Category: Cops
There are things that criminals know that you don’t, but here are some lessons that will help really keep you safe.
I recently attended the Crime and Criminals seminar presented by John Hearne of Two Pillars Training, an annual update he delivers through Citizen Safety Academy. It reinforced something most armed citizens intuitively sense but rarely see laid out this clearly: Much of what we believe about crime in America is either incomplete, misleading or simply wrong.
Hearne holds a master’s degree in criminal justice with a concentration in research methods, a public safety career stretching back to 1986 across fire, police, EMS and more than a decade as a federal law enforcement officer. He’s a published author and rangemaster instructor since 2001. What followed over two hours was one of the most grounded and practically valuable presentations I’ve sat through in years of firearms training.
His seminar isn’t about tactics or gear. It focuses on something more foundational: the reality of crime, how criminals think and how ordinary people become victims. For anyone serious about personal defense, this is where the conversation should start.
The First Hard Truth: The Data Isn’t What You Think
Most people assume FBI crime statistics offer a reliable picture of reality. Hearne makes a compelling case they do not. The FBI’s Uniform Crime Reports rely on “crimes known to police,” which excludes everything unreported—and according to Bureau of Justice Statistics survey data, less than half of violent crime is ever reported to law enforcement.
In 2023, the FBI published data suggesting violent crime dropped roughly 2 percent in 2022. Revised 2024 figures quietly revealed an actual net increase of about 41/2 percent, a swing of more than 6 points that never got a press release, discovered only when a criminologist noticed something odd while downloading fresh data. Cities like Washington, D.C., have been caught classifying gunshot-wound transports as routine EMS calls, effectively erasing violent crimes from the record.
By comparing FBI data to CDC homicide records, Hearne showed the FBI misses roughly 17 percent of homicides. If the agency is missing 1 in 6 murders, he asked, what percentage of rapes and aggravated assaults are going uncounted? His rule of thumb: Take the FBI’s violent crime numbers and multiply by 5. You’ll still probably come up short.
The Criminal Justice System Is Not Your Safety Net
Only about 3 percent of all violent victimizations and property crimes ever result in a prison sentence. Clearance rates hover around 15 to 20 percent for property crime and roughly 40 percent for violent crime, and clearance doesn’t mean conviction. Many cases end in diversion, plea agreements or minimal consequences.
Hearne illustrated the dysfunction with the case of Eliza Fletcher, a Memphis pre-K teacher murdered in 2022 by a man who had served 20 of 24 years for a prior kidnapping and robbery, received a new conviction for indecent exposure inside prison just one month before release, and then kidnapped and raped another woman almost immediately after getting out, but the sexual assault kit from that crime sat untested on a shelf. The system had multiple opportunities to intervene and did nothing with any of them.
He also pushed back on the narrative that American prisons are full of nonviolent drug offenders. In state prisons, only 16 percent of inmates are serving drug-related sentences, and fewer than 1 percent are there for low-level charges with no history of violence.
More than half the non-federal prison population is locked up for violent crimes. Hearne’s conclusion is blunt. If you want to meaningfully reduce the prison population, you are, by the numbers, talking about the possibility of releasing people convicted of murder, rape and kidnapping.
Criminals Choose You Faster Than You Think
Hearne referenced a landmark 1981 study in which convicted criminals were shown videos of pedestrians and asked to rate their ease of victimization. The inmates showed striking consensus, and they weren’t evaluating victims by size, dress or apparent wealth.
They were reading gait, stride length, weight shift and arm swing. These indicators signaled vulnerability more reliably than anything else. Subsequent research using point-light kinematics confirmed it. People form accurate assessments of vulnerability from movement alone in under 2 seconds.
What criminals are asking is simple: Can this person fight back? Are they paying attention? Is the reward worth the risk? Most are rational actors running a rapid cost-benefit calculation, and their default when uncertain is to move on to an easier target. Hearne called inducing that hesitation a “restraining judgment.” As he put it, quoting Clint Smith, “If you look like food, you will be eaten.”
It’s Not the Odds—It’s the Stakes
The statistical likelihood of violent crime in any given year may feel low, but over a lifetime that risk compounds, and when violent crime materializes, the consequences are often permanent. A better framework balances likelihood against consequence. Property crime is common and highly deterrable. Most residential burglaries are opportunistic, local and conducted during daylight by offenders seeking the easiest target. Simple measures like reinforced entry points, visible deterrents and limiting outward signs of valuable property shift the calculation in your favor.
Violent crime is less frequent but categorically different in consequence. As Hearne put it, borrowing from his late colleague William Aprill, “Your understanding and consent are not required for someone to take your life, kill your loved ones and destroy all that you hold dear.” That is not fear-mongering. That is the correct framing for how seriously to take preparation.
Where Firearms Actually Fit
Hearne was careful not to deliver a “go buy a gun” pitch. His framework builds in layers: general de-selection through awareness and not projecting vulnerability; specific de-selection through verbal skills when someone is running the pre-attack interview on you; and forced de-selection when the first two have failed.
The numbers on armed resistance are worth knowing. Complying completely in an armed robbery still leaves a 25 percent chance of injury, and the robbery succeeds 90 percent of the time. Resistance with a firearm drops injury odds to 17 percent and rarely allows the crime to complete. Resistance before injury drops that to around 6 percent. For rape specifically, armed resistance is the most effective deterrent to completion and does not increase physical harm to the victim. Research also shows defensive gun uses frequently occur without a shot fired. The presence of a firearm alone can stop a crime in progress.
A gun is not the first solution. It is the last. But as Hearne noted, “Most of the time, you don’t need a parachute, but when you do, nothing else will substitute.”
The Bottom Line
Personal safety begins long before any confrontation. Crime is underreported. Risk is local and situational. Criminals make fast, rational decisions, and the system most people trust to protect them is working at a fraction of the capacity they imagine.
For the armed citizen, this knowledge is not academic. It is the foundation on which every other preparation rests. The objective is not simply to be armed. It is to be prepared, aware and genuinely difficult to victimize.
Hearne offers this seminar annually through Citizen Safety Academy, and additional training through Two Pillars Training. If you get the opportunity, take it. It is not the most fun class. It is the necessary one.
Categories
“Requiem for an Unsung Hero”
*Last week I was talking to my old friend Andy Stanford on the phone. For those of you new to the shooting game, Andy was a pioneering instructor in the 1990s and 2000s. He focused a lot of his classes on handgun skills and operating in a low light environment.
Back in the days before the internet was popular, Andy was well known in the field because he wrote books about subjects that most of us were trying to master. I still have the original first edition copies of Andy’s books from the now-defunct Paladin Press.
Andy’s most notable book was Fight at Night, the first book ever written about low light operations. His book Surgical Speed Shooting was also quite innovative for the time. 
In our conversation, I mentioned that I was planning on attending an upcoming private training class taught by Larry Mudgett. Larry spent 35 years with LAPD, During his tenure there, he radically improved the police department’s (and the SWAT Team’s) firearms training.
He, somewhat like Andy, did the majority of his fine work in the days before YouTube, Instagram, and Facebook. That means most Gun Culture 2.0 folks have no idea those guys even exist.
I’ve always found Andy to be both superbly intelligent and intellectually curious. He’s a bit of a contradiction in the knuckle-dragging world of atavistic firearms instructors. If you don’t know anything about him, I think this short article Andy Stanford: Former shooting instructor hits the high notes in the Ridgecrest, California Daily Independent characterizes a lot of his personality.
