Jeff Cooper

Had all the magazines.

American Rifleman, Guns and Ammo, all that stuff, right? And I would sometimes, I'd spend a lot of time in his store and there would be times I'd just be pouring through these old, these stacks of magazines, right? And I can recall, I don't remember if it was a column by Jeff Cooper or who it was, but I remember reading something a long time ago talking about, and I don't remember if they even used the terminology dry fire, but they just talked about doing some basic practice with an unloaded gun kind of thing.

So it's not like it hasn't been around for a while.

It's just that it really has not been talked about and proliferated like it is today.

What are some resources or ideas that you'd like to share with the audience about becoming more aware?

Yeah, I think the person who sort of cemented this from the beginning was a man named Jeff Cooper.

And he developed something that had become known as Cooper's color codes or the four conditions, which are white, yellow, orange, and red.

I think that Baseline situational awareness follows you wherever you are, including digitally

rabbit.

In self-defense classes, you'll often hear about Colonel Jeff Cooper's color codes for situational awareness.

You're aware of that, right, Billy Ed? Oh, I'm always aware of that.

Situational awareness.

And it is the truest American martial art because we basically invented that shit and have spent, you know, the following hundred years perfecting it, you know.

And when you think of people like Jeff Cooper and, you know, some of the, you know, guys like that as martial artists, a lot of what they wrote makes sense when you realize they're writing philosophy the same way martial artists were it.

but it's contextualized around a weapon system.

No, you're absolutely correct.

okay so if we're talking about like a crossover kind of hunting any kind of martial and i'm trying to use the term martial more than tactical because tactical has become so thrown around it doesn't really mean anything you know you go to walmart and find some boots and you're like tactical boots like what does that mean like anyway but martial meaning like to use force on an opponent an adversary some kind of martial application um You might be aware of the scout rifle, which typically is in .308.

That is like the de facto scout rifle caliber, says Jeff Cooper, or said Jeff Cooper, Colonel of the U.S. Marine Corps, former.

However, you may not be aware that there's a smaller subset genre lovingly referred to as the Cub Scout rifle concept, which is basically the scout rifle concept... which is like this kind of concept, but in a smaller version, dubbed the Cub Scout, and generally in a 5.56, .223.

So if you can find one, I do believe that Ruger, which is my favorite Scout rifle so far, made a .223 version.

I don't see it listed currently, but they do exist.

I also believe that you can get the Steyr Scout rifle A rifle I believe Jeff Cooper himself had a hand in.

They make that same rifle in 5.56. Now, I don't know if he was around for the 5.56 version, but he was around for the development of the Steyr Scout Rifle.

It's a cool rifle.

Maybe you're not.

Maybe a lot of people aren't familiar with Jeff Cooper.

But if you know your firearm safety rules, you probably should give some credit to Jeff Cooper.

But he did a lot.

And one of the things he did was a scout rifle.

um and one of the reasons he liked that one the optics when he was designing those weren't as rugged as they are today and two uh he liked to shoot with both eyes open well so do i but i shoot any optic with both eyes open i don't care if it's uh i don't care what kind of optic it is i shoot it with both eyes open unless there's some weird thing going on where like the sun is shining in one eye or something i shoot with both eyes open i don't care if it's irons i don't care if it's a red dot i don't care if it's a reflex sight i don't care if it's a a high power optic a low power optic i shoot with both eyes open so i i don't really see that advantage they can balance better depending on the rifle but the scout rifle concept this is a very good versatile rifle and there's a lot of different iterations of the scout rifle there's the steyr there's the ruger there's the new ruger there's uh the savage And I don't think there's a perfect scout rifle.

Again, I like the Ruger stainless steel, the old one, stainless steel controlled round feed.

Jeff Cooper was a big fan of the 308.

Jeff Cooper on rifles.

That's what we're going to talk about today on Gunfighter Life.

Welcome to the podcast where we talk about guns, gunfighting, tactics, ballistics, the right way, with God at the center, Judeo-Christian values, and real world, first-hand experience.

If this is your first rodeo here, check out bio in the show notes.

As to why you should listen to anything I have to say, but today's not really about my bio.

Let's talk about Jeff Cooper or Colonel Jeff Cooper.

I may not always refer to him as Colonel Jeff Cooper.

I mean no disrespect.

Sizemore is injured as he tried to cover the bag.

And Jeff Cooper, Philly's assistant trainer, racing out along with Danny Ozard.

Got his left wrist, his glove hand.

Ted had his hand in there trying to catch the ball.

He's only been caught once.

Richards sold 56 last year to set an all-time San Diego Padre Club record.

Ted Sizemore is being administered to by Jeff Cooper, Philly's assistant trainer, and Danny Ozark is also out there, and Siz is heading toward the dugout.

Richards at second base and nobody out.

I bet.

Now, you said you started at Gunsight in 93, so you got to work with Jeff Cooper for a while.

I

did.

That's a good way to put it.

On a little different note, but I've always been kind of curious about this and where you've kind of been there since almost the beginning.

I remember years and years ago, probably... probably back in the 80s when Jeff Cooper started talking about the scout rifle concept, which was a short-barreled carbine, preferably in .308 with a forward-mounted scope.

Was that something that he was using in the field himself, and he just kept gravitating towards it until he thought that was something that other people used?