Sharing this for your reading enjoyment.
In the beginning was point shooting. For those precious few who prepared themselves to use a pistol as a serious defensive weapon, it was fired from the hip, without the benefit of sights. For others, including target shooters and law enforcement officers alike, the pistol was fired at arm’s length, onehanded, and, often, very slowly. Either way, the pistol was a one-handed gun, and the unfortunate thing was neither the close-quick-dirty approach nor formal pistolcraft bore any real resemblance to the skills needed to survive a real-life shooting. And then in 1959, along came an L.A. County Sheriff’s Deputy who held his pistol with both hands, hit what he aimed at, and did it faster than anyone else. His name was Jack Weaver, and as Jeff Cooper put it, “He showed us the way.”
Jack, an only child of only children, was born in Huntington Park, California, where his father worked for the Matson steamship line. From a young age, he loved guns. In his own words, “When I was a kid, real young, I mean like about 10 or so, I was fascinated by revolvers. Not the automatic, but just the revolver. Something about the cylinder with the holes in there.” Like most of us, though, he actually started shooting with a .22 rifle. In Jack’s case, it was a teenaged relative’s gun, which was always accompanied by a nail with its head cut off. After each shot, you had to drop the nail down the barrel to knock out the empty shell.
After graduating from high school, he attended Glendale Community College, where he met Joy Moniot, whom he would later marry. She was studying airline administration, and he was taking mostly machine shop, until he was drafted into the US Army in 1950. Although it was during the Korean War, Weaver was stationed at Fort Carson in Colorado, where he served in 4th Field Artillery, Battalion PK — and that’s “PK” for “Pack.”
By Jeremy Clough
