Grayman and Company double breasted convertible jacket for rifle plates:
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Lynx Brutality is one of the premiere two-gun physical shooting matches in the world, held annually in Slovenia by Polenar Tactical. This year I chose to run the match in a Grayman and Company suit made specifically to conceal rifle plates – and to fit properly without the plates as well, for a universal practicality. However, “Armored” division requires a number of other elements of infantry-type kit that I did not carry, so I was in Open division instead. I used a Laugo Remus pistol and a Troy CAR-15 (specifically, GAU-5/A/A) carbine as my pistol and rifle.
Unfortunately, something happened to my rifle zero during the second stage – I will figure out exactly what happened once the rifle gets back to me in a few weeks. Anyway, one perseveres, and I had a really good time regardless. One of the best things about matches like Lynx and Finnish Brutality is the camaraderie; we shoot these events to challenge ourselves against the course and not to beat our fellow competitors, and the atmosphere is fantastically congenial.
Jeff Cooper was right!! Back up irons are king.
South-West Combat Pistol League rules stated that “No competitor shall carry more than one pistol in competition”.
Eon’s Mother’s Rule;
The fastest reload is a second gun that’s already loaded.
When I first went to work carrying a 1911 in a Safariland FBI rake holster behind my right hip, she looked, nodded, and said, “Now get your father’s Colt Police Positive Special 6 inch .38 and carry it in the spring-clip shoulder holster under your left arm, where you can draw it with either hand”.
She taught me the left-handed cavalry “twist draw” from the shoulder holster. Then she showed me how to reload the .45 automatic one-handed while maintaining fire on target with the revolver with the other hand.
(Drop magazine, shove pistol inside belt, shove loaded magazine in, pull pistol out, hit slide release. Note that this was with the Colt with no magazine safety; she disapproved of magazine safeties in general.)
That’s how I carried both sidearms for most of my working life other than when regulations dictated otherwise. The second was either that .38 or my Colt Lawman .357 2.5 inch.
Unlike competition, real gunfights generally do not have “time out” rules.
clear ether
eon
Southwest League says no second pistol? What is next? No ocean liner shall carry lifeboats? Same logic.
Rules as quoted in Cooper on Handguns (1974). Since he was the literal founder of the original SWCPL, I’d say he knew what the rules actually were.
SWCPL rules came directly from the Leatherslap, the Western-style fast-draw competitions from 1954 to 1966. Two gun events were separate there, because Cooper & Co. simply did not believe that actual Old West pistoleers carried more than one pistol at a time.
My mother at one time was in a relationship with Focal Francis “Jack” Earp, the youngest son of Virgil Earp. According to Jack, his father and each of his uncles (Wyatt, Morgan, Warren, James, and Newton, the eldest) always carried at least one “hideout” gun in addition to the service revolver in the belt holster.
Contrary to movies and TV, his Uncle Wyatt preferred the Smith & Wesson Schofield or Russian Model revolvers to the Colt Single Action Army, due to being able to reload more quickly.
Dr. John H. “Doc” Holiday invariably carried three guns; two Colt Model 1861 Navies converted to .38 centerfire with barrels cut to 4.5 inches, plus a Remington Double Derringer .41 rimfire. It was one of the .38s he used at the “O.K. Corral”. Again contrary to TV (including Star Trek), he did not normally use a sawn-off shotgun; the recoil was too heavy for his light build, to say nothing of his “consumptive” constitution.
After the turn of the last century, as a writer living in San Francisco, Wyatt finally stuck to only carrying one sidearm. A Savage Model 1907 in first .32 ACP, and then .380 when that chambering was introduced in 1913. His famous “Ten Shots Quick” ad copy was in reference to the .380; nine shot magazine plus one in the chamber equals ten. The .32 held ten rounds in the magazine.
The “old timers” weren’t stupid. That’s how they lived to become “old timers”.
Modern-day defensive shooters could study their habits and tactics to their present-day advantage.
clear ether
eon
Interesting they did not believe Old West pistoleros carried only one gun. I was just looking at a photo of Missouri Bushwackers packing two apiece on their belts. True, that was wartime. But habits formed in war carry over into times of fragile peace
Martin;
Clint Eastwood studied that sort of thing very carefully in plotting out both The Outlaw Josey Wales (1976) and Pale Rider (1985). He took special note of the way “shootists” in those days carried multiple Colt revolvers, and the way they reloaded Remington revolvers, both percussion and metallic cartridge, with pre-loaded, interchangeable cylinders, much like reloading a self-loading pistol with a box magazine developed in the late 1890s.
In Pale Rider, he found he actually had to slow the reloading procedure down so the movie audience could actually see and understand what he was doing. IRL, that kind of reload is a lot quicker than what was shown there.
cheers
eon
It’s sort of humorous, actually…
Back in the dayes of ye Olde Timey things, the single-shot muzzle-loading pistoleer was usually someone who was smart enough to carry entire bandoliers of as many as they could carry.
The usual number was six, from what I’ve seen, and that has an interesting consonance with the Colt revolver cylinder, almost like he was saying “Yeah, let’s put a bandolier into a single gun…”
The idea that people would carry only a single gun into pistol-based combat is a little nuts, and really didn’t become viable until the magazine-loading handgun became prevalent. Carrying a backup is only common sense that’s been around since the first “hand gonnes” were produced and used.
Well, according to sworn testimony (and the coroner’s report), Holliday went to the OK Corral carrying a Greener shotgun handed to him by Virgil Earp (who’d borrowed it from the Wells Fargo office), and shot Frank McLaury under the right armpit with it. It is still unclear whether Frank was pointing a gun or just holding out his hand as if to say “stop.” Frank staggered up the street and died half a block away. Holliday, thinking he’d missed, resorted to his handgun and for his trouble was shot in the hip by Tom McLaury. He may have put a bullet into Billy Clanton. Agreed that Doc H. never regularly carried a shotgun. Thanks for your frequent valuable input.
For example of unit active at frontier using more than 1 revolver per member see Battle of Walker’s Creek (1844) https://texasescapes.com/JefferyRobenalt/Battle-of-Walkers-Creek-and-Colt-Paterson-Revolver.htm
…During the Battle of Walker’s Creek the Comanches attempted to use their traditional style of mounted warfare, but this time thanks to Sam Colt, each of the Rangers was armed with two rapid firing Paterson revolvers. One Comanche who took part in the fight complained that the Rangers “had a shot for every finger on the hand.”…During the running, three-mile, hour-long Comanche retreat, Yellow Wolf rallied his warriors for three separate counterattacks with the Rangers fighting in relays — one group quickly switching the cylinders of their Colts while the other engaged the Comanches…
Sorry. They believed old timers carried only one
The number of things “believed” to be true by “authorities” in many fields are as legion as they are often wrong…
I’ve lost track of the number of times I’ve actually gone out to do the research and then discovered that the “conventional wisdom” I’d been taught, and which was parroted by all and sundry… Turned out to be “Unsupported and unsupportable in the actual documentation…”
S.L.A. Marshall, I’m looking at your lying ass. Directly.
My last comment was a correction to my previous one. I had included an unnecessary ‘not.’
I don’t know how Marshall started out, but there is a lot of evidence out there that he wound up more concerned with being quoted than with being fact-based. The number of interviews he claims to have conducted is almost physically impossible. That in itself is a big warning flag