3) The third reason for the bad way I feel about this “article” is that I used to have tremendous faith in this magazine called The Police Chief. I read it cover-to-cover every month, like some people read the Bible, and the city paid for my subscription. Because they knew I was valuable to them, and The Police Chief was valuable to me. I loved that goddamn magazine. It taught me things. It kept me ahead of the game.

But no more. Things are different now -- and not just for me either. As a respected law enforcement official for 20 years in the West, and now as a weapons consultant to a political candidate in Colorado, I can say from long and tremendous experience that The Police Chief has turned to cheap jelly. As a publication it no longer excites me, and as a phony Voice of the Brotherhood it makes me sick with rage. One night in Oakland, about a dozen years ago, I actually got my rocks off from reading the advertisements. . . I hate to admit such a thing, but it's true.

I remember one ad from Smith & Wesson when they first came out with their double-action .44 Magnum revolver: 240 grains of hot lead, exploding out of a big pipe in your hand at 1200 feet per second. . . and super-accurate, even on a running target.

Up until that time we'd all thought the .357 Magnum was just about the bee's nuts. FBI-filed tests had proved what the .357 could do: in one case, with FBI agents giving fire-pursuit to a carload of fleeing suspects, an agent in the pursuing car brought the whole chase to an end with a single shot from his .357 revolver. His slug penetrated the trunk of the fleeing car, then the back seat, then the upper torso of a back seat passenger, then the front seat, then the neck of the driver, then the dashboard, and finally imbedded itself in the engine block. Indeed, the .357 was such a terrifying weapon that for ten years only qualified marksmen were allowed to carry them.

So it just about drove me crazy when -- just after I'd qualified to carry a .357 -- I picked up a new issue of The Police Chief and saw an ad for the .44 Magnum, a brand-new revolver with twice the velocity and twice the striking power of the “old” .357.