Revisiting Col. Cooper’s “Principles of Personal Defense”

What better way to pass the time flying West to observe a 250 Pistol Course at Gunsite Academy than revisiting Principles of Personal Defense by The Colonel, Jeff Cooper?

Originally published in 1972 and again in 1989, my copy is the 2006 Paladin Press edition with a foreword by the late Louis Awerbuck. In the Preface, Cooper says he re-read the book and “felt no need to change anything of importance” (p. 11). But the Preface is undated, so it’s not clear whether it was written for the 1989 or 2006 edition.

In any event, here are some brief snippets from the book I found interesting in 2017.

First, although I have usually heard the analogy made to a piano, the statement commonly attributed to Col. Cooper is found here as follows:

“You are no more armed because you are wearing a pistol than you are a musician because you…