A definitive introduction to firearms training, helpful for the novice and the expert.
An astonishingly comprehensive guide to the use of firearms.
According to League (The Perfect Pistol Shot, 2017), proper training in the use of a handgun requires a system that addresses the totality of possible circumstances, which presupposes but goes well beyond marksmanship and open-distance shooting. His approach is called Practics (meaning practical tactics), designed to combine the value of several different existing techniques, including point-shooting and aimed-fire shooting, but it also accommodates firing while the shooter is in motion and even while the shooting arm is in motion. And since the vast majority of gunfights occur within close range, the author discusses (in impressive detail) hand-to-hand combat techniques relevant for those circumstances and even subcontact shooting, in which a gun’s muzzle is pressed directly into the target’s flesh at the point of firing. League considers a dizzying array of scenarios—shooting in the dark, shooting around a corner and ricocheting off a wall, shooting while running, warning shots, and a seemingly endless list of others. Also, he discusses the fundamentals of marksmanship, an exhaustive account of the shooter’s tools (from holsters to knives), ambidextrous training, and the proper response to a firearm’s malfunction. The orientation of the book is unyieldingly pragmatic. League relentlessly examines a range of predicaments with which a shooter might be confronted. The entire manual is the equivalent of a three-week training course; the author also provides helpful suggestions about how to follow the prescribed course of study, which includes a surfeit of instructive drills. League was a U.S. Marine Corps marksmanship and close-combat pistol instructor, and his wealth of experience and technical mastery are extraordinary. It’s difficult to imagine what would count as a more thorough treatment of the subject—he includes a discussion of firing straight up into the air and straight down into the ground. Also, the author supplies a searching account of the legal and moral questions that inevitably confront a shooter and the situations within which a “reasonably prudent person” can legitimately resort to deadly force as a matter of self-defense. League doesn’t glamorize or recommend violence—in fact, his book seems designed to correct unrealistic depictions of gun violence peddled in popular culture—but rather attempts to convey the safest and most effective uses of firearms consistent with the law. Occasionally, the author interjects his own political sentiments regarding gun control law, views which are not uncontroversial today and will certainly rankle some readers. Not everyone will agree that the “firearm is a tool for the civilized” or the fact that “the home defender being increasingly scrutinized and caricatured is undeniable.” Some will even be astonished by the pronouncement, delivered sans argument, that “George Zimmerman legally shot Trayvon Martin. Zimmerman had a God-given right, recognized by the U.S. Constitution, to defend himself— and he nearly went to prison for it.” Nevertheless, this is an impressive training manual, written with great clarity and filled with photographs helpfully illustrating its lessons.
A definitive introduction to firearms training, helpful for the novice and the expert.Pub Date: May 12, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-73232-460-2
Page Count: 388
Publisher: Baltimore House
Review Posted Online: June 7, 2018
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Stricter than, say, Bergen Evans or W3 ("disinterested" means impartial — period), Strunk is in the last analysis...
Privately published by Strunk of Cornell in 1918 and revised by his student E. B. White in 1959, that "little book" is back again with more White updatings.
Stricter than, say, Bergen Evans or W3 ("disinterested" means impartial — period), Strunk is in the last analysis (whoops — "A bankrupt expression") a unique guide (which means "without like or equal").Pub Date: May 15, 1972
ISBN: 0205632645
Page Count: 105
Publisher: Macmillan
Review Posted Online: Oct. 28, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 1972
An autobiography as toxic and addictive as any drug its author has ever ingested.
The legendary booze-addled metal rocker turned reality-TV star comes clean in his tell-all autobiography.
Although brought up in the bleak British factory town of Aston, John “Ozzy” Osbourne’s tragicomic rags-to-riches tale is somehow quintessentially American. It’s an epic dream/nightmare that takes him from Winson Green prison in 1966 to a presidential dinner with George W. Bush in 2004. Tracing his adult life from petty thief and slaughterhouse worker to rock star, Osbourne’s first-person slang-and-expletive-driven style comes off like he’s casually relating his story while knocking back pints at the pub. “What you read here,” he writes, “is what dribbled out of the jelly I call my brain when I asked it for my life story.” During the late 1960s his transformation from inept shoplifter to notorious Black Sabbath frontman was unlikely enough. In fact, the band got its first paying gigs by waiting outside concert venues hoping the regularly scheduled act wouldn’t show. After a few years, Osbourne and his bandmates were touring America and becoming millionaires from their riff-heavy doom music. As expected, with success came personal excess and inevitable alienation from the other members of the group. But as a solo performer, Osbourne’s predilection for guns, drink, drugs, near-death experiences, cruelty to animals and relieving himself in public soon became the stuff of legend. His most infamous exploits—biting the head off a bat and accidentally urinating on the Alamo—are addressed, but they seem tame compared to other dark moments of his checkered past: nearly killing his wife Sharon during an alcohol-induced blackout, waking up after a bender in the middle of a busy highway, burning down his backyard, etc. Osbourne is confessional to a fault, jeopardizing his demonic-rocker reputation with glib remarks about his love for Paul McCartney and Robin Williams. The most distinguishing feature of the book is the staggering chapter-by-chapter accumulation of drunken mishaps, bodily dysfunctions and drug-induced mayhem over a 40-plus-year career—a résumé of anti-social atrocities comparable to any of rock ’n’ roll’s most reckless outlaws.
An autobiography as toxic and addictive as any drug its author has ever ingested.Pub Date: Jan. 25, 2010
ISBN: 978-0-446-56989-7
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Grand Central Publishing
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2009
IN THE NEWS
© Copyright 2025 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
