ohland
07-08-2015, 10:29 AM
I hope the first picture was staged. Left handed? It could be more ego crushing, she might be able to shoot right -AND- left handed...
Not sure EVERY woman has the requisite character... But then again, I have a picture of an Army Captain being re-assured by a medic during Combat Lifesaver training... He was distraught over having to give a stick...
The Woman’s Weapon
Outing, vol 63, pages 590-592
http://books.googleusercontent.com/books/content?req=AKW5Qad0VLowq-RmA2WpQTRntxNLNda7IzJeOpTgGSZ-1MxYSoWSIOBI3Vl8EIA3J1I4KjFyXJz9t32VNoE4ny3vlbEwaH CjvbkyAPE8K4bjYhWJjzdVL0JEsEhNOPRK1-OUaSPfxDO_O_3OhROgB1Ez6D7uBDPz07EIp8kitCyMmgNyCcXC NjsR1rz29Elmh8NhqtS-sxMDJMvwTq1ifQReft0Va_6KId89_6w4-Acc7p6xXtt8hNc
THE WOMAN'S WEAPON
By WILMA ANDERSON-GILMAN
ILLUSTRATED WITH Photographs
Not an Essay on the Hat-Pin, but a Little Talk on What the Pistol Offers to the Outdoor Woman in Pleasure and Protection
GOD," says an old toast, “made big men, and God made little men ; but God bless Col. Colt, who made all men equal." A pistol will shoot just as straight and hit just as hard in the hands of a woman as it will for the most brawny and brutal of men. As between these two, it gives each an equal power to inflict injury upon the other and leaves the victory to the one having the more coolness, courage, and skill. And the day when woman was willing to admit that she was inferior to man in these qualities is long past.
I do not like to dwell upon this phase of the pistol question. But, to the average person, man or woman, the pistol undoubtedly appears first and most a weapon of combat. The subject is one which will not down and might as well be touched and disposed of at once, thus clearing the air for a consideration of the wider and more pleasant field of the pistol's usefulness.
The knowledge that she has a pistol and knows how to use it certainly does tend to reassure the woman alone in camp or cabin and enable her to face things very confidently. It is true that the rifle or shotgun are even better weapons of defense, but the pistol is so much more portable that it is the arm she can most easily keep where it will be in her hand at the first instant she needs it.
I can imagine no more morbid, fear-fraught situation than that of a woman alone save for a pistol she is afraid of, which simply serves to remind her that, in some remote, improbable contingency, she might have to rely on it for protection.
To be a real safeguard the pistol to her should be an article of familiar, everyday use; something which she can utterly forget until the time she wants to use it—and then pick up and use as naturally as a saucepan or a curling iron. It was my entire innocence of the romantic, dime-novel idea of firearms which led to the practical, commonplace use of this arm by my husband as well as myself. A thievish red squirrel had earned the death sentence and I, in my very ignorance, turned to a little .22-caliber revolver as the instrument of execution. Here was a squirrel to be shot and here was a pistol which, as I under stood it, was made to shoot things. So I took the pistol and shot him.
That very simple act saved us both from the "gun-toter" state of mind. We kept up target practice and tried to improve our marksmanship, but it was not at all with the idea of preparing for a possible "gun fight." In the woods, whether on canoe trips or around the shack, we both wear the pistol—because it is convenient and always at hand when we want it. The use may be a marauding porcupine inside "the dead line," a rabbit or a brace of partridges desired for the table, a fish to be quieted before he is taken aboard the canoe, a signal shot to give information of our whereabouts—or a provoking tin can may move the spirit to a little target practice.
The practice is one which has given the "old timers" much gratifying amusement. It is seldom indeed that one encounters a backwoodsman who knows or will even believe that a pistol can be put to any practical use. It is less hard to understand this state of mind when one has seen the pitiful, pot-metal revolvers these people sometimes buy and the entire lack of understanding with which they use them.
Yet pistol shooting is just like any other shooting with a rifled barrel, only more so. You align the sights on the object which you wish to hit and strive to pull the trigger while they are in line. It is this firm, steady increase of pressure upon the trigger which is hard to master; which makes the expenditure of many hundred cartridges in constant practice the price of pistol efficiency. It is also the thing which makes the pistol most peculiarly a woman's weapon. Strength has nothing to do with it, muscular steadiness and nervous control have everything to do with it. And in these the average woman is superior to
143988 143989
the average man. She has never jaded her nerves with stimulants nor dulled them with narcotics; her muscles are light, loose, and trained to delicate work, while a man's are frequently over hard and trained to put forth strength in violent, abrupt jerks.
