloodied attackers left behind were in fact the local authorities—sheriffs and deputies.

Violence was often lopsided.  Early on in the days of the Underground Railroad blacks generally had only single shot weapons while the slavers tended to have the more modern repeating weapons. After the Emancipation and the War, blacks sometimes won, sometimes lost and often hung on, maintaining a sort of stasis made possible by the potential for defensive gun use. Armed blacks could not be attacked with impunity.

The storied NAACP enters the picture as a major player in legal cases involving armed self-defense by blacks, defending (unsuccessfully) WWI veteran Sgt. Edgar Caldwell for using his service revolver to kill a train conductor and wound a motorman who had been trying to stomp him to death after he resisted being thrown out of the white passenger section.  Johnson presents more cases than can be recounted here, some virtually municipal in scale. In Elaine, Arkansas a white deputy was shot dead after he fired into a group of Negro farmers, veterans, who had formed a farmers union. In the ensuing violence, the governor mobilized troops, deputies roamed the countryside, resulting in 5 white and 25 black casualties. Murder indictments in the “scores” for the blacks were followed by kangaroo trials, some only an hour long.  Eventually, with NAACP help, at the SCOTUS level of appeal the convictions were reversed. Justice Holmes justified the reversal on the grounds that the trials were merely an extension of mob violence. In Detroit, NAACP brought famous litigator Clarence Darrow into the Ossian Sweet case. Sweet, a dentist, along with friends and relatives, had been indicted for murder after a white mob attacked the house that he had purchased in an all white neighborhood on Detroit’s east side. Threats had been made and Sweet and friends armed themselves.  Shots were fired and afterward a white man lay dead. The prosecutor’s office tried to present the case as incidence of armed Negroes firing on a peaceful community. In court, Darrow pointed out that prosecutors had called up a mob of eyewitnesses to testify there was no mob outside the house. After an initial mistrial Sweet was eventually acquitted.  A compliment to Johnson as a scholar, being myself very interested in 2^nd Amendment issues and having published extensively in this field, I had thought myself quite well acquainted with the Sweet case, but in this book I learned much more.     

Of course the big problem to NAACP and black community leaders was balancing a non-violent political movement with the needs of personal home and self-defense. Non-violence wasn’t an effective political tactic for the dead. But neither was retaliatory violence good for the movement. The notion of armed aggressive black freedom fighters was more than enough to incite an unwinnable race war, and at the least could reverse progress and good will hard earned over the years. Hence the public commitment of Civil Rights Movement leadership to non-violence while privately their homes and sometimes their persons bristled with guns. It was a balancing act between political symbolism and survival. A movement of armed black men known as the Deacons protected non-violent marchers and the homes of community and movement leaders, all as unobtrusively as possible. When during the era of the Black Panthers, the Deacons and other organizational sympathizers morphed into a more militant movement, the checkbooks of northern white liberals closed to them, and support went to more moderate non-violent leaders. 

In a time of threats, church bombings and burnings, Martin Luther King applied for a concealed carry permit and was turned down on the grounds that he had not demonstrated need. This is how the old unreformed “may issue” concealed carry licensing boards worked—back when boards had total discretionary power, the concealed carry permit became a boon granted to friends, cronies and brother-in- laws. Still, King was uneasy about the political ramifications of guns, so he stressed a low profile for his armed protectors. Another civil rights activist packed her gun in a paper bag everywhere she went, people thought it contained her lunch.  Activists are quoted as stating that non violent or not, there were guns everywhere in the homes of movement leaders and members.

Back in the 19^th Century, journalist/social commentator and provocative black essayist Ida B. Wells wrote: “The Winchester rifle should have a place of honor in every black home. The more the Afro-American yields and cringes and begs, the more he is insulted, outraged and lynched.”  

