“Your weapons should be hearty, not decorative,” wrote Miyamoto Musashi in The Book of Five Rings. For those unfamiliar, Musashi is considered the Kensei or Sword-Saint of Japan, having won over sixty duels to the death against opponents in the 17th century. During the last years of his life, Musashi sought solitude and wrote The Book of Five Rings to detail his way of training and view of the path to enlightenment in the martial arts.
When the master stated that your weapons should be hearty, not decorative, was he saying that they needed to be ugly or beat-up looking in order to be worthy? Having read his book in several translations, I believe his point was that your weapons should be hearty, durable, and reliable first, and decorative or pleasing to the eye second. However, at no time should we prioritize pleasing looks over reliability.
If you were to consider the various tools in your garage or workshop, I feel as though you’d apply the same standard to them as Musashi did to weapons.
I have a wood splitting maul that I’ve been using to split firewood for over a decade now. About once a year I run a stone over the cutting edge and apply some oil to it. It’s not pretty or cool, but it works as advertised, season after season.
Ditto the yellow-handled claw hammer that I have used on innumerable projects, up to and include building the chicken barn here on the ranch. The hammer works and it’s reliable. I don’t care that it is not pretty.
Priorities
While I doubt that I would get much pushback about tools being reliable first and foremost and their looks being of secondary consideration, what about the guns we say we own for self-defense or EDC?
If you own a firearm for the express purpose of home defense or concealed carry, that means you’re at least acknowledging that you recognize the need to have a tool that can be used to save your life and/or the lives of your family. That being said, how many men out there are prioritizing looks over reliability in the guns they claim are for “personal defense?” Are these guns tools or are they toys?
Smith & Wesson M&P .357
Yes, you have looked at the accompanying photos. Hell, I’m sure some of you have already formulated a comment based on the pictures alone without bothering to read the full article. Such is the state of man in the 21st century.
The tool featured here is a Smith & Wesson M&P .357 duty pistol I acquired as a police trade-in gun. The .357 SIG cartridge was a bit like the Blu-Ray of pistol calibers. It might have been viable under some circumstances, but after the shine wore off, it quickly faded from popularity. This was particularly true when the Clinton “assault weapons” ban expired and 17-round 9mm pistols became the standard.
For those of you who were in diapers or not even born in 1994, the Clinton AWB capped capacity for new magazines at ten rounds. And so, with every full-sized pistol being restricted to 10+1, there was stiff competition between handguns chambered in .45 ACP, .40 S&W, 9mm, and .357 SIG.
However, as the .357 SIG was a bottle-necked cartridge built on a necked down .40 S&W casing, it was both a “hot” or high-pressure found and, as is true of all bottle-necked pistol rounds, a pain in the ass to reload once-fired brass. I have heard from ammunition manufacturers that it was a pain to load new ammo as well. New .357 SIG ammo is still being produced and it’s priced about double that of comparable 9x19mm loads.
Tools or Toys?
So, with my S&W M&P 357 in hand, I set out to make a statement regarding our focus on defensive handguns being hearty and robust versus decorative. My first stop was the KKM Precision website to order a conversion barrel to switch from .357 SIG to 9x19mm. The second was to order some more S&W M&P 9mm magazines. That was all that was needed to convert the gun to a much more practical caliber.
If you’re anything like me, when you were growing up, your dad probably had numerous black and yellow Stanley tools on his work bench. I know mine did. As I grew to manhood, the colors black and yellow became synonymous with tools.
My next stop was the Duracoat website to find a yellow that matched “Stanley yellow” as closely as possible. As you can see from the photos, the project took on a two-tone black and yellow color scheme and I even Duracoated a holster and magazine pouch to match.
The end result was a rather plain or mundane fighting pistol (minus the yellow color of course). The 9mm converted pistol reliably consumed every type of 9mm ammunition that I fed it from steel-cased FMJ up to nickel-cased controlled expansion rounds and everything in between.
Compared to what’s showing on the websites of modern gun makers these days, my M&P might seem like an antique. There are no superfluous holes carved into the slide to expose the barrel and allow the 3Ds (dirt, dust, debris) to get into the action. It isn’t “optic-ready,” it just has plain old iron sights. The trigger is the stock factory version and magazine capacity is the standard 17+1. No idiotic holes were drilled into the barrel nor are there any compensators affixed to the muzzle. You can’t even attach a suppressor to it.
I’ve been shooting this gun for years, particularly in public when I’m trying to drive home the point that defensive guns are tools and these tools are supposed to be hearty, not decorative.
Thousands and thousands of rounds later, this old M&P is still running just as it should with monotonous reliability. Isn’t that the ultimate goal for a tool that you’re planning to use to defend your life?
Toys are fun, but they aren’t what you use to save lives. Lastly, if you made it all the way to the end of the article, you are to be congratulated. Okay, go ahead and post your comments.
Paul G. Markel is a combat decorated United States Marine veteran. He is also the founder of Student the Gun University and has been teaching Small Arms & Tactics to military personnel, police officers, and citizens for over three decades.