Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Ask The Gunwriters So...how bout Charles Askins, Jr.?

A gunwriter from the Petersen Group wrote an article on Askins after he died which was pretty succinct. He said Askins either liked you or despised you--there was no middle ground. I think he was probably right. I guess the Col. liked me because we corresponded a lot through the years. He sent me a couple of boxes of 8mm 200g partitions to test before Nosler introduced them to the public. I liked him. I really hurt for him with his unrepentant attitude. He probably wrestled with a lot of personal demons. One thing was for sure---you did not mess with him if you valued your hide.

I met Elmer Keith a very long time ago at an NRA board meeting in Washington, and spoke with him for a while. I have all his books, one of his rifles, and since I have the American Rifleman from its beginning in 1923 I have read a lot of his articles as well. My frank opinion is that the man had a genius IQ. If he had received a first class academic education he could have been anything and done anything he wanted to, in any field of endeavor that interested him, and he would have been famous not just to us but to the broad American public.

Very perceptive and right on.

He was a real [bleep]. I met him a couple of times at my buddies home which was one of his best friends (col evan quiros) I was born and raised in laredo texas and even met skeeter skelton at some of the same parties. I am part mexican and he always had something "cute to say about mexicans.
I now live in san antonio and a few months before he died he was found wandering about the state. His family had a missing posters all over town.
now he has no chanceto repent
screwnhim

I did not know the man, but find that sad. Here's a quote from a story I wrote last year called "A Conversation with Jack O'Connor" It's Jack's response to what he believes we (the general public) should consider when discussing people with colourful backgrounds.

"I can't think of anybody I've met in my lifetime that was perfect, but I'll never hold their faults against them. When the good outweighs the bad, then be happy. Life's too short to be poking around in useless space."

You were one of the witnesses to his fall from being a vital human being to a ravaged soul. Sometimes, it's best to let the world think kinder thoughts.

Safe Shooting! <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/grin.gif" alt="" />
Steve Redgwell
303british.com

I believe the reference for Herters comment is in his "Professional Reloading". At the time I read it
I thought he was refering to Askins ??. I have the book (somewhere).
Good Luck

Gee, I guess he must have been a sorry bastard. Too bad
we don't have 20,000 just like him on our southern border
today.

If the incident described by Mr. Howell is true, it takes Askins well out of the realm of "flawed" individuals and into the class of the most vicious sociopaths.

Listen, friends, anyone who kills a baby for pleasure and convenience, after having already killed the baby's parents, is more than simply a bad guy. He is evil , don't kid yourselves. That one action alone would get you the death penalty in many parts of the U.S.

How many people out there have any kind of respect whatsoever for Ted Bundy, Richard Ramirez, Dahmer, etc.? Anyone who takes pleasure in killing people is a blight on our humanity and is certainly not someone that we, as enthusiastic shooters and hunters, want to be associated with.

P17, agreed.

Ditto, in spades !!
Catnthehat

A friend who's a firearms & self-defense instructor once wrote up a list of recommended readings. Among various sections like "How to Shoot", "How to Fight," and "How to Kick A** WW2-style", he had a section entitled "How to Be a Hard-A** Bastard". The books listed were H.W. McBride's "A Rifleman Went to War" and Askins' autobiography.

Askins asked one publisher why they wouldn't handle "Unrepentant Sinner". It was gently pointed out to him that on page 1 he shoots his best friend in the leg -- for borrowing a horse without permission.

I've also been told he was tough to edit, because when given a word count he would write a fairly pure stream of consciousness until the specified count was reached -- then just stop, fold up the paper and mail it in.

John

Ross; the Herter reference you spoke of is on pg's 12 & 13 of "Professional Loading".
Rereading the reference to the "Dapper Captain" it could well have been Sharpe.
Good Luck!

Irv,
Thank you, I enjoyed the re-read.
I need to keep reminding myself of the character of the author as I refer to Sharpe often to recall old loading tool lore.
I enjoy George Leonard Herter as much as I do McManus, and almost as much as Zern.
Cheers from Darkest California,
Ross

All I know about Askins is that he was courtly polite when you ran into him at the NRA meetings. He could really turn a phrase in print and his prose was mildly, entertainly off-color by the standards of the day.

I am 71 years old and got the gun bug prior to my teen-age years, so I have read stuff written by most of the names that get mentioned when the subject of gunwriters comes up. The one guy who is head and shoulders above the rest on the first class bastard list has to be Askins Jr. A couple of his pieces are memorable. He wrote one article explaining the ideal barrel length for a center fire rifle. He claimed that 22" was too short and 24" was too long. He therefore had all his barrels cut to 23". The other article, which really tore it for me, was a character assassination piece he did several months after Jack O'Connor died, in which he sneered at everything O'Connor ever stood for or said. The guy had no class.

I enjoyed Askins' writing very much when I was an uncritical teenager. In retrospect, however, the stories he told on himself proved him to be a felon and a stone killer.

On the other hand, I wouldn't much enjoy living next door to Papa Hemingway either, and he wrote some pretty fair hunting stories.

Old thread but I had to comment after reading his Autobiography.
I would certainly not care to be his buddy. He clearly liked to kill people for fun. He went beyond what a hard core fighter would do. He killed for fun. Sport.
It was interesting he was in Ordinance and not in the Infantry. He easily have gone that route but did not. He was no Rambo.
I was kind of disappointed in the book after reading Ayoob's descriptions of his gun fights. Ayoob writes better.
After reading up on Keith, I benefited. After Askins I wanted to take a shower.

Re: dogzapper's comment that Askin's was rumored to have cheated his way to the top:

Before WWII the main pistol game was NRA bullseye (the only other game was PPC, based on the FBI course). Then, as now, there were three parts to bullseye pistol: .22, centerfire and .45. Centerfire could be any centerfire round. So Askins got the bright idea of adapting a Colt Woodsman Match pistol to the .22 Velo Dog cartridge, which was an obsolescent centerfire cartridge about the size and power of a .22 LR. I don't recall if he had to cut the case down in length or was able to use the cartridges intact. In any event, the obvious advantage was it had the recoil of a .22 LR, significantly less than the .32 and .38 caliber centerfire revolvers that were then favored for that class, clearly a benefit in timed (5 shots in 20 sec) and rapid fire (5 shots in 10 sec), which accounts for 2/3 of the overall score.

He actually shot a few matches with that gun, but IIRC he didn't actually win a championship with it. I believe the next year, the NRA modified its centerfire rules so that a centerfire pistol had to be at least .32 caliber. In his writings, Askins was clearly proud of the way he gamed the system to gain an advantage over his competitors. Whether it would be considered cheating depends on your idea of sportsmanship - it was definitely gamesmanship. But he was a national pistol champ so he clearly was a top notch target shooter.

I also read somewhere (possibly on the 'fire) that he had a dislike of Jack O'Connor because O'Connor replaced his father as Shooting Editor of Outdoor Life when the elder Askins wasn't yet ready to go.

IIRC, the Border Patrol forbade him to flout the obvious intent of the NRA match rules, but he went ahead anyway.

Also IIRC, he did indeed win a championsship match with his modified Woodsman, and as a consequence, the NRA modified its match rules to specify that "centerfire" comprised any handgun that was .32 or larger.

Word was that until Harlon Carter white-washed him, he was also persona non grata with the NRA.

I don't know whether any of the above is factual � and don't lose any sleep over any of it, one way or the other.

Interesting old thread.

I also read Unrepentant Sinner many years ago and finished it feeling like Askins was someone I'd just as soon not know.

I wondered if I was the only one.