In our phone conversation, Andy told me about one of his friends whose accomplishments at Bakersfield, California PD rivaled those of Mr. Mudgett. In fact, Andy’s friend was once Larry Mudgett’s instructor. Unfortunately, this man, Mike Waidelich, passed away a few years ago.
I did some research on him and found that he and I would probably have gotten along quite well. He was a student and friend of Jeff Cooper, serving as Range Master at Gunsite Academy.
In one of Cooper’s monthly Commentaries from 1995, he mentioned Mike in the following entry.
“Family member and Orange range master Mike Waidelich has now become a firm advocate of the Glock pistol. This has puzzled me because I consider that trigger action is the most significant single element in the precision efficiency of any firearm, and the trigger on the Glock is customarily so bad as to be practically unworkable.
But Mike does not agree. He explained to me that pistol engagements within the law enforcement establishment customarily occur at such short range that precise bullet placement is not important. He maintains that he can teach anybody to center a human adversary with the Glock trigger at any reasonable range – say 10 meters or less.
The other points that recommend the Glock to the police establishment are low cost and readily available modular parts. The Glock people will furnish you with spare parts immediately, where most other manufacturers hem and haw. These points are important. They are not enough to turn me into a Glockenspieler; but then, I am not a police range master.”
An appreciation for Glocks in the Gunsite world back in 1995 was considered heresy. I decided I liked Mike’s style. I liked it even more when I read his letter to the editor published by The Bakersfield Californian titled Don’t leave home without one back in 2012.
“In response to the May 2 letter “Consequences of NRA’s assault on gun laws”: I was a police officer for 30 years. I was assaulted several times during that time and had contact with many assault victims. All manner of weapons, knives, clubs, guns, and a bunch of other things were used.
I have been retired for about 14 years now and I still never leave the house without a gun. When you can assure me that I will never be attacked by anyone, armed or otherwise, I’ll leave my gun at home. Until then, you should hope that I, or someone like me, is around if you are ever the victim of an assault.
I hate violence. I hate it so much that I am willing to kill if necessary, to keep anyone from using it against me.”
Mike Waidelich
I fear that history may forget the genre-changing accomplishments that men like Andy Stanford and Mike Waidelich contributed. Andy wrote an obituary of sorts documenting Mike’s achievements. I am publishing it below with Andy’s permission to keep Mike’s ideas alive for eternity.
I think if modern day officers shot the same 10-round course Mike developed twice a month, our police hit rates would change in a dramatically favorable manner. We’ve known how to solve the problem of cops who can’t shoot for almost 50 years now. The problem is that most modern police firearms instructors don’t take enough interest in their craft to study the methods used by past innovators.
I hope Andy’s article provides you all with a little perspective and historical context that you might not have otherwise been exposed to. Enjoy. Thanks to Andy for allowing me to reprint his work.
-Greg
R.I.P. Mike Waidelich
Requiem for an Unsung Hero
Lyle Wyatt just called me with “bad tidings”: Mike Waidelich died today. I first met Mike in 1977 through the South West Pistol League, where he had won the B-class Championship the year before.
The last time I saw him was probably in the early 1990’s at the Soldier of Fortune 3-gun Match, where Waidelich was a longtime staff member. He had Hollywood good looks, and Lyle confirms my impression that Mike was a genuinely nice guy.
R.I.P. Mike Waidelich
Requiem for an Unsung Hero
Lyle Wyatt just called me with “bad tidings”: Mike Waidelich died today. I first met Mike in 1977 through the South West Pistol League, where he had won the B-class Championship the year before. The last time I saw him was probably in the early 1990’s at the Soldier of Fortune 3-gun Match, where Waidelich was a longtime staff member. He had Hollywood good looks, and Lyle confirms my impression that Mike was a genuinely nice guy.
Mike was born in 1942, and served in the U.S. Army Special Forces (he fought in the Dominican Republic in ’65, if I recall correctly). One of the first Gunsite instructors, Mike taught during the API 250 class attended by LAPD SWAT icons Larry Mudgett and John Helms. But his biggest claim to fame was the too-little-known story of his success as the Bakersfield P.D. Rangemaster. By some miracle, I spoke with him several times in the last month or so, and got the details.
Mike joined the BPD in 1967 when it was an agency of 50-ish sworn personnel (now several hundred). At that time patrol cops carried .38 revolvers in clamshell holsters. A year or so later they had eight on-duty shootings with zero police bullets hitting the suspects. The Chief asked Mike if he could solve this problem. Mike said “yes” but only if he could do it his way. A couple of hours explaining the particulars of “his way” and the job was his, 12 years total.
Pretty quickly the switch was made to 9mm Smith and Wesson Model 59 autopistols, and later, in the 1980s, to the 1911A1 Colt 45’s that Mike initially recommended (in Milt Sparks leather no less). Then, approximately ten years after that, the department switched again, to Glocks, first in .40 S&W, now 9mm. But the hardware is not generally the most important factor in a gunfight. It’s usually “the nut behind the bolt,” and that is where Mike made his bones.
In-service transition training was five days long. So was academy firearms training for recruits. Paul Trent, Mike’s friend and protege, relates: “When I went to the Gunsite 250 course in 1980, I got an Expert ticket. I realized Mike had taught my 1976 academy class virtually the same material, plus some additional tactics.” Trent attended the BPD academy a year before Waidelich actually met Jeff Cooper, and prevailed in an on-duty gunfight his first day on the job.
The standard BPD course of fire (with Mike’s rationale) was as follows, all from the holster:
2 rounds in 1.5 seconds at 10 feet (“No one should be closer than that.”)
2 rounds in 2.0 seconds at 20 feet (“The length of a car.”)
2 reload 2 in 6.0 seconds (8.0 for revolvers) at 30 feet (“From the curb to the front door.”)
2 rounds in 3.5 seconds at 60 feet (“From the opposite curb to the front door.”)
The course was shot twice over each month (later, less frequently).
Mike told me the 10-point scoring zone on the silhouette target was, as best he could recall, a 7-inch circle, with the next zone (9 points) measuring 9×13 inches. A hit anywhere else on the silhouette scored 6 points. Departmental competitions were held as additional motivation for skills development. As for the rest of the system, I’ll let his words speak for themselves (from an 11 March 2021 email):
“I forgot to mention the somewhat unique method for scoring the basic drills. The time was flexible in that there were penalties for overtime. The penalties were 1 point per quarter second over the time allowed for the string. So, if you fired 2 in 1.5 seconds at 10 feet, you got zero penalties. At 1.6 seconds you lost 1 point. At 1.8 you lost 2 points, etc. I had shooters all over the place. One sergeant never made the time but never missed the 10 ring and his times were not long enough to disqualify him.
Others always made the time, but were all over the target. It was quite interesting to get them to balance the speed and accuracy appropriate for their abilities and I think it gave them a proper mind set for actual combat.
Of course shot timers didn’t come along until 1982 so initially the timing was done to tenths of a second with a stop watch. The course was administered with 6 shooters on the line and the RM would walk down the line and each shooter would shoot individually.
A run through all 4 stages for 6 shooters took less than 10 minutes so the first half hour of a 2-hour training session was basic drills, followed by additional drills covering and teaching specific skills and techniques.
Initially the standard was 80 out of 100 on either string out of 2 tries. If a shooter failed to shoot an 80 in his first 2 attempts he was sent to a side range to dry practice and then given a 3rd attempt. Those who failed 3 times were required to come back, but only once on department time.
If they failed again they were required to come back on their own time. If they couldn’t qualify during the course of the training period — monthly at first but it got longer as the department grew, finally to quarterly — they were assigned to the range for remedial training. Should they require remedial training in any two consecutive training cycles, their fitness for duty would be reevaluated.
