Early inventors of automatics were not practical shots.
The inventor of one of the earliest automatics came to me with his invention. It was utterly impossible to handle or make any good shooting with it. It was like trying to eat soup with a fork. He kept telling me that if I "held it like this" and "did this," I should be able to shoot with it, but it was as if he had told me if I sat with my face to the tail of the horse and held on by his hocks, I should be able to ride better than the usual way. Besides being of a most unwieldy shape, to grasp which you had to spread your fingers in all directions, this pioneer of the automatic pistol had all sorts of levers which must be moved by your different fingers in order to shoot it, as if you were playing the cornet.
Inventors, instead of evolving a pistol from their imagination, should consult an expert pistol shot, as to what improvements on existing pistols are required.
We are told by writers who use the fashionable word "imagination," that to do anything, from governing a Nation to destroying submarines, "All that is needed is a man with "Imagination.""
"Imagination" may do many things in legend or story but it will not teach a man pistol shooting, or enable him to invent an automatic pistol. I put experience and technical knowledge before "imagination" and theories.
In rifles there is the same sort of difficulty. It took me years before I found a gunmaker who would try to make a rifle on the lines I consider desirable for big-game shooting.
Big game is shot at short range, so flat trajectory is of no importance.
What is important is to have a rifle which is light and well balanced and yet will knock down an animal with a terrific blow at close range. One does not want the sort of rifle so largely advertised as an ideal rifle for big-game shooting--a rifle which weighs as much as an arm-chair, balances like a poker, kicks like a horse, and is warranted to shoot into a two-inch bull"s-eye at four hundred yards, but is impossible to align on a rapidly moving animal at a few yards off, owing to its clumsiness and weight.
Inventors of firearms expect their customers to adapt themselves to their weapons instead of making the weapon to fit their customers, and answer to their requirements.
I stopped a man just in time, taking a Lea-Metford to shoot rooks with!
I was lecturing on the cruelty and uselessness of docking horses, amputating the bones and nerves of the horse"s tail and searing it with a hot iron, and what for? A man in the audience stood up and said: "If I did not dock my horse he would be too long to fit between the shafts of my cart."
This is just the inventor"s att.i.tude:
You must shorten your trigger finger by cutting off the first joint. I cannot alter all the blue prints of my invention just because you find the trigger too far back for your finger. Your finger is too long; my invention is perfect.
As a shooting man, not a gunmaker, I may suggest improvements impracticable to make with present means, but it was not by saying machines heavier than the air cannot be made to rise that the aeroplane was evolved.
It will be found that I have modified and even entirely changed some of my ideas since I published the _Art of Revolver Shooting_ in 1890.
This is of course inevitable: one lives and learns, and I have learned much on the subject since then. Mechanical improvements have altered and eliminated difficulties which I had to teach how to avoid twenty-eight years ago.
On the other hand, new difficulties have arisen which have to be combated.
Those who cribbed from my former writings made a great mistake, and instruction which was quite right for revolvers is wrong for automatics.
The position of the thumb, for instance, or the filing of the sights (which, almost without exception, these compilers of books have taken without acknowledgment from my _Art of Revolver Shooting_), are not applicable to modern pistols.
The best way to learn pistol shooting is to have an expert stand beside you, but, lacking this, the only way is to read a book by an expert.
It is very easy to write and to pose as an expert by the use of scissors, but it is rather hard on those who wish to learn, and also on those whose ideas are taken and used without acknowledgment.
I do not think any expert could write a book on pistol shooting using quotations, as each man has his own system.
CHAPTER VI
HOW TO PREVENT ACCIDENTS
It is no use carrying a pistol in your pocket for self-defence, and to have it go off and kill yourself, or much worse, shoot the person you are trying to save.
The first, foremost, and last thing is never to point the muzzle towards anywhere you do not want a bullet to go.
Never mind if the pistol is empty, treat it as if it were loaded. "I did not think it was loaded" or "he was cleaning the pistol and it exploded"
are the stock excuses when an accident occurs.
Firearms to the non-expert "explode" at odd moments, and n.o.body is to blame; he thinks it is the nature of a pistol to "explode" spontaneously.
I cannot myself understand how a man can clean a loaded pistol, as by cleaning I understand getting the fouling, nickel, etc., out of the bore of the pistol, and the cartridge must first be extracted to do this. But I suppose a man not used to a pistol would mean by cleaning, polishing the outside, raising the hammer, and then putting a rag through the trigger guard and pulling it backwards and forwards against the trigger with the b.u.t.t of the pistol resting on his knee and the barrel against his chest.
He of course does not first open the pistol to see if it is loaded; he leaves it for the inquest to decide "that he did not know it was loaded."
I am not writing for such people; they are better shot and out of the way, else they might hurt others.
The second thing is never to load the pistol except when necessary.
Most people buy an automatic, get the gunmaker to load it for them, and put it in a drawer or their pocket, and keep it like that for years, or worse, leave it lying about loaded.
A pistol must be periodically cleaned. If it is kept loaded for years, it will probably jamb if any one attempts to fire it.
A pistol kept loaded _is a constant source of danger to everyone, including the owner_.
I knew of a case where a revolver was kept loaded by a bedside for twenty years and thrown into a trunk each time the owner went on a journey.
After the owner"s death, I was asked to see if the pistol was safe.
It was lying in its case beside the bed, and when I opened the case I found the barrel was lying so that it pointed at the head of any one sleeping in the bed.
I found it loaded in all the chambers, the hammer let down on one of the caps so that its sharp point, by constant friction, had polished and nearly worn through the cap.
I took it into the garden and fired that cartridge.
The hammer had during all those years rested on this cap and the least tap on the hammer would have fired it. Each time it was thrown into the trunk it was a mercy it had not gone off.
If it had remained on the cap much longer, the sharp nose of the hammer would have reached the fulminate and fired the revolver.
Here was a case of a loaded revolver, like the sword of Damocles, threatening the life of its owner all night long, every night, though it was put by the bed as a safeguard.
The hammer should have been put down on an empty chamber.
However, to repeat, never point a pistol under any circ.u.mstances at anything you do not want to shoot.
Never have it loaded except when absolutely necessary.
Now as to when it is necessary to have it loaded. Most people are much safer if they _never load it_. If you want a pistol to frighten burglars with or to carry in dark lanes at night, get a _brightly plated nickel_ one. The larger you can carry the better. _Do not buy any cartridges for it._
If you get the gunmaker to render it impossible to fire it, even if loaded, so much the better.
You can stop any but the most desperate man by "brandishing" this at him in approved theatrical style.