10 May 99

We just completed a Basic Defensive Pistol Course here in the Midwest. One of our students was a local municipal police officer. Saturday was very strenuous, and the officer had been up late several nights during the previous week. So, when he arrived home on Saturday evening, he dissembled his pistol with the intention of cleaning it, but then decided to take a warm bath first.

While relaxing in the bathtub, the phone rang. A murder had just occurred in his little town (the first within anyone’s memory), and he, being the only sergeant in the department, was summoned to the scene!

He jumped out of the tub, got dressed as fast as he could, and suddenly remembered that his service pistol (a S&W 5916) was sitting in a number of individual pieces on his kitchen table!

He then scurried about the house trying to find another gun that would suffice. He finally found a recently-acquired Walther P-99, but, of course, it didn’t fit in his duty holster.

He went to the scene of the crime (an inter-mural homicide) with his Walther (a really ill-designed pistol) in his pocket. He felt not a little foolish, to say the least. On Sunday, he was back on the range with his newly cleaned S&W, which, for the rest of the day, functioned flawlessly.

Lesson: When you clean your carry gun, first get another carry gun and put it in your holster, so that you are always ready to go. Don’t get caught “with your pants down.”

/John