Unlike most professors Johnson knows whereof he writes when it comes to firearms. In an apt analogy he shows that the Winchester repeating level action rifle was the “assault weapon” of its time, being capable of a high rate of fire and easily reloadable.  I know from personal conversations with Professor Johnson in the context of academic conferences (e.g., last year’s Second Amendment Symposium at Fordham Law School on that island of antigun sentiment known as Manhattan) that he owns and delights in an old Winchester .351 caliber rifle from 1907 or so.  He enjoys showing antigun academic acquaintances that the idea of a semiautomatic so-called assault rifle has been around for a long time, and is not some new satanic invention causing havoc on society, but has long been part of the healthy social order. In the same way the Winchester rifle became a useful, freedom-preserving part of the emergent social order of the South, the Black tradition of arms. I may be attributing my own construal of meaning to Professor Johnson’s work here, if so I apologize, but you, dear reader, will get the idea. My point is that Johnson is not one of the hoplophobic hysterics that one encounters so frequently in academia. He is knowledgeable; his language is restrained, objective; his interpretations buoyed by an abundance of facts, documentation and experience.        

Johnson’s book is extremely well researched. A Professor at Fordham Law School, Johnson’s scholarship is carefully anchored in citations. The depth of the research is impressive. This is not the sort of book that one takes in at a sitting. Its chapters and organization lend themselves well to episodic reading, however.  Overall, though, one thing becomes certain: a commitment to non-violent political means and peace does not equate with lying down and dying when it comes to matters of self, life, home and family. Defense of home hearth and family is the opposite of violence.

Johnson’s last chapter is especially impressive. He faces down many of the current progressive objections and myths concerning guns in private hands, even looking at the troubling differences between black and white homicide/victimizations.  Recent and early 20^th century victimization and crime studies show rates of blacks as victims and perpetrators at 10 times (or more) higher than the white population.  Modern academics and journalists tend blame this on the NRA and evil gun manufacturers.  Johnson more rationally attributes the disproportion to a criminal “microculture,” even quoting W.E.B. Dubois on the subject. One of the big negative effects of unjust, broadly sweeping gun legislation is that it makes it difficult or impossible for blacks to defend themselves against this criminal microculture, the promise of imminence/omnipotence of the progressive state, being so much nonsense. The police or the state cannot defend: they can only appear after the fact.  We should recall the reason that Otis McDonald was forced to go to law was so he could effectively defend self and family against Chicago gangs in his own home and city.

Also dealt with and dismissed is the myth that guns in the home are more of a risk to the home owner than to invaders, a much cited myth based on a lopsided study based on bad sampling and comparisons published in the consistently hoplophobic New England Journal of Medicine.  Johnson also dispels the common myth that high numbers of guns are correlated with high levels of gun violence, showing that the amazing increases in gun ownership and owners in recent years have not correlated with increases in crime, quite the reverse. He sheds light on DGUs (Defensive Gun Uses), using a variety of survey sources, that show most gun uses are non-violent, good citizens use guns to deter but not to shoot social predators. Johnson attributes current antigun policies of black urban leaders to political alliances with progressives, who provide a great many incentives and blandishments to black communities in exchange for what are regarded as reliable voting blocks for progressive causes.  He cites survey information that suggests current blacks are not as antigun as some imagine, providing guns go to good people.

A final anecdote, not from Johnson’s book, but which suggests some reasons for the disappearance of the black tradition of arms under an educational and informational system dominated by modern so-called progressive values.  A professor and lawyer of my acquaintance, a black man, well educated and urbane, fairly affluent, returned recently with his family to Atlanta to set in order the effects and property of his recently deceased grandfather. In the home in a drawer by the old man’s bed they discovered a revolver in a box along with ammunition. It should be mentioned Atlanta had been, long ago, the scene of one of the race riots discussed in Johnson’s book, wherein many blacks armed themselves to resist attackers. My acquaintance and his family were terrified and alarmed by the gun and worried that it would go off or harm them in some way. They placed the box with the gun in a plastic garbage bag and put it in the trashcan behind the house, and called police.  The police removed the gun.  A few hours later, it must have been a nice revolver with an unsullied history, a police officer came back with a waiver the professor could sign transferring the gun to the officer personally.  The professor did. So the revolver wasn’t wastefully destroyed.  The moral?  You see here what progressive propaganda can achieve in a generation or so. An item of utility, a means of freedom from terror and coercion, an heirloom, was transformed into a symbol of death and evil. As you can imagine, Dear Reader, Johnson’s account will not be well received in some circles because it says things that for some are unthinkable.   

