There was a long, storied era when the revolver was king and the fast draw stopped at belt-level, when unsighted "point-shooting" was standard law enforcement training, and when sophistication in handgun bullets meant lead semi-wadcutters instead of lead round-noses. Bill Jordan was the apogee of that glacial age, and this book is its core sample.
All of us present-day shooters should read this book and know from whence the current art and science grew. Jordan was an accomplished writer as well as the preeminent shootin' badge of his time, so the reading is a straightforward pleasure. Further, this is a book by a working law officer of immense experience, and some of its greatest charm is in its practical day-to-day advice. For example, whether or not you'll ever draw your weapon in extremis, you'll have to ride in a car with the thing at your side for eight hours a day, and that will have a lot to do with your choice of barrel length, holster style, and belt. Similarly: How to make wax bullets for cheap practice; and how to shrink-fit a new leather holster to your gun -- a lost art in our age of Kydex and other plastics. And at every point there are excellent photographs: How to do it right...and, with comic gravity, how *not* to do it. Jordan was six-feet-six of Law and Order - with a sense of humor.
(About the only thing he doesn't talk about, oddly enough, is how to reload quickly. Or maybe that is not so odd, coming from a time before speedloaders, and from a man who never needed but one shot of the six in his gun.)
But for us this is history, not a lesson plan, and the equipment recommendations are not realistic or best-practice in our time. Some reviewers here have commended this book as a modern manual-of-arms, but this is not good advice. We use the sights without fail except at fist-fight range; the trigger finger never enters the guard until the piece is aligned; we depend on high-tech projectiles combining barrier penetration with certain terminal expansion; and if we showed up sporting a cut-away trigger guard or a holster that exposed the trigger, we'd be escorted off the range at high speed.
And four years after this book was published, then-modern autoloading pistols were first adopted by a major US law enforcement organization (S&W Model 39, Illinois State Police), and the eclipse of the revolver began. In our time of Glocks and Sigs this seems obvious and inevitable, but there was no reason why it should have been obvious to Jordan, who in a few pages disregarded the auto as impractical for law enforcement and whose ultimate preference in a police cartridge, which became the .41 Magnum, landed with a soggy N-Frame-sized thud and was swept away on a tide of high-capacity autopistols. (Note that this review is written by one who prefers, and prefers to carry, revolvers. Bill Jordan was simply right in his time; some of us are just...nostalgic in ours.)
So Jordan was not wrong. He was right in 1963, and he proves himself right with wit, great photos, and three decades of experience. Imbibe. Then go to the range.
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Malcolm
Great book. Totally unable to source it in bookshops
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on July 25, 2014
