{"id":34142,"date":"2020-04-27T16:58:16","date_gmt":"2020-04-27T21:58:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/hcsblogdotorg.wordpress.com\/?p=34142"},"modified":"2020-04-27T16:58:16","modified_gmt":"2020-04-27T21:58:16","slug":"what-is-it-for","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thetacticalhermit.com\/index.php\/2020\/04\/27\/what-is-it-for\/","title":{"rendered":"What Is It For?"},"content":{"rendered":"<div>\n<h2>\u00a0Another sage quip from John Farnam regarding keeping your fighting gun simple. This is a prime example of Competition &#8220;race&#8221; gun mentality bleeding over into the Practical Carry arena.<\/h2>\n<h2><\/h2>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" loading=\"lazy\" class=\"size-full wp-image-34145\" src=\"https:\/\/hcsblogdotorg.files.wordpress.com\/2020\/04\/1911.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"619\" height=\"337\" \/><\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<h2><em>\u201cBefore you leave the house, look in the mirror and take one thing off.\u201d<\/em><\/h2>\n<h2>Coco Chanel<\/h2>\n<h2><\/h2>\n<h2><em>Peacetime\/Wartime<\/em><\/h2>\n<h2><\/h2>\n<h2>\u201cForward\u201d slide serrations (forward of the ejection port) on pistols are not a new idea.<\/h2>\n<h2>The Colt M1900 pistol (that would eventually evolve into the 1911 pistol we know today) had them, and it was a bad idea, as it encouraged the shooter to get fingers in front of the muzzle.<\/h2>\n<h2>At the time, autoloading pistols, particularly pistols designed for the military, were just coming into being, and designers of the era had only a blurred idea how they would be carried, handled, and used in during actual fighting.<\/h2>\n<h2>A decade later, when the Colt M1900 evolved, by steps, into the Colt M1911, serrations were wisely moved to the rear of the slide, at the insistence of the War Department!<\/h2>\n<h2>They&#8217;ve been there ever since!<\/h2>\n<h2>Today, forward slide serrations are still a bad idea, for the same reason they\u2019ve always been a bad idea, and only recently have they foolishly made a small-scale comeback, at least among some custom gunsmiths.<\/h2>\n<h2>They are still extremely (and wisely) rare on OEM pistols!<\/h2>\n<h2>Forward slide serrations are an example of a \u201cfeature\u201d that some shooters in certain quaint competitions may think they want, but for Operators and War-Fighters they are useless and thus ignored when present, dangerous when the shooter mistakenly tries to get his support-side hand far enough forward to actually put them to use.<\/h2>\n<h2>\u201cPeep,\u201d or \u201caperture,\u201d rear sights on military rifles, until recently, were mostly confined to America.<\/h2>\n<h2>Europeans and Soviets preferred \u201cnotch\u201d or \u201cV\u201d rear sights.<\/h2>\n<h2>Typically, iron rifle sights, both front and rear, were made large during wartime, so they could be used to get on-target quickly.<\/h2>\n<h2>As soon as the war is over, sights become small again, so that high scores can be achieved, once more, during quaint peacetime academic exercises in theoretical accuracy!<\/h2>\n<h2>This is one reason why the 1917 \u201cAmerican Enfield\u201d rifle was preferred by WWI War-Fighters over the 1903 Springfield.<\/h2>\n<h2>Both were perfectly functional, but the 1903&#8217;s small sights were slower on-target than were the larger (but less precise) sights on the 1917.<\/h2>\n<h2>Even in our modern age, with universal adoption of optics on military rifles, War-Fighters and Operators want tidy, unlittered reticles with big dots and thick cross-hairs for quick target acquisition, while target competitors (and maybe snipers) want small dots, thin cross-hairs, and all kinds of esoteric ranging information cluttering the reticle and competing for the shooter\u2019s attention.<\/h2>\n<h2>When a student asks what kind of gun they should get, and what kind of sights it should have, I reply, before asking anything else:<\/h2>\n<h2>\u201cWhat is it for?\u201d<\/h2>\n<h2><\/h2>\n<h2><em>\u201cBeware of an old man in a profession where men usually die young!\u201d<\/em><\/h2>\n<h2>Anon<\/h2>\n<h2><\/h2>\n<h2>\/John<\/h2>\n<\/div>\n<h2><\/h2>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>\u00a0Another sage quip from John Farnam regarding keeping your fighting gun simple. This is a prime example of Competition &#8220;race&#8221; gun mentality bleeding over into the Practical Carry arena. &nbsp; \u201cBefore you leave the house, look in the mirror and take one thing off.\u201d Coco Chanel Peacetime\/Wartime \u201cForward\u201d slide serrations (forward of the ejection port)&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false,"jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false}}},"categories":[3786,5445,389,390,4802,5754],"tags":[8109,8110],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thetacticalhermit.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34142"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thetacticalhermit.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thetacticalhermit.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thetacticalhermit.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thetacticalhermit.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=34142"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/thetacticalhermit.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34142\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thetacticalhermit.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=34142"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thetacticalhermit.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=34142"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thetacticalhermit.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=34142"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}