Personally, for all deliberate shots, and shots at wilderness small game are very deliberate indeed, I find best the conventional target shooter's attitude : feet firmly placed, body erect and pistol arm fully extended. If the arm is thrust straight out in front, it is lax and uncertain ; if straight to the side it is over-tensed. About midway between these extremes will be found a very steady and comfortable position.
In such shooting a painstaking alignment of the sights and a gradual, steady, increasing pressure on the trigger are necessary. A sudden jerk will point the pistol high at the moment of discharge. The resulting miss is very generally excused on the ground that "the pistol kicked" by many persons, persons who usually denounce the pistol as unreliable for a fault which is their own.
143990
As one's practice progresses, one will find that the pistol is leveled more and more nearly upon the mark when the arm is extended, that the eye and the sights are called upon to make less and less correction of the aim.
Thus, when the mark is large and near at hand, it is possible to hit it with out "aiming" the pistol in the conventional eye-and-sights way at all. At this stage, by a very little practice, one can learn to shoot approximately true with out raising the pistol hand from the hip. This so called "snap shooting" has one value other than the far-fetched one of "getting off the first shot in a gunfight." That is for shots at twilight, or even at night, when the mark is visible and the sights are not. Since the arm alone will point the pistol approximately true, all the bullets are bound to be grouped in the vicinity of the mark, and, if enough are fired, there is a strong probability that one will hit. Once in a while, as on a partridge "budding" high against the sunset glow or a black porcupine eating a whitewashed board by moonlight, this sort of volley firing is productive of desirable results.
It is because of such chances as this and because I frequently miss and want to shoot again quickly rather than on the mere advantage of a many-shot weapon as a means of defense, that I care little for any of the many excellent and accurate .22-caliber pistols as a woods gun. Just because one is a woman is no reason why one should run to the "dinkey" in guns. Pocket revolvers with small handles, sights close together, and toilsome trigger pulls won't give any very dependable shooting to a man —no more will they shoot well for a woman.
The Guns She Used
For several seasons I used very comfortably a revolver of the late army pattern, one with a six-inch barrel weighing a shade over two pounds and shooting the .32-20 rifle cartridge. It was very easy to shoot accurately as both its weight and length were an aid to steady holding. The cartridge was an admirable one for woods work for it threw a bullet small enough not to mutilate small game—and threw it with force enough to make the arm one to be relied upon even against more dangerous creatures.
It was an arm typical of the class of revolvers well suited to woods service and had a grace of line and smoothness of operation particularly attractive to a woman. Against it were only two things, its length and its weight. It was something of a burden to carry and rather in the way when one sat down, particularly in the canoe. Of course I carried it on a belt, in a scabbard, as all such guns should be carried.
During the past summer, and at the present time, the automatic pistol is giving me a lot of satisfaction. First of all it is "more gun" for its bulk and weight than the revolver. Though the total length of my present pistol is but seven inches, hardly more than the length of the barrel of my revolver, I lose only one-fourth of the distance between the sights on the longer arm. And though it weighs but 21 ounces, it gives me ten shots, four more than any revolver offers.
The load, the .380 automatic pistol cartridge, shows a slight concession to the "defense idea," but it is very accurate and, thanks to a bullet fully jacketed, really doesn't muss things up any more than the .32-20. It is true that "the other end of the canoe" insists that he is on the right trail with a .32 auto and that my "coast defense gun" is built for robbers, not rabbits.
Which only goes to show that the selection of a pistol is merely a matter of taste after all. Whether single-shot, revolver, or automatic suits one best is something to be decided by trying. For the woman who wants to carry a pistol in the woods any one of the types described will render good service. She may select most wisely if, after mastering the rudiments of shooting with most any old pistol belonging to her menfolks, she will go to a well-stocked gunstore and look over a number of examples of each type.
There remains only the matter of carrying. Of course your woods clothes will have pockets, even unto the hip "pistol-pocket" of fiction and the melodrama. But they are inconvenient and insecure receptacles for a pistol. Both for your greatest convenience and for the safe-keeping of the arm, carry it in a substantial leather scabbard on your belt. Let the scabbard be plenty long enough to protect the muzzle of the pistol and, by all means, let it have a flap or safety strap to keep it from falling out and getting hurt or lost.
Finally, shoot it often and clean it as often as you shoot.
Just remember that you can become an efficient shot and resolve that you will.
