The Cross And The Switchblade Book Review
Helen Francke
Revolvers have their place. I own several and a couple play into my home defense plan. None of the revolvers are go-to guns, but a Smith and Wesson Model 29 .44 Magnum (a la Dirty Harry) provides plenty of power for a last-ditch emergency gun. For long drives, and occasions when I carry a backup, a 5 or 6-shot revolver with a 1 5/8-inch barrel in a cross-draw holster does the trick. In a jacket or vest pocket, a hammerless .38 Special makes for a snag-free draw. It also provides the comfort of knowing I can shoot more than one shot without the action catching on some material and not going into battery.
Although all these options are great, there are occasions when something smaller is called for. I looked at a two-shot derringer, but it was too heavy. There are several small-caliber automatics, but the safeties are normally junk and the reliability questionable. I want it for an emergency. I do not want it to go off in my pocket and cause me to be the emergency. That lead me to revolvers.
Then, I came across the Standard Manufacturing Switch-Gun. The barrel and frame were CNC machined from stainless steel. The little revolver packs five rounds of .22 Mag and tips the scales at a mere nine ounces loaded.
The revolver folds into the polymer grip. Folded, it is slightly fatter than most cellphones, but smaller in other dimensions. It would be hard for anyone to detect it riding in your pants pocket, purse, or even the breast pocket of a suit.
When folded, the grip completely covers the trigger and minimizes the profile. As for safety, unless you are vying for a Darwin Award by employing a special kind of stupid, there is not much chance of a pocket discharge with a single-action.
To deploy the Switch-gun, there is a button (switch) that pops the grip open. The feel is something akin to a traditional switchblade knife. Being that it is a single-action, it has a hammer that must be cocked before firing. In an emergency, if wounded, the little pocket pistol can be deployed, cocked, and fired one-handed.
A novelty that might work okay in certain circumstances. But for the cost, there are much better options out there. The only people who would pay that much for this are people who have more money than they know what to do with.
Look, If I could hip my Old Model 7 1/2 in Vaquero all day long I would say something like this is not needed, but not all of us live in Southern West Virginia. I keep this gun attached to a Warbull magnet in my car. I can tell you when road rage comes to your window while sitting in 2hrs worth of traffic, it is the perfect deterrence against some lunitc that you accidentally cutoff.
Major lesson here for those who think they know what it will be like if they ever draw on another person. Most likely the deputy could not hear what they were saying AND/OR he was still in the Fight or Flight Response and it meant nothing to him. I am thinking that because of the recent firefight his ears were ringing so badly that he could not hear any of the commands and he still had so much adrenaline and cortisol in his system that he could not interpret what he was hearing. I fully understand that.
Let me give you my background. I am 71 (for another month) and 50 or so years ago, I was an Army Medic on a team that did SAR as well as Recon. We would go out into the boonies for 7-10 days at a time checking out the scenery. For SAR, we would go out to find our guys after their aircraft had unfortunate collisions with high velocity chunks of metal that were sent up to ruin the day of the occupants of said aircraft. I have been on the receiving end of incoming rounds more than once and none of us ever whizzed ourselves as a result. I have drawn weapons to return fire more than once. My hearing is shot as a result.
After I got out of the Army, I spent more than 30 years working as a nurse, in busy metro ERs until I retired from ER in 2008. During my time in ER, I worked more shootings than I can count, but it would be in the high 3 digits, maybe even 4. I saw innumerable cases where a shooter fired at a shootee and the shootee was not injured enough to be stopped dead in his tracks but killed the shooter. Many times the shootee was injured just badly enough to require care, so we saved him and he became a guest of the Oklahoma Department of Corrections for the remainder of his life for homicide. Many times the shootee was on drugs and never really felt much until quite some time passed after he was shot.
