It Pays to Draw Second

In gunfights, at least as portrayed in many Western films, the good guy character always waits that one split second to draw his iron, and ends up putting down the Black Bart bad guy character who drew his iron first.  Doesn’t seem realistic, does it?  Well it is.

If only everything in life was so simple. New research from the University of Birmingham suggests the best strategy may actually be to wait for the other guy to make his move.

In a series of “laboratory gunfights” - with pistols replaced by electronic pressure pads - researchers found that participants who reacted to their opponent’s movement were on average 21 milliseconds faster to the draw.

Not only this research supports the draw second conclusion.  Danish physicist Niels Bohr calculated on this, with the following conclusions.

It turns out that the celebrated Danish physicist and Nobel laureate, Niels Bohr, liked to take time off from figuring out the structure of the universe by watching westerns.

Bohr noticed that the man who drew first invariably got shot, and speculated that the intentional act of drawing and shooting was slower to execute than the action in response.

Here was a hypothesis that could be tested, and with the aid of cap guns hastily purchased in a Copenhagen toyshop, duly proved it.

In a series of mock gunfights with colleagues Bohr always drew second and always won.

The gunfighter’s dilemma

Linked via an Attack Cartoons titled Vente Grande Magnum.

Posted by .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) on 03/14 at 04:21 PM

  1. I think it was Wyatt Erp thAt said that in a gunfight you had to “Take your time in a hurry”

    Posted by .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address)  on  03/16  at  01:27 PM

  2. Big Jer, it was Wyatt Earp who said that, though it’s a condensed version.  Here’s the full version from an interview.

    The most important lesson I learned from those proficient gunfighters was the the winner of a gunplay usually was the man who took his time. The second was that, if I hoped to live long on the frontier, I would shun flashy trick-shooting—grandstand play—as I would poison.

    When I say that I learned to take my time in a gunfight, I do not wish to be misunderstood, for the time to be taken was only that split fraction of a second that means the difference between deadly accuracy with a sixgun and a miss. It is hard to make this clear to a man who has never been in a gunfight. Perhaps I can best describe such time taking as going into action with the greatest speed of which a man’s muscles are capable, but mentally unflustered by an urge to hurry or the need for complicated nervous and muscular actions which trick-shooting involves. Mentally deliberate, but muscularly faster than thought, is what I mean. (bold by ed.)

    Earp also said this.

    From personal experience and numerous six-gun battles which I witnessed, I can only support the opinion advanced by the men who gave me my most valuable instruction in fast and accurate shooting, which was that the gun-fanner and hip-shooter stood small chance to live against a man who, as old Jack Gallagher always put it, took his time and pulled the trigger once. (bold by ed.)

    Grabbed those from Wyatt Earp’s views on gunfighting

    Posted by John Venlet  on  03/16  at  03:11 PM

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