Johnson’s book is a blow against Orwellian history.  A fine and illuminating book it is!

BAP

7 October 2014  

CPL Class of Sept. 20

A new group of trained CPL applicants.  It appears we are standing on a hill.  Dr nick achieved this effect.  The goat appears courtesy of Goatpower Publishing, with whom he is under contract  

Colt Gold Cup Trophy 1911, 45 acp: American Gun Review

SS Colt Gold Cup Trophy. Accuracy. Functionality. Form.

Prologue: The 1911 Snob
Before reviewing the Colt Gold Cup Trophy, please bear with me for an edifying moral tale.

I once knew a fellow who waxed authoritatively on the subject of 1911 pistols. He held forth in various webpages and discussion forums, extolling the perfect, state-of-the-art 1911, custom made from custom frames and slides of the sort used, he said, by elite FBI units. He could, he professed, never be bothered with "inaccurate" and "out-of-the-box" 1911s. Such were for lesser beings than himself. They simply wouldn't do. He had to have accuracy. The best. He was a purist of the highest standards, a 1911 snob and a name-dropper. He spoke knowledgeably about barrel bushings, rod guides, 32 lines to an inch hand cut checkering and so forth.  He sneered at the notion of anything less than a custom pistol by a big name pistol smith. What exacting standards he did set, looking down on other 1911 owners from his olympian heights! How could lesser folks even live as they did with their crude substandard weapons? A accomplished man he was, erudite in the wisdom of the gun magazines, secure in his bastion of knowledge.

It came to pass that the great man visited one day. I had a 1911 on my desk in which he took a polite interest. It was an old (1968) Clark-built match pistol having among its other desirable characteristics the ability to repeatedly place 200 grain Hensley & Gibbs #68 bullets or Federal match ammunition into the 10 and X rings of a 50 yard slow fire target, provided of course the shooter did his job of sighting, holding and trigger control. The blue was worn, the gun very much used. Like me, it was no longer pretty and had lost the blush of youth. It had begun life as a Colt-manufactured service pistol. My guest deigned to shoot it, even though the old Colt frame and sundry component parts were not really from the right sort of makers, and the gun's pedigree did not impress him.

We went out back. I suggested he shoot at my 55-gallon burn barrel, as it was convenient. At a range of about 15 yards, using match ammunition, with a powerful two-handed grip and an impressive-looking bent knee-ed combat stance/squat, he could not hit the oil drum. Not even once out of a full magazine. He flinched so badly, the worst I have ever seen, that the rounds were hitting the ground before about half way to the target. After he gave me a short lecture on gun safety he turned around such that the pistol was pointed at my ribs. He flinched again when I reverted to my native ghetto English and called him a stupid cocksucker and asked him what the fuck was wrong with him for pointing that gun at me. He seemed astonished, as if I slapped him (which was what I had intended in terms of psychological equivalence). He hasn't been back to shine any more of his wisdom on me.

So much for online gun experts. I think perhaps he could be compared the onanistic teenager who had long immersed himself in the lush abundance of online pornography, but who had never experienced interacting for real, never even kissed or been kissed. As far as I know, he went back to his online forums, unaffected by his close brush with reality, wherein he continues to this day as a high aesthete on the topic of 1911s. And as long as he stays exclusively online, he remains potent and transcendent, at the top of his game.

Colt Gold Cup Trophy, Stainless Steel
I actually wanted a blued steel Gold cup, but bought this one because someone had gotten to the gun store ahead of me. It's a pretty gun and needs no makeup. Stainless Steel is wonderful stuff.  The adjustable rear sight is flat black, as is the square front sight in its dovetail cut, so the sights pick up wonderfully. The corners of the rear sight are rounded off, sensibly, and the back face horizontally serrated. The sights are marked "Colt." They function well.