The mastery of this, the woman's weapon, will do much to increase the confidence with which you may go adventuring into the woods, add to your entertainment while you are there, and, last but not least, to the amo
Not sure EVERY woman has the requisite character... But then again, I have a picture of an Army Captain being re-assured by a medic during Combat Lifesaver training... He was distraught over having to give a stick...
The Woman’s Weapon
Outing, vol 63, pages 590-592
http://books.googleusercontent.com/books/content?req=AKW5Qad0VLowq-RmA2WpQTRntxNLNda7IzJeOpTgGSZ-1MxYSoWSIOBI3Vl8EIA3J1I4KjFyXJz9t32VNoE4ny3vlbEwaH CjvbkyAPE8K4bjYhWJjzdVL0JEsEhNOPRK1-OUaSPfxDO_O_3OhROgB1Ez6D7uBDPz07EIp8kitCyMmgNyCcXC NjsR1rz29Elmh8NhqtS-sxMDJMvwTq1ifQReft0Va_6KId89_6w4-Acc7p6xXtt8hNc
THE WOMAN'S WEAPON
By WILMA ANDERSON-GILMAN
ILLUSTRATED WITH Photographs
Not an Essay on the Hat-Pin, but a Little Talk on What the Pistol Offers to the Outdoor Woman in Pleasure and Protection
GOD," says an old toast, “made big men, and God made little men ; but God bless Col. Colt, who made all men equal." A pistol will shoot just as straight and hit just as hard in the hands of a woman as it will for the most brawny and brutal of men. As between these two, it gives each an equal power to inflict injury upon the other and leaves the victory to the one having the more coolness, courage, and skill. And the day when woman was willing to admit that she was inferior to man in these qualities is long past.
I do not like to dwell upon this phase of the pistol question. But, to the average person, man or woman, the pistol undoubtedly appears first and most a weapon of combat. The subject is one which will not down and might as well be touched and disposed of at once, thus clearing the air for a consideration of the wider and more pleasant field of the pistol's usefulness.
The knowledge that she has a pistol and knows how to use it certainly does tend to reassure the woman alone in camp or cabin and enable her to face things very confidently. It is true that the rifle or shotgun are even better weapons of defense, but the pistol is so much more portable that it is the arm she can most easily keep where it will be in her hand at the first instant she needs it.
I can imagine no more morbid, fear-fraught situation than that of a woman alone save for a pistol she is afraid of, which simply serves to remind her that, in some remote, improbable contingency, she might have to rely on it for protection.
To be a real safeguard the pistol to her should be an article of familiar, everyday use; something which she can utterly forget until the time she wants to use it—and then pick up and use as naturally as a saucepan or a curling iron. It was my entire innocence of the romantic, dime-novel idea of firearms which led to the practical, commonplace use of this arm by my husband as well as myself. A thievish red squirrel had earned the death sentence and I, in my very ignorance, turned to a little .22-caliber revolver as the instrument of execution. Here was a squirrel to be shot and here was a pistol which, as I under stood it, was made to shoot things. So I took the pistol and shot him.
That very simple act saved us both from the "gun-toter" state of mind. We kept up target practice and tried to improve our marksmanship, but it was not at all with the idea of preparing for a possible "gun fight." In the woods, whether on canoe trips or around the shack, we both wear the pistol—because it is convenient and always at hand when we want it. The use may be a marauding porcupine inside "the dead line," a rabbit or a brace of partridges desired for the table, a fish to be quieted before he is taken aboard the canoe, a signal shot to give information of our whereabouts—or a provoking tin can may move the spirit to a little target practice.
The practice is one which has given the "old timers" much gratifying amusement. It is seldom indeed that one encounters a backwoodsman who knows or will even believe that a pistol can be put to any practical use. It is less hard to understand this state of mind when one has seen the pitiful, pot-metal revolvers these people sometimes buy and the entire lack of understanding with which they use them.
Yet pistol shooting is just like any other shooting with a rifled barrel, only more so. You align the sights on the object which you wish to hit and strive to pull the trigger while they are in line. It is this firm, steady increase of pressure upon the trigger which is hard to master; which makes the expenditure of many hundred cartridges in constant practice the price of pistol efficiency. It is also the thing which makes the pistol most peculiarly a woman's weapon. Strength has nothing to do with it, muscular steadiness and nervous control have everything to do with it. And in these the average woman is superior to
143988 143989
the average man. She has never jaded her nerves with stimulants nor dulled them with narcotics; her muscles are light, loose, and trained to delicate work, while a man's are frequently over hard and trained to put forth strength in violent, abrupt jerks.
