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Practically Shooting

May 10, 1920


BarryinIN

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Was the day John Dean Cooper was born.

Mr Cooper was a lifelong hunter, hunting bighorn sheep in Alaska in his teens and Cape Buffalo in Africa in his 80s.

He attended Stanford, then was commissioned an officer of Marines in late 1941 at the age of 21. His officer training class had a quickened pace after December of that year. He served in the Pacific, primarily as a gunnery officer aboard the battleship USS Pennsylvania. "The Pennsy" was said to have fired more shots than any other battleship in the war.

He resigned his commission in 1949 as a Major, only to return to the Marine Corps when the Korean War began the next year. There, he served in intelligence and ran "irregular warfare" operations in the vicinity. He once again left the Corps with the post-Korea reduction, with the rank of Lt Col.

When he saw US involvement in the Vietnam War increasing, he repeatedly tried to return to the Marines, calling in every favor, but was denied due to a lack of need for Lt Cols in his area of experience.

He received his Masters degree in history in the 1960s.

During the interwar years while serving at Quantico, he was assigned temporarily to the FBI Academy as an observer. He studied their pistol training program, thought it could be done better, and devoted himself to finding a better way. This became a lifelong quest.

As part owner of a California ski lodge in the 1960s, he helped create a shooting sport to provide a testing ground for those techniques...and to add a spark to off season attendance at the lodge. The sport was called Practical Pistol Shooting.

Lt Col Cooper was known to his friends as "Jeff".

Jeff Cooper moved his family to Arizona and opened the American Pistol Institute (nicknamed and later called Gunsite) in 1976, with the first class held in September of that year.

IPSC was formed earlier that same year in Columbia, MO. Jeff Cooper was named as it's first chairman, which later became an honorary lifetime title, although he would later disapprove of the direction IPSC took.

He trained thousands of students in the defensive use of all firearms, and considered himself a rifleman first and foremost, but was known mainly for the the pistol. He would say he never invented anything, but he taught us to shoot a handgun with both hands, bringing the sights to eye level. He taught us to use a pistol to it's capability, not to the limits on a qual course. He taught us to think in a gunfight, and to prepare instead of react.

He died six years ago at the age of 86. A lot of people didn't like his ideas then or now, and many more have never heard of him at all. A lot of us revere him.

If you shoot a handgun with both hands, you have Jeff Cooper to thank.

Even if you never met him, remember: He taught us all how to shoot handguns.

I thought I'd mention this in case you wanted to observe accordingly tomorrow. I plan on it.

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