This article by Frank Winn writing for America’s First Freedom.
If you consider only the lowest-hanging fruit, there are still about six ways to come at an “Exercise Your Freedom” column about Gunsite Academy. Choosing the most proximate topic, you’d have to observe how close to the 40th anniversary of the original school of “The Modern Technique” of pistol craft we are. The first week in October will mark the actual occasion, but don’t gloss over those 40 years: No other remotely similar institution comes close to that longevity, or the pervasiveness of its influence.
How such influence came to be is just one thread in the story. While Gunsite graduates and instructors would certainly tell you techniques and many facets of equipment have evolved since the American Pistol Institute days, the seminal essentials remain just as the late Lt. Col. Jeff Cooper (USMC) originally defined them. And when you look at where he began—with the decisively inadequate one-handed mechanics and body positions little changed in several centuries prior to the 1950s—it begins to dawn what an achievement his distillation and subsequent handgunning revolution was.
Fad after fancy after fetish have since shivered themselves to bits on the Combat Triad (mindset, gun-handling and marksmanship), the Color Code and DVC. Nobody really knows how many law enforcement officers, members of the armed forces and plain old citizens have saved themselves or protected others using Gunsite Academy techniques.
Nor are those concepts exercises in, or mere proofs of, the colonel’s well-known erudition. Stanford educated, he was a formidable historian and philosopher of broad, eclectic taste, as well as a fine pistol shooter in his own right. That practical bent brought together Jack Weaver’s stance, the Presentation, the Flash Sight Picture, the Compressed Surprise (trigger) Break and use of the Heavy Duty Pistol in the Modern Technique. And while he would likely have preferred to see IDPA, IPSC and USPSA stay focused on defensive and protective skill building, they remain his “babies” in a very real sense. We know that they have fostered better, safer gun handling for many tens of thousands. And they’ve had other subtle, pervasive benefits, too (here and here).
To read this article in entirety click on this link: https://www.americas1stfreedom.org/articles/2016/8/3/jeff-cooper-and-gunsite-academy-40-years-of-freedom/