In short, they could get fired, and nobody hit the street who wasn’t currently qualified. The training had teeth.”
How good were BPD officers? 85% hits when the national average was 15%. (Lyle says this number would be higher but for one outlier shooting in which an officer missed with his entire first magazine.) Anyone who has studied the matter knows how significant this is. Most cops can’t shoot well, and the few who can are usually self-motivated enthusiasts. Not one officer was killed in a gunfight when Mike was BPD rangemaster. A few anecdotes flesh out the tale:
The new regional FBI agents based in Bakersfield usually shot the BPD department qual for familiarization. Mike’s course of fire quickly humbled the mostly cocky G-men. (The Bureau actually used some of Mike’s written documentation as source material for their own efforts.)
When training in the L.A. area, Waidelich and other Bakerfield P.D. officers frequently heard comments like, “Oh. You’re from BAKERSFIELD. Our bank robbers go there to get killed.” Clearly the department had a widespread and well-earned reputation as real deal gunfighters.
Once, a visiting firearms instructor expressed skepticism when Mike described the BPD standards:
“You mean to tell me EVERY officer in your department passes this course?”
“Everyone from the Chief on down.”
“I’ll believe it when I see it!”
Mike got on the radio. “Dispatch, please send two officers to the range.” Shortly, two random BPD cops arrived, and both shot better than 90% scores, cold. “I can call two more but the results will be the same.”
In 2016 — long after Waidelich retired — Kern County law enforcement killed more people in the line of duty than any other county in the country, many much more populous. (Bakersfield is in west Kern County.) I believe this statistic is the result of three factors:
1) a relatively conservative political district where cops don’t automatically get fired for using their weapons,
2) a target rich environment full of gang bangers and oilfield roughnecks, and
3) the lasting influence of Mike Waidelich’s cutting-edge training.
That’s my story and I’m stickin’ to it.
Jack “Legs” Diamond was an old-school thug.
He came from the factory broken. Photo: Public Domain
Just what is “stopping power” anyway? One dude strolled nonchalantly into the ER when I was on duty, having taken a 9mm ball round to the pelvis. He was only minimally inconvenienced. Another guy sped away from a drug deal gone bad with the unlicensed pharmacist throwing 9mm rounds his way with vigorous dispatch.
Then he got home and noticed blood. A 115-grain FMJ round had punched through the trunk, back seat and then front seat before embedding in his back fat. This gentleman legitimately did not know he was shot. And then there was the sweet little old lady who caught a .25 ACP round to the neck during a robbery and will spend the rest of her days in a motorized wheelchair. How well bullets perform in the real world is bizarrely unpredictable. And then there was this guy.
The 1921 Colt Thompson got all the press. However, then,
as now, it was the humble handgun that spilled the most blood.
Origin Story
Nobody is really sure what Jack “Legs” Diamond’s real name was. He went by John Thomas Diamond, as well as John Nolan, John Moran and Gentleman Jack. He was born in the summer of 1897 to Sara and John Moran. It was obvious from the outset this little kid just wasn’t right.
Part of that was likely his sordid environment. Jack’s mom, Sara, was frail by nature and died of an illness when Jack was 16. Jack joined a Manhattan criminal gang called the Hudson Dusters soon thereafter. He was first arrested for burglary a year after his mom’s death.
Diamond enlisted in the Army intending to fight in Europe during World War I but lost his enthusiasm in short order. He deserted, was caught and served several years in Leavenworth.
Prison is grad school for criminals. When Diamond was finally released, he was free to pursue his true calling. In 1921, he entered the employ of a professional criminal named Arnold Rothstein. Diamond’s job description included bodyguard and general thuggery.
Jack Diamond’s nickname “Legs” spawned from one of two possible sources. He was purported to be a fairly competent dancer. He also established a well-earned reputation for being able to expeditiously get out of trouble. Somewhere along the way, his associates began calling him “Legs,” and the moniker stuck.
Being a mob enforcer doesn’t have the greatest retirement plan. Additionally, Jack Diamond was a hyperactive lad and a serial womanizer. Despite being married, he carried on a protracted illicit relationship with a prominent New York showgirl named Marion “Kiki” Roberts.
These suboptimal personal habits and the curiously violent nature of his profession synergistically combined to keep Jack Diamond’s physicians gainfully employed. By 1931, Diamond was known as the “Clay Pigeon of the Underworld.”
Normal people don’t have a nemesis. Jack Diamond, however, was not a normal person. His criminal counterpart was the infamous mobster Dutch Schultz. When describing Diamond, Schultz once remarked to his merry mob of misfits, “Ain’t there nobody that can shoot this guy so he don’t bounce back?”
Gangsters used a variety of handguns during the liquor wars of the 1920s. From left to right, we have the Colt Model 1903 .38 revolver, the .45 ACP Colt M1911 pistol, the 9mm P08 Parabellum
and the .32 ACP Colt Model 1903.
A Curiously Hazardous Profession
Prohibition ran from 1920 until 1933. The stock market crash that accompanied the Great Depression kicked off in 1929. The toxic combination of these two events meant there was a great deal of money to be made for those willing to ignore the law.
Diamond saw this as an opportunity and traveled to Europe in search of alcohol and drugs. He returned with barrels of liquor that he had dumped into New York Harbor. Partially filled, these barrels floated low in the water. By studying the tides, Diamond could predict where they might make landfall. He paid local children a nickel apiece to retrieve these containers.
Diamond was the partial owner of the Hotsy Totsy Club on Broadway. With a name like Hotsy Totsy Club, they weren’t hosting Sunday School brunches or teaching underprivileged blind kids to read.
Diamond used his club as a home base for all manner of illicit activities. In July of 1929, Diamond and an associate named Charles Entratta broke up a fight in the club by shooting three of the participants.
Two of the inebriated thugs, Simon Walker and William Cassidy, died as a result. William’s brother, Peter, was badly wounded. In response, the three men’s criminal associates kidnapped the Hotsy Totsy’s bartender, three members of the waitstaff and the cute hatcheck girl. One of the five was later found murdered in neighboring New Jersey. The other four were never heard from again.
There followed arrests for kidnapping, assault and sundry other crimes. Diamond attempted to flee to Europe but was unwelcome in the UK, Belgium and France. Eventually, German police deported him back to Philadelphia.
The first time Jack Diamond was shot, it was with a 12-bore shotgun. This vintage Remington Model 11 is typical of the genre.
A Notoriously Hard Man to Kill
Jack Diamond was the target of at least five assassination attempts. The first occurred in 1924 while he was attempting to hijack a truck full of liquor belonging to a rival criminal gang. Diamond caught a charge of 12-gauge shot to the face and head but recovered.
Three years later, Diamond was pulling bodyguard duty for a proper villain named Jacob “Little Augie” Orgen. While the two men were walking in Manhattan’s Lower East Side, they were confronted by a trio of assailants.
These three shooters opened fire at close range, killing Orgen outright and hitting Diamond twice in the chest. Both rounds passed beneath the gangster’s heart, and he recovered after a protracted hospital stay. Though he undoubtedly knew the men who shot him and killed his boss, Diamond refused to reveal their identities to police. Jack Diamond was a lot of things, but he wasn’t a snitch.
In October of 1930, Diamond was a guest at the Hotel Monticello on Manhattan’s West Side. Three assassins forced their way into his room and shot him five times. The shooters then fled. Diamond, for his part, stopped long enough to drink two shots of whiskey before staggering into the hallway in his pajamas where he collapsed. After two and a half months in the hospital, Legs Diamond was released to sow yet more chaos.