Personally, for all deliberate shots, and shots at wilderness small game are very deliberate indeed, I find best the conventional target shooter's attitude : feet firmly placed, body erect and pistol arm fully extended. If the arm is thrust straight out in front, it is lax and uncertain ; if straight to the side it is over-tensed. About midway between these extremes will be found a very steady and comfortable position.
In such shooting a painstaking alignment of the sights and a gradual, steady, increasing pressure on the trigger are necessary. A sudden jerk will point the pistol high at the moment of discharge. The resulting miss is very generally excused on the ground that "the pistol kicked" by many persons, persons who usually denounce the pistol as unreliable for a fault which is their own.
143990
As one's practice progresses, one will find that the pistol is leveled more and more nearly upon the mark when the arm is extended, that the eye and the sights are called upon to make less and less correction of the aim.
Thus, when the mark is large and near at hand, it is possible to hit it with out "aiming" the pistol in the conventional eye-and-sights way at all. At this stage, by a very little practice, one can learn to shoot approximately true with out raising the pistol hand from the hip. This so called "snap shooting" has one value other than the far-fetched one of "getting off the first shot in a gunfight." That is for shots at twilight, or even at night, when the mark is visible and the sights are not. Since the arm alone will point the pistol approximately true, all the bullets are bound to be grouped in the vicinity of the mark, and, if enough are fired, there is a strong probability that one will hit. Once in a while, as on a partridge "budding" high against the sunset glow or a black porcupine eating a whitewashed board by moonlight, this sort of volley firing is productive of desirable results.
It is because of such chances as this and because I frequently miss and want to shoot again quickly rather than on the mere advantage of a many-shot weapon as a means of defense, that I care little for any of the many excellent and accurate .22-caliber pistols as a woods gun. Just because one is a woman is no reason why one should run to the "dinkey" in guns. Pocket revolvers with small handles, sights close together, and toilsome trigger pulls won't give any very dependable shooting to a man —no more will they shoot well for a woman.
The Guns She Used
For several seasons I used very comfortably a revolver of the late army pattern, one with a six-inch barrel weighing a shade over two pounds and shooting the .32-20 rifle cartridge. It was very easy to shoot accurately as both its weight and length were an aid to steady holding. The cartridge was an admirable one for woods work for it threw a bullet small enough not to mutilate small game—and threw it with force enough to make the arm one to be relied upon even against more dangerous creatures.
It was an arm typical of the class of revolvers well suited to woods service and had a grace of line and smoothness of operation particularly attractive to a woman. Against it were only two things, its length and its weight. It was something of a burden to carry and rather in the way when one sat down, particularly in the canoe. Of course I carried it on a belt, in a scabbard, as all such guns should be carried.
During the past summer, and at the present time, the automatic pistol is giving me a lot of satisfaction. First of all it is "more gun" for its bulk and weight than the revolver. Though the total length of my present pistol is but seven inches, hardly more than the length of the barrel of my revolver, I lose only one-fourth of the distance between the sights on the longer arm. And though it weighs but 21 ounces, it gives me ten shots, four more than any revolver offers.
The load, the .380 automatic pistol cartridge, shows a slight concession to the "defense idea," but it is very accurate and, thanks to a bullet fully jacketed, really doesn't muss things up any more than the .32-20. It is true that "the other end of the canoe" insists that he is on the right trail with a .32 auto and that my "coast defense gun" is built for robbers, not rabbits.
Which only goes to show that the selection of a pistol is merely a matter of taste after all. Whether single-shot, revolver, or automatic suits one best is something to be decided by trying. For the woman who wants to carry a pistol in the woods any one of the types described will render good service. She may select most wisely if, after mastering the rudiments of shooting with most any old pistol belonging to her menfolks, she will go to a well-stocked gunstore and look over a number of examples of each type.
There remains only the matter of carrying. Of course your woods clothes will have pockets, even unto the hip "pistol-pocket" of fiction and the melodrama. But they are inconvenient and insecure receptacles for a pistol. Both for your greatest convenience and for the safe-keeping of the arm, carry it in a substantial leather scabbard on your belt. Let the scabbard be plenty long enough to protect the muzzle of the pistol and, by all means, let it have a flap or safety strap to keep it from falling out and getting hurt or lost.
Finally, shoot it often and clean it as often as you shoot.
Just remember that you can become an efficient shot and resolve that you will.
The mastery of this, the woman's weapon, will do much to increase the confidence with which you may go adventuring into the woods, add to your entertainment while you are there, and, last but not least, to the amo