PRINCIPLES
OF
PERSONAL DEFENSE
Copyright © 1972, 1989, 2006 by Jeff Cooper
Cover and interior illustrations
copyright © 2006 by Paul Kirchner
ISBN: 978-1-0983319-8-6
CONTENTS
FOREWORD BY LOUIS AWERBUCK
PREFACE
INTRODUCTION
PRINCIPLE ONE: Alertness
PRINCIPLE TWO: Decisiveness
PRINCIPLE THREE: Aggressiveness
PRINCIPLE FOUR: Speed
PRINCIPLE FIVE: Coolness
Principle SIX: Ruthlessness
PRINCIPLE SEVEN: Surprise
A FINAL WORD
FOREWORD
There are two men who influenced my life more than any other — my late father and Jeff Cooper.
I have had the privilege of knowing Colonel Cooper for three decades, during which time he has filled the roles of mentor, teacher, counsellor, and friend. Without the benefit of his teachings I would probably not be alive today — and neither would many others.
The greatest testament to his life’s work is the fact that currently there is not one firearms instructor of repute who was not influenced one way or another by his freely passed-on knowledge. A man of honor and integrity, he expects no less of others, and that is why he commands respect. In a day and age when almost anything can be bought, respect is the one quality which still has to be earned — and he has earned it.
In the early 1980s, when Jeff and Janelle paid my salary, I was never treated like an employee, and always felt I was working with the Coopers, as opposed to working for them. I was informed what needed to be done to facilitate the smooth running of Orange Gunsite during those Glory Days, and I did it. It was as simple as that, and that’s the way it should be.
Of all his prolific writings spanning half a century, including Cooper on Handguns, books on the “how-to’s” of sports car driving, Old West gunfighters, and later works such as Fireworks and To Ride, Shoot Straight, and Speak the Truth, the one which intrigued me more than any other was also the shortest. This was the original Principles of Personal Defense.
When all is said and done — as has been stated so many times through history — the mind is more important than any mechanical weapon. An armed idiot savant could be a dangerous enemy, but an armed idiot with no savant may as well be unarmed. He’s just another idiot.
And this is the gist of Colonel Cooper’s Principles of Personal Defense.
It is a classic, timeless work, encapsulated in a clear, concise, and succinct form. And like a twentieth-century Western Civilization equivalent of Musashi’s seventeenth-century Book of Five Rings, it should be read, studied, and then periodically reread and restudied. No matter how many times you read it, you will always find one more pearl of wisdom that you missed during the last read.
Principles of Personal Defense is the fighting man’s guide to mental conditioning — plain and simple. And there is no better work on the subject — period.
Maybe the Glory Days are gone, and Baby’s throaty roar no longer rings out over the Yavapai hills, but the wisdom and knowledge are laid out in print for perpetuity. All you have to do is read and learn …
Louis Awerbuck
January 2006
PREFACE
It is not common for an author to enjoy rereading something that he wrote a decade previously. Times change, styles change, attitudes change, and most of all people grow, both intellectually and emotionally. It is therefore with gratification and some little surprise that I was able to reread Principles of Personal Defense and to discover that I felt no need to change anything of importance. It stands as it stood, and insofar as it spoke the truth years ago, it speaks it still.