Dean Speir

I received an email from Dean Speirs, who wrote the articles (in The Gun Zone) which inspired the KaBOOM! article.

His comments were pungent (and I mean this in the very nicest sense), to the point, and informative.

In subsequent exchanges, he gave me his permission to reprint his email, which I do here in grateful appreciation.

Well, I must say... and well, again!

A friend found your Jerry-the-Geek KaBoom piece and passed along the link. My blushes!

Coupla comments on that particular blog entry:

1. Gawd!, I wish I'd written "the tendencies of nervous, high-strung or over-stressed pistols to blow up during shooting," so I will add it to the kB! FAQ page somewhere with a (wholly self-serving) cite and link to your blog.
2. Minor erratum:
   

   We saw that in the John Wayne western movie Rio Lobo, essentially a 1970 remake of the 1966 Wayne Western El Dorado

   Delve a tad deeper into IMDb, Brasshopper, and you will learn that both Westerns were very directly remakes of 1959's Rio Bravo, all three being written by Leigh Brackett, directed by Howard Hawks, and starring Wayne.
   
   And if you ever wanna see a more modern "plugged barrel KaBOOM!," rent a copy of The Girl Hunters, in which Mickey Spillane plays his own detective creation!
3. Under the heading of "I was there and I'm surprised that you weren't:"
   

   The KaBOOM! factor was never important until some daring young man (probably Brian Enos) realized that the all-but-forgotten .38 Super cartridge could be used in a pistol which had higher magazine capacity

   I'm shocked... shocked, I tell you... that you don't know that the real culprit here was one Michael McCormick. He was the one who really pioneered the .38 Super in IPSC and almost single-handedly brought beards into vogue on the shooting fields of USPSA. "Chip" was the only one I saw at World Shoot VI in '83 shooting Super. I've since been informed that their may have been one other, but aside from a couple of Europeans shooting "Minor Nine," everyone else I saw was shooting .45 ACP. Chip finished 15th as I recollect, and seven months later, when I was at Steel Challenge, Super had been discovered in a huge way! (Yeah, I know... different power factors factor into this issue.)
4. Continuing in that section:
   

   ...but with a longer cartridge case it had the capacity to legally "make major" ... if loaded with MORE POWDER and which avoided the IPSC rule relegating 9x19 cartridges as "minor power".)

   Now this is very definitely your realm, not mine, but wasn't the "If the headstamp sez 'Luger' or 'Parabellum,' then it's minor!" rule instituted circa '89 or '90, long after hoisted the Super flag?
5. Persevering:
   

   At about the same time, they discovered compensators.

   Again I demur... I'm going up on the name of the South African shooter who actually got the ball rolling at the moment, but the shooter who (again I'll use the word) "pioneered" compensated guns here was Mike Plaxco, and that was circa 1981. WS VI two years later was still ruled by five-inch guns, however.
6. You're getting pretty far afield when you get to the Glock stuff, but then perhaps I'm being "too critical here." But you do have a factual error or three there, mostly in the model designations. But then that'll just allow the Glock Flock to dismiss you as a crank.
   
   Just remember this: Gaston's sole motivation to entering the .40 S&W market was a big "neener neener neener" to Smith & Wesson.
7. Glock has yet to adequately address the "not fully supported caseheads" problem.

I'll sign off here before you go on the nod.

Thanks for the kind words and the links.

If you're ever at a SHOT Show, I'll stand the first round... the second and third as well if Bane continues buying with his usual reckless abandon!

• Dean Speir <DeanSpeir@thegunzone.com>

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