The Trophy has, I think, a more developed grip safety than the standard 1911, a bit of a beavertail, which is something I like as long as it isn't too extreme in the way of protuberances. I would prefer a plain grip safety that would make it legal to shoot in a hardball, DCM type match. Nevertheless I do not plan on changing it.  The manual safety on the left side is the old standard sized Browning design. The same with the magazine release. I see no reason for "oversize" safeties and magazine releases except in the case of pistols that are intended for use in so-called practical pistol competitions in which they are carried in holsters and not used or carried loaded on the street. In real life I don't see such additions as all that practical. They are too easy to push in or off and thus invite accidental releases. The Trophy has no ambidextrous safety, which is also fine with me, for the same reason. Such things seem to me like dangerous clutter. I'm sure our big time gun expert above would disagree. But he is safely ensconced with his imagination. My imagination is more limited: quite simply I don't want to shoot my butt off, nor anyone else's. A friend of mine who served many years with a state police agency reports that he knows of three instances wherein troopers accidentally shot themselves in the rear end or leg with 1911 .45 a.c.p. pistols. I don't know enough details to speak authoritatively about these instances, but it seems like these accidents were related in part to carrying the pistol in the back pocket, belt or holster, apparently cocked and locked, and somehow grabbing the gun while pulling the trigger. I wouldn't call 1911s treacherous, but they are totally unforgiving, and require a heedful type of mindset to carry safely. I would never carry a 1911 cocked and locked in my rear pocket or just stuck in my belt. Beware.

The Trophy's trigger breaks at maybe about 4 pounds, crisply, it's face vertically serrated. The hammer is bobbed, and is not the old spur hammer. Serrations are all sharply and cleanly cut, adding grip and handling characteristics.  It is a well-appointed pistol.

I sighted the pistol in at 25 yards after lubricating the slide rails, shrouds and barrel/bushing with a few drops of lightweight Mobil synthetic motor oil. I also added a slight drop on the elevation and windage screws for the adjustable sight (an often overlooked matter, which generally pays off in years of fault free operation, lubrication being a good thing!). I will not bother to show photos because I am getting tired of looking at gun articles that show photo after photo of impressive groups. These photos take up space effectively, yes, but how come we never see anyone post photos of of the bad groups, just the good ones?  Anyway, this pistol shoots fine groups. After some adjustments to the rear sight, the groups were in the black, actually ten-ring, on the standard NRA 25 yard timed and rapid fire target.  

The next week, perhaps prematurely considering how little I had fired the pistol, I tried it in a match beginning at the 50 yard slowfire stage. I had to crank the sights round a bit to find my zero at that range, but with Federal match 185 grain SWCs the Trophy would keep all rounds in the ten ring of the NRA slowfire target, within the limits of my ability to hold and control the trigger. If I jerked the trigger, the bullet was out, but if I did my job, the gun would do its job. I was favorably impressed. My Clark 1911, with its full length Bomar rib and sights and 6 inch barrel, has more weight, and seems to print tighter groups at 50 yards, and I can control it better, but I am also very much used to my Clark, having fired thousands of rounds through it. The Trophy, out of the box, as they say, is competition ready for Bullseye /Conventional Outdoor Pistol. This style of shooting is in my opinion the most exacting and demanding type of competition pistol shooting. The Colt engineers and workers know what they are about. I compliment them for this high quality product.

The Trophy also functioned reliably. I kept it lubricated during the match, and experienced no failures. This was with the magazines (two) that came with the gun. Incidentally, I am very skeptical of aftermarket magazines, finding that they often do not work well, and sometimes not at all. And merely paying $40 for a magazine is no guarantee of flawless function. Make sure you test them well before relying on them. Buying magazines from a bin at the gun show is a recipe for disaster. I have used Wilson magazines in matches however to very good effect.

This week at 25 yards, in practice, I fired a 5-shot group with the Trophy in which all shots were in the X ring.