In 1930, Diamond and a pair of thugs kidnapped and beat a truck driver named Grover Parks, who was carrying a load of hard cider for a rival gang. Even if the victim is a thug himself, it was still against the law to beat people within an inch of their lives. In April of 1931, Diamond was arrested for Parks’ assault. Two days after his arrest, Diamond was released on a $25,000 bond.
Five days after that, Diamond was a guest at the Aratoga Inn, a roadhouse near Cairo, NY. After taking a meal with three associates in the roadhouse restaurant, Diamond stepped outside to get some air. Gunmen masquerading as duck hunters opened fire from a parked car and shot him three times at close range. Bystanders drove the bleeding Diamond to the hospital, where he recovered yet again after a protracted stay. By now, he was likely growing weary of hospital food.
Jack Diamond’s weapon of choice was a 4″ P08 Parabellum pistol equipped with the 32-round snail-drum magazine from an Artillery Luger.
Nobody is Immortal
If you’re counting, by then, Legs Diamond had been shot with 10 handgun rounds and an unknown number of shotgun pellets. The rock-hard mobster seemed unkillable. However, on December 18, 1931, Jack Diamond’s luck ran out.
By now, Diamond was staying at a rooming house in Albany, NY. He took dinner out with friends at a local restaurant before partying the night away with his mistress, Kiki Roberts. Come the dawn, Diamond staggered back to his boarding house and passed out on his bed.
Two attackers entered his room soon thereafter with a key. One man held him in place while the other pumped three rounds into the back of his head. The two gunmen fled, but one had second thoughts, ran back to the room and shot him several more times.
Mrs. Laura Woods, Diamond’s landlady, later testified that she heard one of the shooters say, “Oh, hell, that’s enough. Come on.” His killers were never caught.
There was ample conjecture. Some suspected local mafia hit men. Others postulated that the shooters had been crooked members of the Albany police force. Regardless, Legs Diamond was finally well and truly dead.
Legs Diamond was buried at Mount Olivet Cemetery in Maspeth, Queens, NY. Though there was no formal service, there were around 200 people who attended just to gawk.
Two years later, the body of Legs Diamond’s widow, Alice Kenny Diamond, was discovered shot to death in her apartment. Mob watchers suspected she was murdered to keep her from telling what she knew about her husband’s nefarious dealings.
This is the SS Belgenland. In 1930, Jack Diamond took this ship to Europe in search of illicit booze and drugs during Prohibition. Photo: Public Domain
The 9mm P08 Parabellum and the Colt M1911 .45 were both powerful and concealable gangster weapons used during the Roaring ’20s.
Ruminations
Legs Diamond was a killer. His weapon of choice was a German P-08 Parabellum pistol with a 4″ barrel and a 32-round snail-drum magazine. In the years following the First World War, such martial firearms would have been relatively commonplace, having been brought back from Doughboys serving overseas.
The 9mm round was appealing then for the same reasons it is appealing now. A drum-equipped Luger pistol was sort of concealable and offered unparalleled firepower.
So, what are the tactical lessons to be learned from the sordid life and gory death of Jack Diamond? For starters, handguns can be pretty substandard manstoppers, particularly firing ball ammo.
They will certainly do the job, but shot placement and ammunition selection are critical. In a social exchange of gunfire, most any rifle is more effective than most any pistol. At appropriate ranges, most any shotgun is more effective than most any rifle. It finally took 16 pistol rounds and Lord only knows how many shotgun pellets to put Jack Diamond down.
Jack Diamond shuffled off this mortal coil in 1931 at age 34. By the time he finally expired in a pool of his own blood, Legs had seen and done an awful lot of bad things. However, even nearly a century later, he can still teach us a great deal about the art of armed combat.
Situation: Early in your life, you find yourself set against the most dangerous and vicious criminals of your place and time.
Lesson: You will be proud of stopping murderous violence. You will regret not being present when you might have been able to do so. And you’ll find ways to do things differently and, sometimes, better.
The year 2023 is the 200th anniversary year of the Texas Rangers. James Gillett (1856-1937) wrote his autobiographical Six Years With the Texas Rangers in 1921. He is one of the few gunfighters of the Old West who left an account of his adventures in his own words. Remembered by firearms historians as the proponent of an unusual method for carrying a six-gun, his legacy includes more lessons than that.
Early Start With Firearms
Gillett wrote that at the age of 12, he bought an Enfield percussion musket for $3.50. “It was almost as long as a fence rail, and at my age, I could not begin to hold it out and shoot it off-hand, so I had to use a rest … I could cock my gun with both hands, but if I failed to get a shot, I was not strong enough to let the hammer down without letting it get away, so I had to carry it cocked.
To keep from losing the (percussion) cap, I would take it off the tube and put it in my pocket until I had a chance for another shot,” he wrote. Gillett added that a year later, “I bought a double-barrel shotgun for $12. With it, I killed quail, ducks, and other small game, all of which I sold on the streets of Austin. By the fall of 1870, I was 14 years old and could handle a gun rather well for one of my age.”
Gillett became a working cowboy at about age 16, and it wasn’t long after that he joined the Texas Rangers. It was 1875, and he would have been about 19. He was not the only teen to join that storied band. The youngest Texas Ranger killed in the line of duty, as historian Tom Clavin reports in his book Follow Me To Hell: McNelly’s Texas Rangers and the Rise of Frontier Justice, was L.B. “Sonny” Smith, shot and killed at age 17 by rustlers in a pitched gun battle in June of 1875. Other Rangers avenged the death, shooting the young man’s killers “to doll rags” in the parlance of the time.
First Blood
One element of a Texas Ranger’s job description in that time and place was “Indian Fighter.” It was a couple of months after young Smith’s death that Jim Gillett got into his first shootout, a battle between a company of Rangers and a group of well-armed Indians. Wrote Gillett, “The captain with a smile turned to us and said, ‘Boys, they are going to fight us. See how beautifully the old chief forms his line of battle.’ From a little boy, I had longed to be a Ranger and fight the Indians. At last, I was up against the real thing, and with not so much as an umbrella behind which to hide, I was nervous. I was awfully nervous.”
Gillett continued, “In a minute, we had killed two horses and one Indian was seen to be badly wounded.” The situation devolved into the Rangers pursuing their foe, both on horseback. Gillett related, “The redskin riding behind would point his gun back and fire at me, holding it in one hand. I retaliated by firing at him every time I could get a cartridge in my old Sharps carbine. I looked back and saw Ed Seiker coming to my aid as fast as (his horse) would run. He waved encouragement to me. Finally, the old brave ceased shooting, and as I drew a little closer, he held out his gun at arm’s length and let it drop, probably thinking I would stop to get it. I gave it but a passing glance as I galloped by …
I drew up within 20 steps of the brave, jumped from my mount, and made a sort of random shot at the horse, Indian and all. The big .50 caliber bullet struck the Indian pony just where its head coupled on its neck, passed through the head, and came out over the left eye. It killed the horse at once, which fell forward 20 feet.”
Then, wrote Gillette, “By this time Ed Seiker had arrived and was dismounting. The fugitive warrior now peeped from behind a tree, and I got a fine shot at his face but overshot him 6″, cutting off a limb just over his head. He broke to run again, and as he came into view, Ed placed a bullet between his shoulders. He was dead in a minute … Seiker scalped him. We took his bow, shield, and a fine pair of moccasins.”
