Читать книгу The Gun Digest Book of Combat Handgunnery онлайн

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At the time, most of America felt that if they wanted an auto that worked like a revolver, they would just carry one of their fine made-in-USA revolvers, thank you very much. In the middle of the 20th century, 1911 flag-bearer Jeff Cooper applied an engineer’s phrase that would stick to the double-action auto forever after. The concept was, he said, “an ingenious solution to a non-existent problem.”

Whether or not that was true at the time, a problem later came up to fit the solution. America had become, by the latter 20th century, the most litigious country in the world. With more lawyers per capita than any other nation, the United States became famous for tolerating utterly ridiculous lawsuits that, had they been brought in a country that followed the Napoleonic Code, would probably have ended up penalizing the plaintiff for having brought an unmeritorious case. Two elements of this would have impact on handgun selection in both police and private citizen sectors.

Gun control had joined abortion as one of the two most polarized debates in the land. Prosecutors were either elected by the same folks who elected the politicians, or appointed by elected politicians. Some of them found it expedient to “make examples” of politically incorrect shootings of bad guys by good guys. For this, they needed a hook.