I can't shoot any better than this with any pistol. Regarding the Trophy Cold Cup, if you can do it, it will do it.

Additional Matters
You may have noticed that in the photo of the Trophy above, the front-strap and back-strap of the frame appear black. I confess that I slightly modified the grip by removing the nicely checkered wooden grips and adding some of the self adhesive abrasive-faced tape sold in hardware stores for use on stair treads. Then I simply replaced the grips over the tape. This makes for a fabulous positive grip, the like of which I have never experienced elsewhere. A plus is that it in nowise permanently alters or mars the pistol in any way. Should you attempt this, and it is easy, you must however take great care not to interfere with the operation of any of the gun's safety mechanisms or the magazine release. But again, this simple adaptation makes for one of the finest grips that I have ever encountered.  I don't know how well this technique would work on guns other than 1911s, but it is effective and inexpensive and seems to last. For a few dollars you could do a score of 1911s. This is all the better for me because I prefer one-handed 1911 operation. In the sort of competition I do, this type of hold is mandated.

Also, speaking generally, they call these things handguns, not handsguns.  You may need your other hand for something else, like holding off zombies. If you can't shoot a handgun reasonably well with one hand, perhaps you don't really know how to operate it as well as you think you do.

A last word. With a suitable holster, one that doesn't catch the front sight and which covers the trigger, I would use this gun for social carry. It's reliable and accurate. Although I would like to shoot it a few hundred more times before making a final decision in this matter.

Thank you, Dear Reader, for your attention.

Washington Post Note

Found myself quoted in The Washington Post re zombies and guns: http://www.washingtonpost.com/posteverything/wp/2014/08/08/exactly-who-is-stoking-american-fears/

Krieghoff Classic Double Rifle 9.3 X 74R: American Gun Review

It took a year and three months to arrive from the time I placed my order, and was worth the wait. My first double rifle.

Beauty and Function, Much Like Me

The rifle came in its own fitted case, green exterior, blue velvet lined, not much larger than an attaché.  Quality. Quality. Quality. This seems to be the byword with Krieghoff.

I decided on the 9.3 X 74R caliber after a fair amount of consideration and after consulting with Dieter Krieghoff, whom I met at the NRA annual meeting a few years back when he was manning the Krieghoff booth in the Exhibit Hall.   Even before talking with Mr. Krieghoff, I had decided against the big bore calibers such as the 470 Nitro Express.  It's not that I don't admire them, but beyond sheer fun and joy of ownership, I didn't see any immediate application to the sort of North American Hunting that I have done. Moreover, I plan no African trip.  The only way that I might ever shoot an elephant would be if it insisted on messing with my garden. Or if I saw it in my pajamas one morning. And I have never ever even seen a rhino except at political events.

I love to hunt elk. In Montana. Whenever I can. With a good rifle. 

My initial considerations included the .375 H&H for my double rifle caliber. Mr. Krieghoff recommended the 9.3 X 74 R in part because a rimmed cartridge is a better choice in double rifles. This has to do with simplicity and ease of extraction. A rimless cartridge complicates the extraction mechanism. He was very proud of his company's rifles, especially the sliding safety cocker which cocks and decocks the action, and renders the rifle completely safe, and yet functions, on the outside,  essentially like a very positive version of the standard tang safety with a bit of added gusto and meat.  

The fact that I had some experience with the 9.3 X 62 caliber helped guide my choice. I respect the caliber and the cartridge, which is ballistically the identical twin of the 9.3 X 74R, a 286 grain bullet at about 2300-2400 feet per second. Other weights are available, but the 286 grain seems to be the standard. I killed the biggest Whitetail of my life, a sneaking ten point, with the 9.3 X 62, while he was in the act of taking a step, his last, as he continued on down to earth. He barely trembled.  Of course I did not shoot him in the ass.  Some fine bullets are available in 9.3 caliber, including the Nosler partition, which I have used successfully on elk, but only in my .340 Weatherby, specifically the 210 grain loading. A 286 grain partition in 9.3 caliber would certainly connect in a meaningful way indeed on an elk or moose.

