One point I make is that an Unconscious Competence level of skill, the ability to do something well on auto pilot, is a wonderful thing but not attainable on demand. When performance on demand is of the essence, I recommend ratcheting down to Conscious Competence and taking an instant to think about what you’re doing.

I change guns often. Partly because testing different ones is another thing I do for a living, partly because my students all have different guns and I have to be familiar with all of them, and partly because I simply like to do so.  A few months ago I decided to forsake my ballistic promiscuity and stick for a while with one particular style, a polymer-framed pistol I’ll call Brand A. For the most part, that plan has worked, fulfilling the advice most of us give that if you stay with one “platform” you’ll become better and more reflexive with it.

There’s another side, though, that I’ve been reminded of in the last ten days. Testing polymer-framed pistol Brand B for a gun magazine on Saturday the 3^rd at an IDPA match in Jacksonville, FL, I managed to take First Master and top score overall in the Enhanced Service Pistol division with Brand B. On the weekend of the 10^th and 11^th, I took Brand A to Clearwater for the Florida State Championships…and absolutely tanked.

I’ll tell you right now, it wasn’t a “brand versus brand” thing. I consider the two guns equal in quality and inherent accuracy and “shootability,” model for equivalent model. The first match was smaller, 122 shooters compared to roughly 300 for the second, a deeper pool with bigger sharks in it, but as the guy behind the sights and the trigger both times, I have a pretty good idea why I shot quantitatively worse with the more familiar pistol.

With the less recently familiar Brand B gun, I was focusing on its subtleties. Its grip to barrel angle was slightly different than what I’d been lately habituated to, as was its trigger reach and length of trigger reset. I was running Conscious Competence pretty much every shot. With Brand A, the old familiar extension of the hand, I found myself going auto pilot and taking overconfident liberties.  There were stages where I KNOW I relaxed my grip, where I pointed rather than aimed, where I rushed instead of pressed the trigger.

Where I took my familiar gun, and my supposed skills with it, for granted.

We do that with people, paying more attention to the new folks we want to impress than we pay with our familiar loved ones.  It hurts us in the end.  Life lesson.  We drive our friend’s new Corvette Sting Ray with more care than our own casually-handled Impala, and it does us no good at the end of the day.  Same, same.

That’s why I say that shooting – like some other sports, and other seemingly casual undertakings – can reinforce for us the more important lessons of Life.

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Tim has just come out with “MAGNUM: The S&W .357 Magnum Phenomenon,” published in the finest “coffee table book” style by Collector Grade Publications in Ontario (www.collectorgrade.com).

It’s every bit as well researched as his previous book on the Colt National Match pistol, and the photos will induce at least the same high drool level among connoisseurs as did the latter book.

The big revolver and its ground-breaking new cartridge – “the gun that took the ‘proof’ out of bullet-proof vests,” as it was advertised at the time – did much to popularize hunting big game with handguns.  Gun collectors know the ultimate “grail gun” was the very first “Registered Magnum,” given by the company to J. Edgar Hoover, later to disappear into “a private collection” after his death. Well, grail hunters…you’ll find a couple of pictures of it in this book. Hoover thought enough of the weapon to order several for the FBI, and many more agents bought their own, including legendary gunfighters Jelly Bryce and Walter Walsh.  Walsh, over 100 years old, is still with us, a living monument to the ideals the Bureau was meant to stand for.

Mullin delves deep into the history and the subtleties of this classic outdoorsman’s revolver. He points out that the first gun expert to write about it in The American Rifleman did so without ever actually firing one. While Tim details the .357s that followed it – from Smith & Wesson, and from other makers – he focuses on the original .44-frame model, later designated the Model 27 series.  Its mirror-polished finish, its checkered topstrap, and its hand-honed action crafted by the company’s most skilled artisans, made it a showcase of the finest American workmanship that could be applied to a firearm.

The $69.95 retail price is commensurate with super-high quality “coffee table books,” and worth it for the details of Mullin’s painstaking research. I for one enjoyed the heck out of it.

Is the classic Smith & Wesson .357 Magnum one of your favorites, too?  If so, come on into the comments section here, and tell us about it.

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Started the morning with true romantic spirit, sleeping in and watching “Zombie Apocalypse,” the Ving Rhames one, which turned out to be every bit as unintentionally funny as I’d been told.

High points for hilarity were a tie between the Browning M2 .50 caliber machine gun mounted on a shopping cart, and the zombie tigers.  The latter were kinda matted & ratty, as would befit their undead status, and the Ray Harryhausen-ish movements were about what you’d expect from a critter trying to “walk off” a pretty good case of rigor mortis.

Well, my valentine and I are both Calvin & Hobbes fans, and all we could think was, “Hobbes Twenty Years Later.” “Sooo, Calvin, you thought you could just abandon me at that dump when you went off to college, eh…?”

The live critters of our holiday were more fun, bearing in mind that we’d celebrated Valentine’s Day as a couple the weekend before, at a Glock match ably run by the Central Florida Rifle and Pistol Club in Orlando.  After an absence of prehistoric wildlife, the range pond now appears to have two resident alligators, one of which kept a wary just-above-the-surface eye on the loud doings a short distance away.  My valentine is a self-described “shooter chick,” and we were far from the only couple in attendance.  Nothin’ says redneck romance like volleys of gunfire.  A recovering big city denizen, my sweetie is in her element on the range, and loves living where she can carry.

We finished up the 14^th at Starbucks, dropping two-dollar bills (to commemorate Starbucks’ refusal to knuckle under to anti-Second Amendment advocates boycott, see post here of January 28, 2012).  Thanks to all who did the same.  The barista who served us told us we certainly weren’t the only ones there for The Cause, and our collective presence was appreciated. (Tried their new Blonde Roast, a light, crisp blend for an afternoon cup.)

Guns, ‘gators, and zombie tigers…seemed like a righteous redneck Valentine’s Day to me.Also helped me to understand why I’m the firearms editor at Backwoods Home, and not the romance editor…

“O my Valentine, my love for you is as undying as, uh, this zombie tiger from ‘Zombie Apocalypse,’…”

Photo by Lara Solanki – © Syfy

It ain’t a REAL  redneck Valentine shootin’  match if ya ain’t got a pond ‘gator watching the range balefully… 

Shooter-chick celebrates Valentine’s Day by strafing down six plates right to left with a Glock 30 loaded with .45 hardball.  Notice spent casing from last shot just behind pistol’s slide, muzzle still on target as middle plate is hit. Strong women are the most interesting…

A $2 bill, symbolizing “2A support,” goes into the tip jar at the nearest Starbucks.

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