Bill Wilson first became known to American Handgunner readers as a champion shooter and master pistolsmith. Today, of course, his Wilson Combat is a serious player in the firearms manufacturing industry. Aware that many pioneers of modern pistolcraft have passed away, he decided to assemble some of those remaining to pick their brains and archive some of their oral history. That came to pass at Bill’s Circle WC Ranch in Texas in September 2019, and I was fortunate enough to be there. Bill decided the baseline for his Practical Shooting Reunion would be people who had “been in the game” (or the business) since at least 1985.
Ken Hackathorn, Dave Westerhout of Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe), Jim McClary, and Bob Arganbright were all present at the historic Columbia Conference in Columbia, Missouri where the International Practical Shooting Confederation (IPSC) was born. It soon encompassed dozens of countries. Their reminiscence from that historic moment should be available on the Wilson Combat YouTube channel by the time you read this. It was the flowering of the bud that had been ripening since Jeff Cooper and a hard corps of dedicated pistoleros had begun free-style “combat shooting” in California in the 1950s.
Dan Predovich ran the first IPSC National Championship in Colorado in 1977. He shared with us photos of Jeff Cooper demonstrating how to scale the six-foot wall in the Cooper Assault course, and how to set the stage for his famous “Guatemalan steak house” shooting scenario.
McClary, a High Master in Police Pistol Course (PPC) competition, retired from a long and distinguished career with SLED, the South Carolina Law Enforcement Division. He’s now the administrator for the Law Enforcement Officers Hall of Fame in Columbia, South Carolina. The burgeoning use of auto pistols in action shooting competition was one thing that helped gun-savvy cops to convince their bosses to switch from service revolvers to the semi-automatic pistol back in the 60s and 70s. Ray Chapman, the first world champion of the combat pistol at whose school in Columbia, Missouri IPSC was born, joined Jeff Cooper before that to demonstrate the 1911 .45’s advantages to Southern California Law Enforcement agencies. Whole departments like Los Alamitos and El Monte switched to the 1911s back then, and I wouldn’t doubt this had some influence on LAPD SWAT’s choice of the same pistol in the late 60s.
From the armed citizens’ side of the house, we all remembered 1985. Seven states then had no provision at all for lawful concealed carry, most states that did offer permits were “may issue,” and only the state of Vermont allowed concealed carry without a permit. Today legal concealed carry is legally available in some form in every state, most of which are “shall-issue,” and more than a dozen states have adopted the Vermont model. “We’ve come a long way, baby.”