Encased

Initial Shooting freehand at 50 yards

Krieghoff equipped the rifle with express sights at my request: two folding leaves ahead of a stable rear sight, pyramidally shaped in cross section, the famous express sight shallow "V" recommended by Elmer Keith and other double rifle aficionados. A simple white vertical inlay below the bottom of the "V" aids the eye in aligning the sights. A subtle but impressive feature, a luminous bead flips up to abut and augment the front gold bead sight, at the options of the shooter, in low light conditions. Clever, simple and well rendered, all. I think this is called a "Moon Sight" but only picked up this term second- hand while talking with Dave at Jaqua's Fine Guns in Findlay, Ohio, who had been talking directly with the Krieghoff USA folks in Pennsylvania, who apparently not only do the final sighting but even add the sights to the rifle after it comes in from the Fatherland.

Ahhh!

I had never shot a double rifle until mine arrived. Up until this point it had been a fantasy rifle and now I had to learn how to effectively use it. Now was the time to transition from consumer to hunter. The rifle came with a test target at 50 meters, showing four shots in a very respectable group of perhaps 1.5 inches, although the Krieghoff people measure all these things in germanic centimeters. I was a bit worried because the factory test target had been fired with the 232 grain Norma Vulcan bullet, which is not what I wished to use for hunting, and which I do not regard as particularly suitable for elk hunting, especially in the timber.  I agree with Keith. Long heavy bullet is best on large game. How would the double do with 286s?  I had read much online and elsewhere that discussed the need and difficulty of "regulating" barrels for a particular load such that both barrels shot to the same point of aim at the intended distance of use.  The Classic does have a feature, a sort of adjustable wedge between the twin muzzles that allows for after-the-factory regulation, but I have no desire to trifle with it, being, despite my fair amount of research, a neophyte regarding double rides in any practical sense. Maybe someday. But I would prefer not to need this feature.

I decided not to shoot off the bench.  This to me is a freehand rifle for use in the field.  It might likely be fired in a kneeling or seated position, off my knees, but certainly not a bench.  Plus I wanted to learn how to shoot the rifle and call shots.  I tried 3 loads: the 232 grain Norma Oyrx, the 286 Norma Oryx and the 286 Hornady Interlock.  All are billed as a premium hunting bullets.        

50 Yards Freehand Ist 8 Rounds

The manual recommends firing the right barrel first followed in 5-10 seconds by the left barrel.  That is how it seems to be done at the factory. Because the barrels heat up, too much firing in an episode changes the point of impact in both barrels, which are of course interdependent.  These rifles are designed to shoot once, maybe twice, a few times, with utter reliability, quickly if need be, and to handle well, not for an afternoon of sustained fire.  

I did not even attempt to dry fire the rifle first.  First were the Norma 232s.  The right barrel struck immediately above where I was holding at 12 o'clock. Recoil was not inconsiderable, but not horrifying either, but still I pulled the second shot down to the right. The triggers, both, were great, surprisingly so. The 286 Norma I place a bit low, as marked on the target.  The 286 Hornadys went into the ten ring and immediately above at about 11 o'clock  Their recoil was noticeably less.  As this was the load for which I asked for the gun to be sighted in, this was gratifying.  I tried then two very quick shots with the 232, both respectable, but too fast considering my newbie condition.       

That was it for the day.  I was learning. I was pleased that the 286 Hornadys did well.  I called the left barrel Hornady 286 that went a bit left, but still in the black, and was getting used to the trigger, which was smooth and would suddenly break the shot.  Also I learned that one should not engage in what some call "stock crawling," i.e., moving the head forward on the cheek piece.  It shot best for me and most comfortably when I held my head erect like shooting a shotgun. Plus this minimized or eliminated recoil effects on my cheekbone.

A note.  The slide-cocker safety device works well and naturally.  