Many cases involved what I consider to be inadequate weaponry on the part of the shooter, usually in choosing something like a .22 LR, .25 ACP, .32 ACP, et al., which only pissed off the shootee, who was, as I said, frequently on drugs, and because nothing vital was hit the shootee went on to kill the shooter. Those calibers were referred to as the last bad choice of dead people everywhere by members of the local constabulary for just that reason. It is extremely nave and foolhardy to assume that just because one has a gun, the assailant will turn tail and exit. Saying that indicates limited life experience in these matters. There is no fact in your statement about presenting a firearm being a deterrent most of the time. That is an opinion presented by those who want to believe it. It can happen but not with sufficient regularity to bet your life on it. You will have a better chance of seeing a unicorn.
Another sign of naivete is saying that shot placement is all that matters. Having been there, I can attest that it is much more difficult than anyone who has never been there can imagine. Anyone who says not so demonstrates an inability to accept what has been documented time and again by more agencies than I can count.
I have known cops who were on the pistol team who, in their first live fire with a suspect, at a distance of less than 10 feet, hit the suspect with fewer than half the rounds fired and of those hits, less than a third were even mortal wounds. This was using high cap magazines, and more than one officer shooting. It changed their world.
I am relating real world situations, not theory, or what I have seen on the big screen. I get little enjoyment from war movies or shoot-em-ups. I have seen too many real dead people to be entertained by watching it on a screen. I have picked up body parts in the aftermath of some unpleasant situations and was not entertained.
Because I grabbed this from the WaybackMachine Internet archive, the photos were lost to the ether. However, I still have the one I reviewed so many years ago, that I took some pictures to flesh out the review. So if it looks like there is a hanging caption/sentence that seems out of phase, it is an artifact of not having the original picture.
I still carry the knife from time to time, and my opinion is relatively unchanged. The pocket clip is still awful, the action is still fidgety, and the blade still has a useful geometry. I do not believe that it is still in production, but if you can find one cheap on the secondary market, it is a pretty good knife.
When I first caught a glimpse of the Ken Onion designed CRKT Hootenanny, I knew it was one that I wanted to get my hands on. First and foremost, Ken designed it to be a folding fish and bird knife. It is also a flipper, albeit unassisted, which I have been developing a fondness for. And finally, I was looking forward to trying out another folder as I have been reviewing mostly fixed blades of late.
It had been the better part of a year since I had reviewed the CRKT Halfachance (also a Ken Onion), and it seemed like a good time to try to get another CRKT product in the queue. I called up my contacts in Oregon and soon a Hootenanny arrived, gratis, at my door.
The knife has very good lateral stability. I can flex it sideways at the pivot, but it requires more effort than it takes for most folders. Front to back stability is excellent, with no deflection or wiggle noticeable either upon examination or use.
There is jimping in the traditional location above the pivot, but there is also additional jimping on the spine of the blade. This is about an inch back from the tip, allowing for choked up control. It is a feature I first noticed on the Benchmade Steep Country, and I have come to appreciate it when gutting slimy trout.
The cardboard test was a joy. The hollow grind offered little friction against the corrugated, and the knife zipped through slice after slice. I continued the test through 200 linear-feet of cross sliced corrugated, before both my cardboard supply and hand gave out.
The Hoot is meant to be a fish and game knife. It does a good job. Fins and head sliced off clean, the knife remained safely held despite a coating of slime, and the sharp edge laid the trout open with lightening efficiency.
If I am going to carry this knife when I am fishing, especially if it is my primary blade, it needs to be able to handle being pressed into emergency use. To that end, I put the Hoot through the preparation of wood and scraping a ferro-rod to build a small fire.
Before beginning the test, I decided to only use wood that was small enough to be broken over my knee. No batonning saplings this time. Even with smaller wood, I was concerned that the thin, hollow portion of the blade might become damaged.
I also worried about the framelock. This is frequently a failure point when a folder is abused. I definitely did not subject the Hootenanny to the same level of batoning, but I feel comfortable enough with the notion that should I need to I could prep enough wood to start a fire.
As it turns out, it was a lack of tinder prep that proved to be my undoing fire-wise. The Hoot did a great job making the fuzz stick, I just was cocky and should have taken the time to make several. You can never have too much small stuff when making a fire, and the Hootenanny excelled at shaving wood, so it was impatience on my part that led me to need 3 cotton balls to get it started. Unfortunately, the waterproof, hollow handle of my ferro-rod only holds 1.
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