The Jeff Cooper Club

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CmdrSlander

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Welcome all,

I have recently been rereading the late, great Jeff Cooper's commentaries, I felt that he deserves his own thread on this forum. This thread will be dedicated to discussing Jeff Cooper, his techniques, his firearms of choice, his exploits and his legacy.

For the uninitiated:

The objective for this thread to be an ongoing discussion and "club" in the Colonel's honor, like any club, we don't have to focus solely on our topic, general discussion of firearms is welcome, especially those which Cooper would have been interested in. Gun politics is also a welcome topic of discussion.

Get to it.
 
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Anyone who met Col. Cooper could not help but be impressed by his depth and conviction. Those of us who were honored to spend time with him will be forever changed because of that. An orange Gunsite hat has meaning to many.
 
Since Mr. Cooper's writings are not public domain, please limit quotes to brief ones, with attribution. This is both to protect the Cooper heirs rights, and to protect THR.

Thanks,

John
 
A reference to many of the guns that Col. Cooper liked for survival purposes were listed in an older book by Mel Tappan, called "Survival Guns". I'll try to shake it up, and give a list. Cooper was asked by Tappan to recommend his favorites for long termed "survival", and it was pretty interesting. In his latter days, Cooper was also interested in obtaining a Broomhandle C96 for nostalgia and personal interest, not necessarily recommending it for anything else. I just remembered that one. Reading his many books would assuredly take one through his shooting interests and favorite guns.
 
He spoke pretty highly of the CZ75B aside from it not being in his favorite caliber. I love mine!
 
I recall in at least one of his Cooper's Corner articles that he advocated issuance of .44 Special revolvers as the weapon of choice for police officers. Noting the propensity for LEOs to spray-fire in confrontations, he thought that the LEOs would be adequately protected by the revolver, and that the general public would be better served by having fewer rounds going down-range.


.
 
I did the API250 and 499 pistol classes at gunsite in '80 and '81. Chuck Taylor was still on the staff when I did the 250 and Clint Smith was there when I went back about a year later for the 499. The Colonel was still out on the range actively involved in the training in those days. I had owned 1911s for years prior to going to Gunsite, but I felt like I learned a lot there and that the money for the courses was well spent . I won the 499 shoot off on Saturday morning, with the Col. watching. He was unimpresed. He said something to the effect that the other guy, an instructor who'd apparently been away for a while and was auditing the class, just got more shook up than I did during the final ;-) I still have a photo of the Col., me and some of my classmates taken after the shoot off...
 
OptimusPrime said:
What ideas and advice of Cooper's were proven wrong?
Click to expand...
While there is some disagreement over the validity of some of the techniques he advocated, the following two are pretty universally understood as being flawed.

1. A double tap; that two presses of the trigger, with one sight picture, would place two rounds on the target as the pistol was rising in recoil

2. The press check that hooked the index finger on the front of the slide under the barrel and the thumb in the trigger guard
 
I first met Jeff Cooper when I was a teenager in the early 1980's, at a SWPL event at the old Wes Thompson's Juniper Tree Rifle Range, back when it was near Agua Dulce. I did not comprehend the significance of his position back then, but have since enjoyed the tour of his home and collection while at Gunsite.
 
Colonel Cooper was a great influence on me back in the day.

I never met him, but eagerly read everything I could get my hands on.

His down to earth attitude about self defense just made sense to me, and his affection for the 1911 pistol (and the .45 ACP cartrige) helped lead me to a long running relationship with them.

The only thing about his writings that I could make a negative comment about was his "We are not amused" second voice style.

When a man puts as much in print as the colonel did and his writing style is the only negative I can find, he's done a good job.

We need more like him today.
 
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Colonel Cooper turned one of my anti friends into a staunch pro gun person.

He and I used to meet for a pint or three in the pub after work, but he used to finish work half an hour later then I did.
Although I used to run a few errands after work, I would still often get there before him, so once a month, he'd walk in to find me reading Guns & Ammo.

'Cooper's Corner' was always the first page I'd turn to, and so my friend would be greeted with one of the Colonel's witticisms or pearls of wisdom when he walked in.

Eventually he would walk in, grab the magazine, and read Cooper's Corner immediately.

Cooper had such a talent for articulating ideas. He had such a talent for summing up a paragraph's worth of information in a few punchy words that it got through to my friend and actually made him stop and think.

I remember the day that it was announced in Guns & Ammo that he had died, and both my friend and I felt a genuine loss.
 
Coopers Corner (and the full length version in another venue) were some of the best reading ever...some of it was just plain funny, all at the expense of politicians, socialists, and liberals, and the gamesmen.
 
SharpsDressedMan said:
A reference to many of the guns that Col. Cooper liked for survival purposes were listed in an older book by Mel Tappan, called "Survival Guns". I'll try to shake it up, and give a list. Cooper was asked by Tappan to recommend his favorites for long termed "survival", and it was pretty interesting. In his latter days, Cooper was also interested in obtaining a Broomhandle C96 for nostalgia and personal interest, not necessarily recommending it for anything else. I just remembered that one. Reading his many books would assuredly take one through his shooting interests and favorite guns.
Click to expand...

I've put some of his books on my wish list at Amazon. But other sources of information will do in the mean time. :)
 
Cooper liked the orignal CZ75; the 75B hadn't been born yet. I really like the early CZ's, as they have a longer, smoother trigger pull than the B's. Other gun trainers have called some of Cooper's stuff flawed, but I think some of that is like "semantics".......they just want to do it a little different, and be recognized for it. Just as in law enforcement, there just might be more than one way to do it. The "press check" works fine, for instance, as long as your gun doesn't have one of those new fangled, full length guide rods. And double taps are STILL deadly at close range. I thnk Cooper got it right; others may do it their own way, too.
 
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