Early Start With Firearms
Gillett wrote that at the age of 12, he bought an Enfield percussion musket for $3.50. “It was almost as long as a fence rail, and at my age, I could not begin to hold it out and shoot it off-hand, so I had to use a rest … I could cock my gun with both hands, but if I failed to get a shot, I was not strong enough to let the hammer down without letting it get away, so I had to carry it cocked. To keep from losing the (percussion) cap, I would take it off the tube and put it in my pocket until I had a chance for another shot,” he wrote. Gillett added that a year later, “I bought a double-barrel shotgun for $12. With it, I killed quail, ducks, and other small game, all of which I sold on the streets of Austin. By the fall of 1870, I was 14 years old and could handle a gun rather well for one of my age.”
Gillett became a working cowboy at about age 16, and it wasn’t long after that he joined the Texas Rangers. It was 1875, and he would have been about 19. He was not the only teen to join that storied band. The youngest Texas Ranger killed in the line of duty, as historian Tom Clavin reports in his book Follow Me To Hell: McNelly’s Texas Rangers and the Rise of Frontier Justice, was L.B. “Sonny” Smith, shot and killed at age 17 by rustlers in a pitched gun battle in June of 1875. Other Rangers avenged the death, shooting the young man’s killers “to doll rags” in the parlance of the time.
First Blood
One element of a Texas Ranger’s job description in that time and place was “Indian Fighter.” It was a couple of months after young Smith’s death that Jim Gillett got into his first shootout, a battle between a company of Rangers and a group of well-armed Indians. Wrote Gillett, “The captain with a smile turned to us and said, ‘Boys, they are going to fight us. See how beautifully the old chief forms his line of battle.’ From a little boy, I had longed to be a Ranger and fight the Indians. At last, I was up against the real thing, and with not so much as an umbrella behind which to hide, I was nervous. I was awfully nervous.”
Gillett continued, “In a minute, we had killed two horses and one Indian was seen to be badly wounded.” The situation devolved into the Rangers pursuing their foe, both on horseback. Gillett related, “The redskin riding behind would point his gun back and fire at me, holding it in one hand. I retaliated by firing at him every time I could get a cartridge in my old Sharps carbine. I looked back and saw Ed Seiker coming to my aid as fast as (his horse) would run. He waved encouragement to me. Finally, the old brave ceased shooting, and as I drew a little closer, he held out his gun at arm’s length and let it drop, probably thinking I would stop to get it. I gave it but a passing glance as I galloped by …
I drew up within 20 steps of the brave, jumped from my mount, and made a sort of random shot at the horse, Indian and all. The big .50 caliber bullet struck the Indian pony just where its head coupled on its neck, passed through the head, and came out over the left eye. It killed the horse at once, which fell forward 20 feet.”
Then, wrote Gillette, “By this time Ed Seiker had arrived and was dismounting. The fugitive warrior now peeped from behind a tree, and I got a fine shot at his face but overshot him 6″, cutting off a limb just over his head. He broke to run again, and as he came into view, Ed placed a bullet between his shoulders. He was dead in a minute … Seiker scalped him. We took his bow, shield, and a fine pair of moccasins.”
Fleeing Felon
In December of 1877, the Rangers were after a murder suspect named Dick Dublin. When they caught up with him, Gillett wrote, “We were so close upon Dublin that he had no time to mount his horse or get his gun, so he made a run for the brush. I was within 25 yards of him when he came from behind the wagon, running as fast as a big man could. I ordered him to halt and surrender, but he had heard that call too many times and kept going. Holding my Winchester carbine in my right hand, I fired a shot directly at him as I ran. In a moment, he was out of sight.”
Gillett continued, “I hurried to the place where he was last seen and spied him running up a little ravine. I stopped, drew a bead on him, and again ordered him to halt. As he ran, Dublin threw his hand back under his coat as though he were attempting to draw a pistol. I fired. My bullet struck the fugitive in the small of the back just over the right hip bone and passed out near his left collar bone. It killed him instantly. He was bending over as he ran, and this caused the unusual course of my ball …We found him unarmed, but he had a belt of cartridges around his waist.”
Near Misses
There were times when Gillett was on the scene of famous gun battles but wasn’t the man who pulled the trigger on the outlaw in question. Gillett was among the party that took down infamous outlaw Sam Bass. He wrote, however, “Bass’ death wound was given him by Dick Ware, who used a .45 caliber Colt’s long-barreled six-shooter.
The ball from Ware’s pistol struck Bass’ belt, cutting two cartridges in pieces and entering his back just above the right hip bone. The bullet mushroomed badly and made a fearful wound that tore the victim’s right kidney all to pieces. From the moment he was shot until his death three days later, Bass suffered untold agonies.”
Gillett was among the many who pursued the great Apache war chief Victorio, and reading between the lines of the Ranger’s autobiography, it’s clear he wanted to be in on the kill of an enemy he considered responsible for the murder of many innocent settlers. Many whites in the West bitterly believed “the only good Indian was a dead Indian,” and Gillett’s chapter on the Apache chief was, in fact, titled “Victorio Becomes a Good Indian.” The chief had been killed in a battle with Mexican forces. Gillett bore a grudging respect for Victorio and declared him a brilliant strategist. Such was the hatred — and occasional atrocity — that manifested on both sides of the Indian Wars on the 19th Century American frontier.
Kidnap Or … ?
At the end of 1881, two Mexican brothers murdered a New Mexico newspaper publisher in Socorro and fled across the border. The brothers were spotted in El Paso, Texas, where their uncle was a judge. Gillett arrested one brother (and, mistakenly, another innocent man) and angrily refused the judge’s bribe of $1,000 to let his nephew go. A month later, acting on a tip, Gillett and fellow Ranger George Lloyd crossed into Mexico, seized the other killer brother, and brought him back across the border. The suspect was snatched from Gillett by a lynch mob and promptly strung up.
“Expedited extradition” or kidnap? Gillett answered that question himself. He wrote, “… I thought I might as well ’fess up.’ I told (Texas Ranger Captain Baylor) I had arrested Baca at Saragosa and kidnapped him out of Mexico. Captain Baylor’s eyes at once bulged to twice their natural size.”
Though Gillett was not criminally charged for his action, it brought his six-year career with the Texas Rangers to an end.
In Old El Paso
Gillett wrote, “Immediately on leaving the Rangers, I had accepted a position as a captain of guards on the Santa Fe Railroad under my friend, Captain Thatcher. I did not remain long in the railroad’s employ, however, resigning after a few months to become assistant city marshal under Mr. (Dallas) Stoudenmire (in El Paso).
On his resignation as marshal, I was appointed to succeed him.” Stoudenmire was unfortunately on an alcoholic downward spiral and soon got into a brawl with an ex-deputy named Page at the Acme Saloon. The local newspaper reported, “Stoudenmire drew his pistol and fired at Page; the latter, however, knocked the weapon upward, and the ball went into the ceiling. Page then wrenched the pistol from Stoudenmire and the latter drew a second pistol and the two combatants were about to perforate each other when Marshal Gillett appeared on the premises with a double-barrel shotgun and corralled both of them.” Stoudenmire would later die in another booze-fueled saloon shoot-out.
In the spring of 1885, Jim Gillett resigned from El Paso to go into ranching. He died peacefully at age 80 in 1937 at his ranch in Marfa, Texas.
When Jim Met John
We old gun guys consider the book Triggernometry: A Gallery of Gunfighters by Eugene Cunningham (1896–1957) to be a classic “must read” in the field. Younger gun guys and gals should consider it likewise. It was first published in 1941. Its author knew some of the last surviving Old West gunfighters. He dedicated the book to a pair of straight-shooting Texas Rangers who had personally mentored him. One was the legendary John Hughes. The other was … Jim Gillett.
