Ladies pistol

Wizard had a unique way of shooting…
It frequently surprised, and it was always interesting to see peoples reactions whenever they
were at target practice around other shooters who hadn’t seen his style before …
It was unorthodox, but it was certainly effective…

He would quickly turn his head to look at the target, just a glimpse. ..
Then he’d turn his body or step in a direction, and from wherever he was holding or drawing his gun
he’d start to fire as he drew…
He didn’t wait to line up the target, he didn’t telescope his shots by his body stance…
From wherever his gun was, in his hand, his pocket, his pants… he shot as he drew.
As the gun completed its arc, keeping with the momentum of the draw,  passing in front of the target, he kept firing…

He always hit the target, and usually several times…
Not usually in middle, or the “bullseye” of the target
but would spread his shots across either side of it…

Part of this technique was his choice of gun… he used an extremely small and light pistol.
Some might call it a “ladies” pistol…

Cottinger remembered the conversation when someone once tried to jibe him for his choice of weapon…

“Yeah, the thing is, I don’t want to have to lug aroud half a ton of iron mongery in my pants…”
Wizard had retorted irritatedly…
 
A fucking glock is like an anvil, and that thing your shooting, you can’t carry that in a pocket…
It’d pull your pants down…
And most of the time you are carrying that shit anyway, so you need a holster, a big heavy belt to hold it up… maybe a crane or a forklift…
You’ve already added a couple of kilos to your clothes, so you then need big jeans or heavy pants to go with that, and then you’re walking like a cowboy anywhere you go…
Lugging around that hand cannon, thick heavy belt and holster to go with it…
Loudly pronouncing you are carrying…
Heavy clothing slowing you down…
If you have a shoulder sling, same thing…
Adding weight, changing your balance… making you less comfortable,  and a making number of actions slower and less easy…
A trained eye can spot it easily enough…
And if you do need to draw it, let’s hope there’s no hurry, eh…

Heavy, slower to draw, slower to aim…
No thanks…

I want something small and light, I can carry it wherever, without needing extra crap, and If I need to use it I can do It in a hurry…
Wizard deftly lifted the small black pistol he was carrying as he spoke , pointing to it …
Cottinger had gotten another insight into the wizard’s technique after another younger slackjaw had attempted to criticise his ability to hit a bullseye…

“Man, I don’t give a shit about that…”
 
What I do care about is hitting something quickly if I need to …
If any of those targets were live, they’d know about it, and I’d be quickly on my way out of there, while you were wasting precious milliseconds trying to aim for the body mass, that is, if you could have actually raised that colossal blunderbuss inside your coat in time to shoot…
And your technique doesn’t have a failsafe…what if your tired, or drunk, or have the flu, or someone spiked your fucking drink?
You still need to shoot, but your aim and timing is further off because of your condition…

Your method requires conditions conducive to its operation, you need the time to sight and aim,
the heavier your gun, the more opportunity your opponent has to either draw first or evade you, and your technique relies on you making a particular stance and body stance, and by the time
you have made that, telescoping all the while of what you are doing, and have hefted that railway sleeper of a piece into position, a number of game changing strategic things could have happened …

Cottinger prided himself that he was one of the fortunte ones who had not naiievely rubbed wizard the wrong way on the shooting range, and had, in the course of their association had picked up some very interesting information from the wizard, as well as becoming occasional drinking buddies with the famous character…

It was after all, Wizards Han Solo like, street readiness, which had left two dart gun wielding
mercenaries clutching punctured bodies, when he was on his way to deliver “that suitcase” to
Terry Cribbs …
So he well knew what wizard needed and preferred in the firearm department.

Word on the street was that a number of assassins had converged on the city, so a street flare from the wiz asking him to find something suitable in the firearm department wasn’t too much of a surprise…

He was in fact set to have lunch with wizard next week, but that wasn’t how things were done…
out in the open…where who knows however many prying eyes, and these days, cameras, might see…

And so it was , on a warm summers evening,  Derrick “The Iceman” Cottinger waited till nightfall, when the levels of satellite snooping and long distance visual surveillance or recognition were at their minimum,  and found  the drop point the graffiti had described…

He pushed the loose brick back into place and dropped the two caps of well known beer brands on the street corner…(Piece and ammo in place)…and tagged a brick with his graffiti callsign…
“Ranga”