Jeff Cooper

John Dean "Jeff" Cooper is America's best-known and most widely followed firearms instructor, author, lecturer, and consultant.

Internationally acclaimed as the father of the modern pistol technique, his accomplishments in the shooting field, as well as his contributions to it, are legendary.

Jeff was born in 1920 in Los Angeles. As a young man, he traveled extensively with his father, a successful real estate broker who imparted in him a voracious appetite for knowledge, adventure, and culture. In 1941, Jeff was graduated from Stanford University with a BA in political science, and he was commissioned as a second lieutenant in the U.S. Marine Corps the same year. He served in World War II and later Korea, resigning in 1955 as a lieutenant colonel.

In the 1950s Jeff was the guiding light in the Bear Valley Gunslingers in California, which would later develop into the Southwest Combat Pistol League. Many techniques new to pistol shooting, which revolutionized the use of the handgun in combat, can be traced back to these beginnings and Jeff's later work at the American Pistol Institute at Gunsite Ranch, Arizona, which he founded and developed. (He is no longer associated with the current Gunsite Training Center.) A lifelong big-game hunter, Jeff has also been influential in the development of the modern rifle, notably with his "scout rifle" concept. His latest book, The Art of the Rifle, published by Paladin Press, addresses that subject in depth.

Jeff is the founding president and honorary lifetime chairman of the International Practical Shooting Confederation (IPSC) and sits on the Board of Directors of the National Rifle Association (NRA). He has taught defensive pistolcraft in Mexico, Guatemala, El Salvador, Honduras, Costa Rica, the Philippines, Germany, Belgium, Switzerland, Sweden, South Africa, Southwest Africa, and Rhodesia, as well as in the United States. In 1995, he received the Outstanding American Handgunner award.

He has served for 20 years as handgun editor of Guns & Ammo magazine and is currently editor at large with a monthly column, "Cooper's Corner." He is also the author of several books, including Fighting Handguns; Handguns Afield; Cooper on Handguns; Fireworks; To Ride, Shoot Straight, and Speak the Truth; Gargantuan Gunsite Gossip; The Complete Book of Shooting; The Expert's Book of Shooting Sports; Another Country; Principles of Personal Defense (Self-Defense M-Z section); and The Art of the Rifle (Firearms A-G section). The latter two are available in the current Paladin catalog.