Cunningham wrote, “During (John Wesley Hardin’s) transfer from one jail to another in the custody of Ranger Lieutenant N.O. Reynolds, the Ranger guards were very curious, as men of arms, to see what this wizard of the sixes could do. With Lieutenant Reynolds’ grudging consent, they handed Hardin empty pistols and told him to show his stunts. Jim Gillett says nothing he had ever dreamed of compared with Hardin’s speed and skill. The quick draw, the spin, the rolls, pinwheeling, border shift — he did them all with magical precision.”
Though he was known to carry guns in many holsters or even stuffed inside his shirt, Hardin was famous for having designed and often worn a leather vest with holsters built in, butt forward, riding in a similar fashion to shoulder holsters. Gillett was clearly aware of this.
Added Cunningham, “When James B. Gillett succeeded Dallas Stoudenmire as chief of police of old El Paso … (his admirers) presented him with a beautiful pair of white-handled double-action six-shooters, holstered in a John Wesley Hardin vest. Captain Gillett relates with much enthusiasm his pride in the outfit. He went back to his office and exhibited the vest and pistols to his deputies. They were impressed by the elegance of the rigout. They asked for a demonstration of Wes Hardin’s cross-arm draw. Gillett says he lifted his hands to shoulder level, then snapped them down, crossing each other to the butts of the new weapons. His hands interfered with each other. The pistols, coming out, clashed together. He tried it again and again, with little more success. Deputy Marshal Scotten said gravely, ‘Jim, that’s a tony rig-out … We’ll bury you, later in the week, in that vest.’ ‘And I was having the same idea,’ Captain Gillett told me.”
Which leads us to …
Gillett’s Quick Draw Rig
Cunningham quotes Gillett as having told him, “I had always worn a pistol in a belt holster, and I was used to drawing fast from that position. This was no time for me to be changing my style of drawing! I got out of that vest, and later it was raffled off. A little later, I put on a belt which carried two Colts without holsters. I like that belt better than anything I’ve ever used on the ground.”
Per Cunningham’s description, “On the belt is riveted a plate slotted to receive the hand-made pin-headed screw which replaces the regular hammer-screw of the single-action Colt. To carry the pistol, the pin is entered in the slot, and the pistol pushed back until the pin drops into the slight depression at the rear end of the slot. It hangs there, swinging easily.”
Cunningham continues, “‘I used to have to watch the gambling games,’ Captain Gillett says. ‘So I’d sit on the edge of a table or on the bar in a saloon. I could swing the gun muzzles up or down, and they were out of the way and, at the same time, ready for instant use. I could shoot the pistols — though I never had to — without drawing them, just as one shoots out of an open-toed swivel holster.’”
Gillett was an innovative soul to the end of his days. The Texas History Blog notes, “(Gillett) had an active mind, and in 1936, he was issued a patent for a safe bathtub. It came equipped with a stout rope to be attached to the ceiling. If a user started to slip, he could grab the rope, steady himself and ‘utter a prayer of thanksgiving to Mr. Gillett’s patent,’ a newspaper account stated.”
Lessons
Regarding Gillett’s killing of Dick Dublin, we have to remember in that time and place, gunfire was considered an acceptable method to stop the flight of felony suspects. Dublin was wanted for the murder of two men and, until that day, had proven exceptionally elusive.
Remember, too, Gillett’s account of Dublin reaching as if for a concealed handgun when the Ranger shot him. This is known in our time as a “furtive movement shooting.” This movement is reasonably consistent with reaching for a gun and not reasonably consistent with anything else when considering the totality of the circumstances. The rule has always been, “You don’t have to be right; you have to be reasonable.” Sadly, today there are prosecutors who charge “good guys” who shoot “bad guys” under these circumstances, notwithstanding having graduated from three years of law school and passing a bar exam. Perhaps such things were better understood in the 19th Century.
Today, the anti-gun movement wants to ban young adults aged 18 to 20 from purchasing even rifles or shotguns. They advance the theory the human brain is not fully formed and capable of responsible decision-making until age 25 or so. Gillett’s experience long ago gives the lie to this. He became a Texas Ranger in his late teens, was quickly promoted to sergeant, and was appointed the chief law enforcement officer of the city of El Paso at the age of 25. His skill at arms learned very early stood him in good stead when he had to fight for his life and to protect the innocent.
The racial hatred of the Indian Wars, and the atrocities known to be perpetrated by both sides, is apparent in Gillett’s book. Dehumanizing the opponent is a characteristic of war. Gillett’s attitude is a classic example.
Even in the 1880s, Gillett was miraculously lucky to escape charges for the kidnapping in Mexico. Sometimes justice and law are two different things. Gillett was lucky this breach of the latter cost him only his career with the Texas Rangers.
Oh, and the gun stud on the belt slot? That didn’t catch on. One can picture the revolver flopping constantly, and not being where the hand reached for it if the draw was preceded by dynamic movement. A photo of Gillett during his Ranger years shows him wearing his 7.5″-barrel Colt single action .45 in a relatively high-riding leather scabbard on his right hip. Shooting from the hip, one rationale for Gillett’s belt contraption has never been a sure thing. We note that when he shot the murder suspect Dublin, Gillett himself said he “drew a bead” first.
Bibliography: Six Years With The Texas Rangers: 1975 to 1881 by James B. Gillett, ©1921, published 1925 by Yale University Press; Triggernometry: A Gallery of Gunfighters by Eugene Cunningham, University of Oklahoma Press, 1941; Follow Me to Hell: McNelly’s Texas Rangers and the Rise of Frontier Justice by Tom Clavin, St. Martin’s Press, 2023; The Texas History Blog, “James Buchanan Gillett, Texas Ranger” https://texoso66.com/2016/09/15/james-buchanan-gillett-texas-ranger/
Never, ever underestimate the capacity of young men for stupidity. Testosterone is the most potent poison known to man. Even in small doses, this horrible stuff can indeed be lethal.
The Boeing 737 is an undeniably big target, but it was moving really fast.What Happened
At 5:25 PM on 31 December 1986, 30-year-old Barry Rollins of Brooklyn, New York, was sitting in coach aboard United Airlines Flight 1502 out of Wilmington, North Carolina. The Boeing 737 was traveling light carrying only sixteen passengers and five crewmembers. As the plane was on short final into Raleigh-Durham Airport, Mr. Rollins watched eagerly out the window. His plan was to catch a separate flight into New York City and make it to Times Square in time to see the ball drop for the New Year.
The plane was two miles south of the airport and roughly twenty seconds from touchdown. With the aircraft about 300 feet off the ground, a .30-caliber bullet pierced the bottom of the fuselage, passed through Rollins’ right thigh, and then lodged in the left side of his face. Rollins felt as though he had been struck with a baseball bat. Fragments of the round ended up behind his left ear.
The pilot landed the aircraft without incident. He had been unaware anything was amiss. Mr. Rollins was rushed to the local hospital where he underwent surgery and spent several days recovering. United Airlines covered all of his medical costs and flew his three brothers and two sisters in from New York to be at his bedside.
Poor Misled People
As you might imagine, the world pretty much came unglued over that. Wake County Commissioner Merrie R. Hedrick was quoted as having said, “It is just another in a long list of cases that point out to me that we need to do something about the county gun ordinances. It would certainly seem to me that if people were shooting that close by, it was just a question of when something would happen.”
