It’s Worth A Shot
Jim Wagner
“Of course, I’d like to test your latest weapons?” I responded to his question enthusiastically. What self-defense instructor wouldn’t want to do it?
Hold on! Let me back up to about one month prior to the question asked of me. I received a phone call from Tobias Leckebusch. He was my hand-picked assistant instructor for a decade when I taught for Böker (the knife manufacturer who hosted my Jim Wagner Reality-Based Personal Protection courses) in Solingen and Cologne, Germany. Actually, he’s more than that. He’s also a good friend.
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Tobi (pronounced toe-bee), as I call him, informed me that he’s now working for a company called Steambow, and Austrian company. Not an “Australian” “G’day, mate” company, but Austria, as in the center of Europe. He told me that they have a new product on the market – a crossbow. Of course, the moment he said “crossbow,” I was interested. After all, I had shot sport crossbows before, and I even shot a Medieval crossbow in a castle in Prague, Czech Republic several years ago. However, what he told me next wrenched my mind from my sport or nostalgic perspective of a crossbow and into the reality of here and now. He said, “Our sales for crossbows this year in Germany has increased 300%, because people are afraid of the growing crime. Since citizens are not allowed to have firearms for self-defense, they have been buying our crossbows. If a housewife is alone in the house while her husband is on a trip, she now has something powerful that can protect her. Maybe she won’t even have to use it. When an intruder breaks in through the front, and she sees one of our tactical crossbows pointing at him, which looks like an MP5, then she may not have to shoot him, because it is so intimidating.”
I already knew about the increasing crime rate in Germany since many of my students in that country keep me up to date on their current affairs, but I had no idea that a crossbow would be the weapon of choice. It wouldn’t be my weapon of choice if I were a German citizen, as I pondered Tobias’ words. I’d be more inclined to go with the machete, like the Greeks have taken to when their crime rates went through the roof years ago. I found that out when I suddenly got an influx of Greek martial arts instructors attending my Knife Survival courses.
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Then instantly Tobias made me reconsider the crossbow as a viable self-defense weapon when he said, “My boss invented a magazine for the bolts (arrow-like projectiles), and a new way to instantly cock the string back to fire them like a repeating rifle.” There is no longer a need for a cocking stirrup, which eats up too much time in getting the string behind the latch.
Wow! I thought, that certainly changes everything!
Tobias’ follow-on question was music to my ears, “My company want you to test a couple of our products, and then we want your honest opinion.”
This was not an unusual request, since Tobias knew from our past working relationships that various tactical companies often had me test their new products. Just last year I wrote an article about a few new products that Riot Glass, makers of riot-proof and bulletproof glass, that I tested on the gun range for them. Of course, if I like a product that holds up to my real-world testing, then I’ll endorse it, but if I don’t like it a product I’ll tell the company why, and I won’t recommend it to my students or followers.
Tobias Leckebusch’s timing to contact me was no coincidence, because he asked me, “Jim, are you going to the Shot Show this year?”
The annual Shot Show is a convention held every year in Las Vegas, USA where gun manufacturers, bullet makers, and everyone under the sun who sells tactical gear for civilians and law enforcement, display their goods. The items are not for sell on the floor, but for interested parties to put in orders for what they like, and it will be shipped to them.
By the time we finished our phone conversation it was agreed up that I’d meet Tobias at the Steambow’s booth at the Shot Show 2023 located in the Caesars Forum and The Venetian Expo on the Las Vegas Strip, and he’d give me a briefing on the products his company wanted me to test.
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On Tuesday, January 17, 2023, I left in the morning from Los Angeles, California and drove the four and a half hours to Las Vegas, Nevada. When I arrived there, I not only met with Tobias manning the booth, but I had the opportunity to meet the CEO of the company, Gerald Missbach, who also happens to be the man who invented the crossbow magazine and other revolutionary features.
Yes, you’re probably thinking the same thing I did, and that is, “How did they come up with the name Steambow?” Well, the name came from one of Gerald’s first inventions to improve crossbow technology. It was a part that looked like a piston that was attached to the limbs called a “steambow.” After a couple of years of using this term, it became synonymous with the crossbow itself, and so when Gerald formed his corporation, he used the name Steambow.
After I had all of the information that I needed from Tobias, Gerald, and their engineer Thomas to get started on my “training mission,” I had an opportunity to go check out the rest of the convention until closing time at 5:30 pm. The next day in Las Vegas I had lunch with a friend who lives in nearby Henderson, and then I headed back to California.
As it stands now, I am waiting for a shipment from Steambow. Once the products arrive, I will test them under combat conditions. If I like what I test, then I will write a detailed article about the test results so that you’ll be well informed – especially for my students around the world who are not legally allowed to own firearms to protect themselves or for those students who simply do not feel comfortable with firearms and looking for the best alternative.
BE A HARD TARGET
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