Excerpts from the Writings of Jeff Cooper. July 2026
I find it strange and discouraging to note that the design and production of pistols, which once was the field of the United States industrial establishment, has been relinquished to the rest of the world. For most of my life a handgun was made in the United States or it was essentially inconsequential. Now, of course, we find that the American military service is armed with a weapon of Italian design. This is not to denigrate the Italians, who have indeed designed some wonderful weapons, but the art of the handgun has always been essentially an American concept, and to see us drop the subject in favor of the Europeans is not cheerful. We are by no means chauvinistic in this. We admire German and Italian cars excessively, and we are particularly fond of South African wines and Germanic rifles, but the art of the handgun has always been an almost exclusively American achievement, and it is indeed a pity to see that era vanish.
Jeff Cooper’s Commentaries Vol.1, No.8 July 1994
A lot of heated conversation has been flying these days in connection with the word “hero.” Research indicates that the word can mean almost anything one wants it to mean. It is really no longer possible to elevate anyone by referring to him as a hero. The most commonplace examples are entertainers. A hired entertainer is worth whatever the lord of the manor wishes to pay him, but the fact that he performs his entertainments well does in no way establish him as a hero. Thus no professional athlete can be correctly termed a hero for doing what he is paid to do excessively well. Expert, possibly. Hero, no. A true hero performs noble purposes of great difficulty at immediate risk of his life. Warriors and fire fighters may indeed be heroic, but hardly simple purveyors of amusement.
Jeff Cooper’s Commentaries Vol.1, No.8 July 1994 …