The next day, I fired 6 more shots from a cold barrel.  Utilizing what I learned the first day, the 286 Hornadys did very well.  And I tried the moon sight with the 232 Normas and found to my surprise that I fired the first of the two rounds into the X ring and the second into the 9 at 3 o'click, two quick but unhurried shots. The moon sight may be the way to go for me, but I won't really know until I extend my ranges out to 100, 150 and even 200 yards.  I will next obtain a box or two of Nosler factory custom loaded Partitions in 286 grain. This would be my personal perfect bullet if it handles well in the double.

I have little doubt that I can handload either the Partition or the Hornady bullet more or less to perfection.  Unfortunately, non factory ammunition is Verboten, says the Krieghoff manual, at the risk of loosing the one-year warranty.  I understand why.  Perfectly.  In fact, to tell the truth, I would prefer factory loads if they do what I want for hunting purposes.  But I would like also to replicate this optimal load for practice so that I can shoot enough to become thoroughly comfortable with the rifle.  It feels good already, but I want the confidence of knowing exactly how to make it work my will at the ranges that the cartridge will accommodate, maybe 200 yards or a bit more depending, of course, on the shooter's abilities. This is not a 400 yard rifle in any case. And it is also a pricy rifle to shoot.  Perhaps it's like the old admonition that was applied to luxury boats: if you have to ask how much fuel it burns, then you can't afford it. Too late now for me.  I Bought the boat.  But at least 9.3 X 74 ammunition is very modestly priced in comparison to the  bog bore double cartridges such as the 470s, which may go for six or eight dollars or more per round.

Second target, six rounds, freehand, called pull on right

Before the rifle arrived I had already obtained new Redding 9.3 X 74R reloading dies, a fair quantity of unfired Hornady brass and bullets, as well as a good supply of Nosler partitions. I use the same bullets in my FN Mauser 9.3 X 62 anyway. A phenomenon that I have observed with different loads in high power rifles is how recoil and muzzle blast changes with powder without necessarily any change in velocity/impact.  This is a complicated business, some use terms like "impulse" to describe it, but if I can get the same velocity with a softer effect, I will. This might be the only free lunch around. I know the laws of physics say there just ain't no free lunch to be had, nohow. But I know, too, that many gun writers use terms like "perceived recoil" to get themselves out of this logical paradox.  I will do the same.  For example, the Hornady 286 is noticeably softer in perceived recoil (subjectively experienced) than the Norma 286 Oryx, even though published muzzle velocities are virtually identical. My handloading would take this into account in choice of powders.  Usually it is the slower burning choices, the lower pressures, less bark, that lead to this perceptual result.  In any case I will not begin this search until after the warranty expires.      

Some shooters employ claw mounts for scoping their doubles.  I will not because I think the beauty of a double is in its compact appearance and elegance, kind of like Audrey Hepburn. The rifle has the appropriate base for this type of mount should I ever wish to deviate from the high road.
   
Incidentally, I have called this column, if that is what it is, an "American Gun Review." But the Krieghoff is German, you may say.  Well, I am an American, and now, so is my Kriegkoff: it is becoming naturalized. 

POSTSCRIPT 8/16/14

I have continued my freehand shooting, extending my range out to 70 and 100 yards with good results. The heavy slugs thunk in a very satisfying way on the one inch thick steel disc at 100 yards.  I have noticed three things:  (1) If I focus on the front sight and control the trigger, the gun strikes where I aim. (2) It doesn't seem to be as fussy as I had expected regarding different bullet weights and configurations, e.g., the 232s v the 286s, or the flatter pointed Oryx v the more pointed Hornady design, and (3) My best shooting is done with my head held up, naturally, and not "crawling" the stock. I am gaining confidence and knowledge of the rifle.  I likes it!   Need a sling for field carry.

I have more ammunition on the way, Nosler 286s and am trying to find some Sellior and Bellot, too, to continue my lessons/experiments.  Prvi Partisan has announced 9.3X74R ammunition in their line, but I haven't yet found any. I would like to try this too, as I have had very good results with their 9.3 X 62 fodder.  Ranges will increase as well. One step at a time.   Elk watch out.