Bless their hearts, most gun control advocates really don’t have a great grasp of the way the real world works. There are more than 400 million guns in circulation in America. Gun control might have worked 350 million guns ago, but that ship has sailed.A point of personal privilege–Let that sink in for a second. Wake County Commissioner Merrie R. Hedrick actually thought that the way to keep people from shooting at passing airliners was to pass more gun control laws. Wow. That must be a fascinating place to live. In my world, the sort of idiot who might take a potshot at a passing airliner is unlikely to be dissuaded by yet more anti-gun legislation.
G. Eric Shuford, the president of the Sir Walter Raleigh Gun Club, had this to say in response, “Whoever perpetrated such an act should be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law. Don’t restrict all the responsible hunters and responsible firearm owners because of one stupid act by one person.” That seems pretty logical to me.
The 1980’s were fairly tame, relatively speaking. When this event happened Osama bin Laden was 29 years old and not yet a raving homicidal maniac. Back then the androgynous singer Boy George could still actually shock people. It was, in short, a very different time. Special Agent Richards of the local FBI office said, “We’ve got so many wackos in the world, you never know. It would be a tragic thing. I just hope it doesn’t give any loonies out there an idea.”
The Idiot Who Shot A Plane
This is most definitely not Robert Proulx, the rocket surgeon who got bored while out hunting and tried to shoot down an airliner. This is, by contrast, some nice guy in Mississippi who killed a really epic whitetail buck. However, both episodes began with somebody wandering around in the woods chasing deer.Robert Raymond Proulx was a 23-year-old unemployed construction worker who was out hunting at the time the airplane flew over. It’s tough to get your head around what possessed him to take a potshot at a passing airliner, but one of his buddies apparently anonymously ratted him out later. Proulx was arrested within a week of the incident.
When you shoot an innocent guy in a passing airliner it is tough to put a positive spin on that. Proulx knew he was doomed. Once the details of the case became apparent he pled guilty to the charge of damaging an aircraft. This got him out of the worse charge of using a firearm to damage an aircraft. I’m not a lawyer. I have no idea how the American legal system actually works.
Regardless, Proulx still faced a maximum sentence of 20 years in prison and a quarter-million-dollar fine. For his part, Proulx claimed via his attorney that the weapon had discharged accidentally. He actually said, “I was checking my rifle when it fired. I didn’t mean to hurt anyone.” Really? I was born at night, but not last night. That seems pretty thin to me. Apparently, the judge in the case was not swayed by this explanation, either.
As I see it, Robert Proulx made two big mistakes. The first was being stupid enough to try to shoot down an airliner with a deer rifle. The second is trying it while he had buddies around to rat him out.What cinched the deal was Proulx’s rat buddy. He later testified that Proulx had actually been trying to hit the pilot. The man’s statement was, “He had committed the above-described act and that he had been aiming for the pilot.” It would have been far better had Proulx been drunk. As it was, he was just without excuse.
All this legal stuff unfolded in February of 1987, some six weeks or so after the event. US District Court Judge Terrence Boyle presided over the sentencing hearing. US Attorney Peter Kellen said, “It was our belief that the defendant in this case was someone whose conduct was wanton and callous. We were not aware of any remorse or concern shown by the defendant for what he had done, and it was our position that an individual of this nature, in order to protect society, needs to be taken off the streets for as long as the law allows.″
In May of that year, Robert Proulx was formally sentenced to twenty years in prison. He was also ordered to pay $33,300 in restitution to the airline to cover the medical bills of the man he shot. Considering the poor guy had multiple surgeries and a substantial inpatient stay, that seems like a bargain. Nowadays in most modern hospitals 33 grand likely wouldn’t cover much more than your ghastly meals and those squeezie things they put on your feet.
I have some reliable information that this sucks. Robert Proulx apparently agreed.The following year Proulx was growing weary of being in prison and appealed to have his sentence reduced. This appeal was rejected for being outside of some timely filing window. As I said, I don’t begin to understand the American legal system.
The Gun – A Winchester Rifle
News reports filed after the event described Proulx’s gun as a Winchester Model 74 in .30-30. The Winchester 74 was actually a semiautomatic tube-fed sporting rifle chambered in .22 rimfire. It was produced from 1938 until 1955. 406,574 copies were manufactured. I am fairly certain the gun in question would have been a Model 94. The Winchester 94 was the archetypal .30-30 lever-action deer rifle. Media types seem congenitally incapable of getting gun stuff right.
The Winchester 94 was designed by John Moses Browning in, you guessed it, 1894. Those first guns were chambered in either .32-40 or .32-55 Winchester, both black powder rounds. In 1895 the Model 94 was offered in .30 Winchester Center Fire. This was the first commercially successful rifle chambered for a smokeless cartridge. Over time the .30 WCF became known as the .30-30.
The Model 1894 was produced by Winchester Repeating Arms until 1980 and then offered by US Repeating Arms under the Winchester banner until 2006. Well over seven million copies were produced. Newly-manufactured reproductions remain on the market today.
I realize this is was the most powerful man in the world with control of 5,428 nuclear warheads. However, I’m not sure I’d trust this guy unsupervised with a firearm.The Model 94 was the first sporting rifle to sell more than 7 million units. The millionth rifle was gifted to President Calvin Coolidge. Serial number 1.5 million went to President Harry S. Truman. The two millionth gun was given to President Dwight Eisenhower. If somebody gave a gun to our current President I’m not convinced that would end well. My, haven’t times changed?
The US government bought 1,800 commercial Model 94 rifles along with 50,000 rounds of .30-30 ammunition for use by ground troops during WW1. These rifles were marked with a “US” and the flaming bomb of the Ordnance Department. I rather suspect these GI-issue lever guns would be fairly spendy in collector’s circles today.
The British Royal Navy bought another 5,000 of the rifles for use in shipboard security and mine-clearing operations. The French purchased 15,100 Model 94s, but their guns sported left-sided sling mounts and adjustable rear sights marked in meters.
The Model 94 was offered with either a 20, 24, or 26-inch barrel. Magazine capacities for each of these configurations was 7, 8, and 9 rounds respectively. The 20-inch gun was the most popular. This version weighed 6.8 pounds and was 38 inches long overall.
Ruminations
I don’t know where you stand on the subject of prison as either punishment or rehabilitation. I’m typically a pretty forgiving guy. Jesus forgave me of a great deal, and I try to return the favor whenever possible. However, some people are just too dangerous to be allowed to wander about unsupervised.
A 20-year prison sentence for a 23-year-old is an undeniable life-wrecker. There’s no getting around that. However, shooting at a passing airliner is pretty extra special stupid as well. The fact that he connected is fairly impressive, I guess, but that still doesn’t seem like a terribly marketable skill, particularly in 1986.
With the gear down and the flaps set at thirty degrees, a Boeing 737 sports a final approach speed of 140 knots indicated. That’s about 162 miles per hour. Considering our hero fired at a slant range of about 300 feet and was apparently aiming for the cockpit he apparently just didn’t lead the plane far enough. The end result had he been a slightly better wing shooter would have been cataclysmic.
I never found out what happened to Robert Proulx. He should obviously be out of prison by now. He’d be about sixty today. Apparently, the man he shot, Barry Rollins, fully recovered. It was announced that he planned to seek civil damages, but an unemployed carpenter remanded to prison for two decades is likely not a terribly lucrative mark for a plaintiff’s attorney.
Perhaps he sued the airline, but for what exactly? It hardly seems like negligence that you witlessly flew over a homicidal moron on the final approach into Raleigh-Durham. That just seems more like random testosterone poisoning to me.
