William Bell

William Bell has been shooting since age 12, starting with BB and pellet guns and, at 16, a 20-gauge single-shot shotgun. He was mainly into hunting guns until he began college in 1972, working toward a degree in Criminal Justice. He graduated in 1976 with his CJ degree and a commission as a 2nd Lieutenant in the Army Reserves, later serving as 1st Platoon Leader in the 198th MP Battalion, 438th Co., Kentucky Army National Guard. Noted for his skill with the 1911A1 .45 pistol, he became a member of the KYARNG Combat Pistol Team and won an Excellence in Competition Medal at the Winston P. Wilson Matches. Bell entered law enforcement at a small-town Kentucky PD, then became a patrolman with the Housing Authority of Louisville PD, and in 1978 a deputy with the Jefferson Parish Sheriff's Office in Louisiana, where he competed with the S.O. PPC Shooting Team. In May 1982 he became an agent with the U.S. Border Patrol, and published his first gun article in 1983 in Police Marksman magazine. By 1988 he had transferred to U.S. Customs, shooting competitively with the port pistol team while writing for Combat Handguns (Harris Publications) and later Guns & Weapons for Law Enforcement as a Contributing Editor. After transferring to a Customs Anti-Smuggling Unit in Louisville in 1991, he took up Cowboy Action Shooting (as "LaVista Bill"), wrote for Guns of the Old West, and became Sr. Contributing Editor with the Western Words column. He served as a collateral-duty firearms instructor for a total of 17 years. In 2000 he was promoted to U.S. Customs Port Director in Indianapolis, ending his LE career in 2014 after 38 years. His writing has appeared in Harris Publications, Athlon Outdoors, Bleecker Street, The Blue Press, Guns, Gun Digest, the NRA, and Police magazine, and now extends online to Lipsey's Bulletin, GunBroker.com, Midsouth Shot Report, Davidson's Insights, and Gun Tales. He has been shooting and writing about guns for some 43 years.