FEATURED AUTHOR
ROBERT H. BOATMAN
 “Only
when you’ve slept with a cocked-and-locked 45-caliber
1911 under your pillow or gone about your daily business
with one nestled in your underwear do you begin to understand
the true nature of the fighting gun. An intimate relationship
with the 1911 pistol is a necessary rite of passage for
everyone who would be firearms literate,” says Robert
H. Boatman, author of Living with the 1911: A Fresh Look at the
Fighting Gun.
Boatman is the author of two other Paladin best-sellers, Living
with Glocks: The Complete Guide to the New Standard in Combat Handguns and
Living with the Big .50: The Shooter’s Guide to the World’s
Most Powerful Rifle. He is a native Texan who has carried a  gun,
professionally and otherwise, virtually since kindergarten
and counts himself a member of the elite corps of dropouts from St. John’s
College in Annapolis. He has had parallel careers as a
national political strategist, VIP bodyguard, creative executive with
major advertising agencies, undercover cop, international magazine publisher
and editor-in-chief, freelance journalist, and crusading newspaperman.
He is now a full-time gun writer, writing monthly columns and feature
stories for several gun magazines and hard at work on more books for Paladin
Press.
Of his latest
book on the 1911, Boatman goes on to say, “The 1911
is the essence of the fighting gun. Everything we’ve learned from
Jeff Cooper’s revolutionary Modern Technique of the Pistol, which
is really more specifically the Modern Technique of Man-on-Man
Fighting with the Pistol, we’ve learned on the solid platform of
the 1911.”
PALADIN: You devote quite a bit of space in your book
to conversations with 1911 luminaries like Jeff Cooper,
Louis Awerbuck, Max Joseph, Wayne Novak, and Robbie Barrkman,
and you write about historical 1911 people like Armand
Swenson and Charlie Kelsey. How important have people like this
been in keeping the 1911 alive?
RHB: The
1911 world has always been populated by great, strong personalities.
The people are at least as interesting as the guns. Without
the pioneers you mention—and I do spend a great deal of
time with them in the book—the 1911 world would be as boring and
passionless as, say, the Beretta world or the Sig world
would be if anybody cared to write about such things. The
pistol would still be alive, because Browning’s basic design is
as elegant as ever, but it would not be the great inspirational
resource for the gun culture that it is today.
PALADIN: The way you write about the 1911 pistol, you
make it sound so personal. This is an attitude that pervades
your new 1911 book, as it does your other Paladin books, Living
with Glocks and Living
with the Big .50. Do you think most shooters have a
personal relationship with their guns?
RHB: Guns are
natural extensions of the human body. They’re our fangs and claws.
Human intelligence creates them and develops the doctrines
that allow us to use them most effectively, all of which
makes them as natural and normal and necessary to survival as the physiological
weapons other predators are born with. The psychotics who declaw their
pet cats are the same kind of people who keep trying to ban guns.
PALADIN: And each gun has its own personality?
RHB: Every
experienced shooter is well aware that every individual
gun has its own personality and that different facets
of that personality are brought to light in the special relationship
between the individual gun and the individual shooter. Even the antigun
fruitcakes realize this on some subconscious level. But they wrongly
believe that guns lead dangerous lives of their own free will; they
don’t realize
that a gun’s personality only comes to life in the hands of its
shooter.
PALADIN: What
are the unique “personality traits” that
make the 1911 such a classic fighting gun?
RHB: Three
important ones come to mind: the single active safety—the thumb
safety—which is simple, positive, and intuitive;
the excellent trigger pull, inherently better than any
other semiauto, or at least it can be made to be better; and the grip,
which was a major improvement over revolver grips at the time and is still
better than most other semiautos. There is a fourth, of course—the
.45 ACP cartridge, which is a definitive part of the 1911’s identity
and is still the best man-on-man fighting cartridge of
them all.
PALADIN: You write quite a bit about shooting techniques,
but you seem to emphasize mindset far more than conventional
marksmanship. Why is that?
RHB: Shooting is a martial
art, where the body must control the environment in accordance
with a paradigm created by the mind. Some people lack the
necessary killer instinct, which is the mental equivalent
of a major physical handicap like not having thumbs. Sometimes, the right
kind of training can rekindle the killer instinct in those who have apparently
lost it. For those who have it without question, it can be further refined
and intensified. In either case, it’s
that mindset that must precede and direct the application
of mechanical shooting skills. Otherwise, the skills, which
are quite easily learned in and of themselves, have no
focus and are therefore meaningless.
PALADIN: You have strong opinions about the isosceles
stance. Do you really not see it as a viable option for
combat shooters?
 RHB: As
a shooting stance for 9mm-class handguns or smaller the
isosceles is okay, but as a tactical stance it is extremely weak. Some
instructors like it because it’s easy to
teach to nonphysical people. It is a natural stance for a lot of women
and men with no athletic ability, much like lobbing a softball or turning
a steering wheel underhanded. Such people can have trouble with the more
physically aggressive Weaver stance. I would venture to say that any real-world
operators who use it have simply been trained in it and don’t know
any better. The isosceles does nothing to enhance precision control of
a hard-kicking gun, and it severely restricts tactical flexibility. It
is not an instinctive stance for a man in a fight. It’s an example
of how techniques developed in competitive game-playing
work their way into the lexicon of real combat shooting
and cause problems. In a gunfight, the isosceles stance can get you killed.
PALADIN: Your
book also features plenty of more down-to-earth material,
such as a survey of the current 1911 models available and a look at all
the things a shooter can do to customize his pistol. Given the fact that
the basic design of the 1911 hasn’t materially
changed since it was invented, why are so many companies
making new guns and why are custom pistolsmiths and parts
makers still growing at such a healthy rate?
 RHB: The
1911 is not perfect, and there are some pretty simple things
you can do to perfect it for your own purposes. It’s
a great platform on which you can build a very personal
gun reflecting your own needs and desires and tastes. It takes very little
to configure a basic 1911 for any specific job, from military combat to
personal defense to different kinds of competition. One reason for the
long life of the 1911 is its versatility. You have to know this is a gun
that will live forever when, almost a hundred years after the first 1911
rolls out of the Colt factory, Smith & Wesson finally gives up and
introduces its own brand new model of the very same gun.
PALADIN: The basic design of the 1911 hasn't changed
in 100 years, but the 1911 continues to evolve and keep pace with the
times. What are the latest trends with regard to the 1911, and do you
believe they will stick?
RHB: There are two strong trends I believe
will last. One is a retro movement where the 1911 is returning
to its roots to make up for all the dead-end “evolutions” and
gadgetry that gun makers and hobbyists have perpetrated
on it over the years. The other is the smaller, lighter,
handier, smoother, and more compact 1911 designed specifically
with concealed carry in mind. There is, indeed, still some
room for improvement in this latter specialized role.
PALADIN: A lot of books have been written on the 1911.
What makes Living with the 1911 different?
RHB: I
don’t attempt to wrap up a century of drama
in a few thousand words, though I do cover the historical
high points I think are most important, even if these are sometimes at
odds with conventional wisdom. Rather, being as brutally honest and straightforward
as I can be, I try to give the reader some special insights into the extraordinary
world of the 1911 that he won’t get anywhere else.
LIVING WITH THE 1911
A Fresh Look at the Fighting Gun
LIVING WITH THE BIG .50
The Shooter’s Guide to the World’s Most Powerful Rifle
LIVING WITH GLOCKS
The Complete Guide to the New Standard in Combat Handguns
|