By David E. Petzal and Philip Bourjaily

I’ve sat on, I believe, 23 jury panels since the mid-70s, and have never been picked for a jury. Public defenders do not like me. Just about all of them are politically liberal, and some of them are not the sharpest legal minds around. If you haven’t had the experience, the prosecutor and defense counsel question potential jurors in a process known as voir dire, which is interpreted to mean “speak the truth.” They ask you all sorts of neat stuff about yourself, including any organizations you may belong to.

When I’m asked this question, I smile sweetly and say: “The American Society of Magazine Editors and the National Rifle Association.”

When public defenders hear that last, their eyes pinwheel in their heads, and they think the following:

“Probably reads Mein Kampf on Sundays. Probably collects hangman’s nooses. Probably owns guns. Probably votes Republican. Probably doesn’t care that my client hacked 5 people to death only because he had an unhappy childhood. GET RID OF HIM.”

So then when the challenges come, I see them point at me and know that soon I will be returning to the jury room to do crossword puzzles…and read Mein Kampf.

I would be interested in hearing from... [ Read Full Post ]

By David E. Petzal and Philip Bourjaily

This week I had an interesting and reasonably testy exchange with a reader who claimed that his .300 Winchester Magnum, loaded with bullets that I’d recommended, didn’t “wallop” African game the way he liked. He had to shoot them multiple times, and nothing dropped in its tracks. But on the other hand every critter expired, and he didn’t lose a one.

I told him that you don’t wallop anything in Africa or here for that matter; that animals go down from lack of oxygen to the brain or damage to the spine, and not from bullet impact. Here are a couple of cases in point:

The first day of a safari, your PH will say something like: “Let’s go collect an animal for dinner, bwana.” But what he’s really saying is, Let’s see how well you can shoot.  This is your debut, and how the safari is conducted will depend largely on how competent or otherwise you prove yourself to be.
So in 1987, in Zambia, I had a PH named Abie DuPloy, and we went through this drill, and presently came on a herd of puku, which is a stocky, tough antelope of about 400 pounds. I was shooting a .338, which... [ Read Full Post ]

By David E. Petzal and Philip Bourjaily

This is only marginally about guns, but I like it, so I’ll pass it along. On July 4, 1976, the Buffalo Bill Historical Center in Cody, Wyoming dedicated the arrival of the Winchester Firearms Collection to the center, and it was a Great Big Deal. The governor of Wyoming was there, and various astronauts, professional athletes, captains of industry, etc. And as a sop to the lower classes, Winchester flew up a bunch of writers, including myself, from Denver, to report on the goings-on.

At the time, Cody airport was extremely small, and most of the town’s people were assembled in two lines at the entrance. So as each of us stepped through the door, our name would be announced, and our home town, and there would be a polite spattering of applause.

As I stepped through the door, I heard the loudspeaker say: “And from New York City, Field & Stream’s managing editor Dave Petzal…”

And the people went ape. Strong men wept. Women fainted. Babies puked. I started to swell up like a toad. “Hot damn,” I remember thinking, “I’m  home.”

And then I happened to look behind me. John Wayne had stepped through the door a little ahead of cue, just... [ Read Full Post ]

By David E. Petzal and Philip Bourjaily

I’m on the e-mail list for the Coalition to Stop Gun Violence, and what I get is always interesting, even if I don’t agree with it. The most recent arrival is a statement of Joshua Horwitz, who is Executive Director of the Coalition. Mr. Horwitz is exercised over the Senate’s vote on July 13 to prohibit law enforcement officials from using federal funds to confiscate private firearms during future emergencies and major disasters.

What is particularly interesting about this e-mail is not so much Mr. Horwitz position, but the basic assumptions on which it rests, which are common to many anti-gunners.

Assumption Number One:  Anyone who owns a firearm is a likely psychotic, because normal, law-abiding people do not need firearms and would not be allowed to own them in the best of all possible Americas.

The fact is that the people who were doing the shooting in New Orleans were the usual thugs, felons, and hoodlums of which the city has a plentiful supply. Most people—legal gun owners included—were too busy trying to stay alive to bother with shooting at the police and National Guard.

Assumption Number Two:  If the citizenry is an armed mob, then the forces of government, the police, etc.,... [ Read Full Post ]

By David E. Petzal and Philip Bourjaily

I’m indebted to my friend John Thomas for this one. John is a retiree who teaches rich people how to shoot a shotgun, and we were talking the other day about a client of his who couldn’t hit a crossing target.

“His problem,” said John, “is he thinks about it. It’s a clear case of analysis paralysis.”

Truer words were never spoken. If you want to miss with a shotgun, or a rifle in most cases, just think about what you’re doing. Gene Hill used to say that the ideal trapshooter would be a gorilla who knew how to handle a gun; he’d be too dumb to analyze, and recoil wouldn’t bother him.

A classic case; I’ve been shooting in a summer trap league, and when I stand on Station 5 I stand almost square to the target to give myself a better swing at the hard right angle bird. As I called pull during one shoot, I realized that my feets were in the wrong position, and was thinking about that instead of thinking about nothing. Did I miss? Is a pig’s ass pork? I felt a little better because one of the geezers on the squad completely lost track of what... [ Read Full Post ]

By David E. Petzal and Philip Bourjaily

Advocates of tougher gun laws are unable to understand the horror that shooters feel when the word “license” comes up. After all, say the anti-gunners, aren’t drivers licensed? And pilots, and just about anyone who has anything to do with anything that moves? Well, here’s an example why we don’t like licensing, and it happened to a co-worker of mine who had a permit to keep two handguns in his home in New York City.

Mr. M, as we will call him, moved from one borough of New York to another, and as required by law sent in his application for a new license with the new address, along with a money order for $340. Time went by, and nothing happened. When Mr. M called the New York City Police Department, he was told that his permit had been sent to him. Then, after much back and forth, he was told that the permit application had been lost (but not, apparently, the $340 money order). And then he was told that since he had not notified the NYPD of his move, his permit was revoked.

Then followed a Kafka-esque back and forth with the NYPD, who advised Mr. M that since he didn’t... [ Read Full Post ]