Evilio waltzed into a stop-and-rob convenience store without a second glance at cars parked outside, never checked the clothing of customers inside, and stuck a gun in the clerk’s face.
Had he looked, he might have noticed Wilbur Fernander standing by a cooler, wearing a black T-shirt with bold yellow letters reading Hollywood Police. He might also have noticed the gun on his hip, maybe the badge on his belt. But he got a chance to see them later.
Fernander, assigned to a street crimes unit, was conducting a routine business check while his partner waited in their unit outside. He only hesitated a second, surprised at Evilio The Oblivious pulling a heist with an officer in attendance, then alerted his partner by radio, stepped up behind Palau, and played a brief version of my-gun’s-bigger-than-your-gun.
“When he finally looked at me, his eyes got really big,” Fernander later told reporters. Yeah, we bet. And that sucking sound you heard, that was, well, never mind.
Palau, already wanted for parole violation, took the semi-smart option and dropped his .357 Magnum revolver on the counter. He was charged with armed robbery, possession of a firearm by a violent career criminal, and not-looking-around-real-good-before-pulling-a-stickup.
He might go into stand-up comedy. His story got a lot of laughs from other inmates at Broward County Jail.
Pause That Refreshes
It wasn’t his pistol that foiled Thomas Springer’s crime, but what done him in did begin — or you could say it ended — with a “P.” The former congressional press secretary had successfully held up the Crestar Bank in Vienna, Va., and was making good on his escape from the scene when he paused in mid-hotfoot to attend a call of nature.
About to jump into his getaway wheels, Tom stopped to take a public leak a short distance from the bank, and when he unzipped, a local dowager flipped.
When the masked robber revealed The Masked Avenger, the outraged citizen copied down the license number of the degenerate’s car and called the police. After a brief — very brief — series of remarks along the lines of, “Hey, this dude fits the description of …” the police had their suspect in hand.
Not the way he had just had himself in hand, see, but … you know what we mean.
Computer News
The Silver Bullet Award, given anonymously on the Internet, recently went to a poacher who took a shot at a buck standing on an overhanging ledge just above him. The deer was killed and — you guessed it — fell on the poacher, killing him.
Now we can say there are three types of justice left in America: Street, Poetic, and Occasionally-In-The-Woods.
And in other computer news, let’s hear it for Sebastian Strzalkowski, a 14-year-old lad living in Antigua, Guatemala, who helped the FBI land a most-wanted crook after the crook helped Sebastian identify him.
“Mr. Young,” Sebastian’s friendly neighbor, helped wire up the kid’s computer for Internet access. Sebastian then fired up the FBI’s homepage and found a photo of, yup, good ol’ Mr. Young, a most-wanted dude fleeing from a series of bank robberies in the U.S.
Leslie Isben Rogge, aka Mr. Young, had been languishing on the list for six years, but he became the FBI’s first Internet hit with an assist from Sebastian — and himself.
Sir Arthur Conan Doyle was a classic Renaissance Man. He seemed to do most everything well.
Public domain.
Sir Arthur Ignatius Conan Doyle was born in 1859 in Edinburgh, Scotland. His father was an alcoholic with a history of psychiatric illness. Young Arthur’s family was subsequently all but destitute.
Despite his squalid upbringing, Arthur was a quick study. Supported by wealthy uncles, the boy was sent to boarding school, where he availed himself of a classical education. He eventually attended a Jesuit school in Austria before returning to Scotland to study at the University of Edinburgh Medical School. Along the way, he made time to master botany and begin writing short stories.
The young doctor was a gifted athlete. He was an amateur boxer, a compulsive cricketer, and a goalkeeper for the Portsmouth Association Football Club.
An avid marksman, he founded the Undershaw Rifle Club at his home, replete with a 100-yard known distance firing range. Doyle was also recognized for his skill at skiing, golf, and billiards. In 1901, Arthur Doyle served as one of three official judges for the world’s first male bodybuilding competition.
Doyle was a prolific scribe, ultimately producing more than 30 book-length pieces and at least 150 short stories. Sprinkled across all of that were hundreds of essays and magazine articles. What Arthur Conan Doyle is truly remembered for, however, is creating Sherlock Holmes.
Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes series captivated readers around the world. Public domain.
Doyle’s Super Sleuth
Sherlock Holmes’ capacity for observation and deduction was like a superpower. His first work was A Study in Scarlet. Doyle penned this piece over the span of three weeks when he was 27 years old and then, predictably, struggled to find a publisher. Ward Lock and Co eventually printed the piece in 1886. Doyle earned £25 for his efforts. That would be about $4,700 today.
Doyle patterned his gifted detective upon one of his university professors named Joseph Bell. In a 1892 letter to Bell, he wrote, “It is most certainly to you that I owe Sherlock Holmes … round the centre of deduction and inference and observation which I have heard you inculcate I have tried to build up a man.”
Once the reading public got a taste of Sherlock Holmes, they could not be satiated. Doyle grew weary of such pigeonholed writing in short order and considered killing the acerbic super sleuth off. In an effort to rid himself of the Holmes burden, the author began demanding exorbitant sums from his publishers. However, they willingly paid whatever he asked to get more Holmes material.
Modern depictions of Doyle’s classic characters are reliably compelling even today.
Promotional still from the TV series Sherlock.
Life Imitates Art
As an aspiring professional writer myself, I can tell you that we all write from life. My early efforts were utterly tripe until I had accumulated enough experience to depict things realistically.
It was only after engineering school, eight years as an Army officer, and a second career as a physician that I finally accumulated a portfolio of experience adequate to inform a decent literary career. In the case of Arthur Doyle, MD, some of Sherlock Holmes’ amazing capacity for deduction bled over into his day job.
Dr. Doyle worked in a hospital in Edinburgh and was once consulted to evaluate a particularly sick child. The youngster was pale and listless. Despite being obviously well-nourished, the boy had little to no strength in his wrists. Doyle pondered the case briefly and directed the patient’s mother to stop painting the child’s crib.
When she inquired what the connection might be between the color of his crib and her child’s sickness, Doyle observed that the woman had flecks of white paint on her hands.
White paint in the 19th century invariably contained large amounts of elemental lead. Little children chew on anything they can fit into their mouths. Dr. Doyle rightly deduced that the kid had been gnawing on his freshly-painted crib and had developed plumbism.
Plumbism is the doctor word for lead poisoning. Back then, lead was found in lots of household stuff. This made lead intoxication a serious concern, particularly for inquisitive children. Chronic lead exposure can lead to belly pain, cognitive defects, and irreversible brain damage. Arthur Conan Doyle’s deductive skills uncovered the source of the kid’s problem so that it might be rectified.
Arthur Conan Doyle’s last words were directed at his wife
when he said, “You are wonderful.”
Ruminations
Doyle personally investigated two real-world closed cases in a relentless pursuit of justice. Both men were eventually exonerated as a result of his efforts. Doyle covered the second man’s legal expenses out of his own pocket.
In 1903, Doyle founded what he called The Crimes Club. This was an exclusive social club limited to 100 members that met four times a year at the Imperial Hotel on Russell Square in London. Their objective was to foment discussion on crime and criminal detection. The club has been perpetuated in its original form to the present day. Their logo is a silhouette of Doyle.
In July of 1930, Doyle suffered a catastrophic heart attack. He left behind five children, none of whom had kids of their own. As a result, Arthur Conan Doyle produced no direct descendants. His last words were directed at his wife when he said, “You are wonderful.” It was a fitting end for a truly exceptional scribe.