…and it’s still taught at Gunsite Academy
by Richard Mann
Bashing Jeff Cooper on social media, at shooting ranges, and around the gun counter seems to be the in thing to do these days. Mostly perpetuated by the Gen Y and Z crowd, Granny Hawkins would call these vain attempts to get attention worth doodly squat. (If you don’t know who Granny Hawkins is, you’re Gen Z or Gen Y for sure.) This bashing runs the gamut of proclamations from “the Weaver stance is outdated” to “the Modern Technique of the Pistol has been superseded” and even includes declarations that anyone who reads or remotely admires Jeff Cooper is a grey-haired, dust-covered, lunatic Fudd who has not advanced into the 21st century.
Many modern shooters also claim the training offered by Gunsite Academy — founded by Jeff Cooper in 1976 — is just as outdated. Of course, none of these self-proclaimed personal protection practitioners have ever trained at Gunsite Academy, which is the oldest, largest, and most respected civilian firearms training academy in the world.
In 1976, there was no place for a civilian gun owner to obtain self-defense training with handguns, and there were very few folks speaking or writing about it. Jeff Cooper, who was a former Marine officer, was the first to offer a practical codification of the martial art of the pistol, which is why so many read what he wrote and flocked to Gunsite (called the American Pistol Institute [API] at that time) to train with him. Cooper’s doctrine laid the foundation for all the self-defense pistol training that has occurred since.
Cooper taught us how to fight with a pistol.
I received a lot of firearms training when I was a police officer and special agent from various academies and even at Quantico. I have never attended a course that provided a better foundation for defensive pistol shooting than the 250 Defensive Pistol Course at Gunsite. That is why I’ve taken it three times. In that course, you will learn how to shoot and run your gun, and in the upper level courses you’ll learn how to do those things better plus you’ll learn tactics. Not only does Gunsite train civilians, they also train our warfighters and law enforcement officers from coast to coast.
This year, Gunsite celebrates its 50th year of continuous training. It has existed for 1/5th as long as America. That would not have been possible had their teachings not been, and remained, relevant.
Most Gen Y and Gen Z gun owners received their firearms training on television by watching Hollywood pretenders act like operators, or on the web watching other tenderfoots play with their pistols. Alternately, they may have taken a class from some local tactard trainer who developed his own doctrine in his mom’s basement while waiting for his on-line friends to join in on a Call of Duty game.
Learning to shoot a pistol is not all that difficult: sights on target and press the trigger. Fighting with a pistol, though, is a different thing altogether.
Then there are the gamers. The competitive shooters who negotiate courses of fire where they know where they will always shoot from, how many targets there will be, where they will conduct a reload, and the time they must beat. And all this happens in an environment where the targets will not shoot back, try to take their gun, or beat the ever-loving daylights out of them while they’re trying to drop the slide on their pistol by using their thumb.
Don’t misconstrue this as a knock at competitive shooters. I know several who are masters with a handgun. I have about as much chance outshooting competitors like Dianna Liedorff Muller, Mark Hanish, Max Michel, Todd Jarret, and Travis Tomasie as I do at receiving a tantalizing invitation from Britney Spears. I know this because I’ve tried. (Not to get a date with Britney, but I’ve shot with all those folks.) Here’s the thing, competitive shooting is not the same as fighting with a pistol in your hand. Yeah, I know, front sight, press. But let’s be clear about something — fighting with a handgun is not just about shooting. If you think it is, you’re likely a product of paragraph seven.
Here’s a perfect example. A few years back, Para-Ordnance held a training seminar at Gunsite Academy, and USPSA and IPSC champion Travis Tomasie was there repping the company. I told Travis I wanted to shoot against him. Not because I thought I could beat him — I knew I could not — but because I wanted to see what it was like to shoot against a master. We stepped up to the man-on-man shoot-off target array commonly used at Gunsite Academy. A friend said “Go!” and I drew my pistol and hit all my targets. I looked over at Travis, and he was laughing; he’d not fired a shot.
Why? Well, his gun was unloaded. You see, Gunsite Academy runs a hot range — so your gun is always loaded at Gunsite, just like it should be in real life — and Travis’ training and experience had been to always unload and show clear. (No one told him to “make ready.”) We all got a laugh out of it, then Travis loaded his pistol and beat me, proper like. No, I’m not suggesting Travis walks around concealed carrying with an unloaded pistol. The point I’m trying to make is that personal protection is as much a mindset thing as it is a shooting thing. Mindset was one of the things Cooper lectured on extensively and it’s still a large part of the Gunsite curriculum. If your self-defense pistol training does not include mindset molding and adaptation, it’s lacking.
Here’s another thing, and I’m paraphrasing ROBAR founder and former gunsmith at Gunsite, Robbie Barrkman: “Just about everything related to handguns today can directly be traced to Jeff Cooper.” Cooper started the defensive handgun movement that continues today, and his 1972 book, The Principles of Personal Defense, is still the best resource on that topic. Oh, and for you competition shooters out there, would you happen to know who was the founding president of IPSC? For most, I doubt it. Were it not for Jeff Cooper, you would not have a game to play, and we still might be shooting PPC matches.
What those of you who are not all that long out of diapers may not realize is that Jeff Cooper (1920-2006) founded the way of life you like to think you’re living. At a time when this country needed it, he conveyed a message that struck at the heart of patriots and folks of good character. The sermons he delivered in print and in lecture shaped the future of firearms and personal protection in America. I don’t think it’s a stretch to give Cooper at least some credit for the pro-concealed carry and even Constitutional Carry laws sweeping the nation. No, he might not have had a direct hand in their adoption, but he was a primary influencer of those who lobbied for them.
Yeah, you might have what you think is a better way and, heck, it might even be a better way. Regardless, and I’d bet my last can of Skoal on this, the last thing you or anyone else wants to do is get in a fight, in a diverse, dusky, chaotic environment, with a well-trained practitioner of the Modern Technique of the Pistol, which is still the driving doctrine of the teachings at Gunsite Academy.
As a final thought, if your technique, tool, or opinion is so high-speed, low-drag, there’s no need to belittle the work, opinions, or teachings of others while you espouse its virtues. Cream has a way of rising to the top; tell your story and teach your lessons with the respect due those whose shoulders you’re standing on. If your thing makes sense, shooters will flock to you like crows to a dead opossum. Jeff Cooper and Gunsite Academy have been proving that hillbilly proverb for a half century.
- Cooper Laid the Foundation… - June 9, 2026
- Silencer Central’s Banish 30 V2: A General Purpose Suppressor - May 29, 2026
- Wilson Combat/Sig Sauer P365 2.0 - May 4, 2026
