Recent Book: Grip …Sights … Aim … Squeeze: “Combat Shooting for Police”
| Published date | 01 January 1979 |
| Date | 01 January 1979 |
| DOI | 10.1177/0032258X7905200119 |
| Subject Matter | Recent Book |
GRIP
...
SIGHTS
...
AIM
...
SQUEEZE
PAULB.
WESTON:
"Combat
Shooting
for
Police" (2nd Edition)
Charles C. Thomas: $10.75
This is the second edition of a well
written training
mannual
first published
in 1960. Professor
WESTON,
who has
considerable pistol shooting experience,
was at one time the Officer-in-Charge of
the New York City Police Firearms Unit
and
in later years has
taught
basic and
advanced shooting at California
State
University at Sacramento, California.
The
author
has endeavoured to cover
all aspects of Police
Combat
Shooting
starting with the basic principles of
handgunnery and working right up
through
the spectrum of
combat
shooting culminating with a full
chapter
on
combat
tactics
and
protection
equipment.
Almost athird of the
book
deals with
the selection of handguns and ancillary
equipment suitable for Police use.
It
is
pleasing to note
that
the Professor has
been able to evaluate the main makes of
Automatic
Pistols
and
Revolvers
without entering into the only too
common
argument of Revolver versus
Auto
Pistol for Police use.
An interesting
chapter
on reloading
gives quite a few tips on the aspect of the
shooter's art and highlights some of the
pitfalls which can be encountered when
casting one's own bullets.
The
book
concludes with an
important
chapter on the need for continually
planned practice in order to maintain a
high
standard
of efficiency and alertness.
Although directed mainly at American
Police readers, I feel
that
this
book
provides much useful information which
could be advantageous to Police Weapon
Training
Departments
in the United
Kingdom. H.L.S.
AN EVEN
MORE
VEXED
SUBJECT
A. R.
LINDESMITH,A.
L.
STRAUSS
and N. K. DENZIN"Socia/ Psychologv"
Holt, Rinehart
and
Winston New York £8.00
This
textbook
shows signs of its
original publication date - 1949- and is
now appearing in only its fifth edition in
thirty years.
It
is written from the
interesting, but in some ways limited,
'symbolic interactionist viewpoint' and is
therefore on the borderline between the
soft science of psychology and the even
mushier science of sociology.
Symbolic interactionists stress the
importance of the meanings
that
we
attach
to
our
own and
other
people's
behaviour and the effect this has on
our
own subsequent actions. This stress on
what goes on in
that
'black box' - the
mind - places this school of psychology at
the opposite end of the spectrum to the
Behaviourists who are only interested in
overt behaviour. The arguments however
between these two extremes were lost and
won a generation ago when the middle
ground
was cultivated
and
psychology
began to flourish.
In this editionof the book the
author's
have increased the coverage of the
scientific basis of the behavioural
sciences. They
take
Kuhn's concept
that
revolutions in
thought
determine the way
we (and scientists in particular) view the
world
about
us. Thus, to take the most
usual example, the heliocentric view of
the
solar
system
was
literally
'unthinkable'
until
the
time
of
Copernicus
(although
all the information
was available and the theory had been
suggested 1500 years earlier). The
example used by these
authors
is the less
90
familiar
and
therefore
interesting
example of the discovery of the cause of
malaria.
Because of the
author's
viewpoint a
considerable section -
about
athird - of
the
book
is devoted to the role of
language in shaping behaviour.
Thus
the
fact
that
Arabs have. it is said, six
thousand
words relating to camels. and
that Eskimos have dozens of words
describing different types of snow. helps
them to make distinctions and to
take
decisions
that
would be impossible for
us.Curiously little, in a book on social
psychology, is devoted to the wealth of
studies and experiments on grou p
behaviour. Even more remarkable in a
book
on social psychology
that
isdealing
with mental artefacts is
that
a mere two
pages deal specifically with prejudiceand
stereotypes.
This is thus a very uneven book.
tending to re-fight old battles against the
Behaviourists, but it is often interesting
and readable. The scope of this new
edition has been extended by including a
chapter on old age and the
book
does
therefore provide a review of
human
life
from birth to death. The early pre-
language years of infancy are but
sparsely covered however. and this
neglect of a now well-researched area of
human
development (no mention of
maternal deprivation. for example!)
reveals
that
this book is in some respects
30 years out of date. J. HIL
TON
January /979
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