Posted on 09/25/2017 5:27:13 AM PDT by w1n1
Here is an interview that Wyatt Earp shares his views on "gunfighting". This was sometime in the 1910s he offered to give an interview about his thoughts on using a gun. In his own words, Wyatt is going to explain how he became one of the most feared and accurate gunslingers even if he was about the slowest.
When asked how he became so proficient with a gun here's his response: "The most important lesson I learned from those proficient gunfighters was 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-shootinggrandstand playas I would poison."
"Fast is fine, Accuracy is final." What Wyatt meant is practice makes perfect. It should be said that Wyatt would even take his time acquiring his targets even if they were only five feet away.
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 mans 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.
We typically hear people talk about making a split second decision when it comes to shooting. In Wyatts case he made the decision to shoot a long time before the trigger was pulled. Read the rest of the Wyatt Earp views on Gunfighting here.
Good advise. I am frequently irritated by friends and family that have semi-autos with over a dozen rounds in the mag but rarely go the range. Spray and pray seems to be their strategy.
To me, the silliest thing I see in movies and on TV is when two people pull guns, point them cocked at each other, and stall.
It is as if they are saying “My trigger finger can beat your trigger finger if you pull your trigger!”
My thoughts is if someone pulls a gun on you are you going to also pull and wait to see if the other person pulls their trigger first? YOU IS DEAD!
Slow is smooth and smooth is fast.
Ever since cowboys first swaggered onto the silver screen, scientists have been struggling to solve a conundrum. Why do the bad guys always get shot in a gunfight when they’re the ones who reached for their guns first?
The Nobel laureate and quantum physicist Niels Bohr was so intrigued with the puzzle he came up with a theory: the one who draws second moves faster because he reacts without thinking.
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Research by psychologists at Birmingham University has shown that Bohr was right, at least up to a point. In mock gunfights, volunteers were 10% faster when they drew second than when they made the first move.
One of the researchers, experimental psychologist Andrew Welchman, said our brains seem to be wired up in a way that makes reactions faster than conscious thought.
https://www.theguardian.com/science/2010/feb/03/good-guys-draw-faster-gunfights
I paraphrase Yogi Berra (RIP): You can’t think and shoot at the same time. (In other words, you have to have thought it through beforehand.)
Notably, Ike Clanton had been publicly stating his intention to kill Wyatt Earp. He and his companions were also carrying guns in violation of a town ordinance. The Earps were law enforcement officers, with Holliday deputized and part of a legally authorized posse to disarm the Clantons and McLaurys. The best view of the evidence is that the initial gunshots were mutual and virtually instantaneous.
Although the Earps and Holliday were cleared of criminal charges, like many cops versus criminals shootings today, the issue was not fully settled as a matter of debate. Moreover, the gunfight also had political aspects that carried over into contemporaneous accounts and later histories.
In essence, the Earps, with the qualified exception of Georgia native Doc Holliday, were law and order Republicans from Iowa aligned with the leading Republican businessmen and townspeople in Tombstone. The Clantons, McLaurys, and the Cowboy faction were mostly Democrats of Southern origin allied with like-minded townspeople, ranchers, criminals, and cowboys in the nearby rural area.
Initially, public opinion rallied behind the Earps, but a determined campaign by the Clantons and McLaurys and their supporters made the issue a close one despite the Earps and Holliday being cleared of criminal charges. In the 1930s, Left-wing Western writers and historians began to shade the facts so as to call into doubt the correctness of the conduct of the Earps and Holliday. Over the last twenty years though, most histories have tended to favor them, with Judge Spicer's ruling and the rediscovered trial transcript making for strong support in their favor.
You are of course correct about most Western shootings being more in the nature of bushwhacking than straight up open gunfights. Tom Horn's notorious career bears that out, as do many instances in which there is nothing to go on but the body of someone shot dead in unknown circumstances. The record of the era is that it was usually the outlaws who did the back shooting, not the lawmen. Many of them took great risk to bring law and order to the West -- and I count the Earps among them.
Fair fights are for people that are willing to lose. I had that lesson beat into me in the third grade.
“Notably, Ike Clanton had been publicly stating his intention to kill Wyatt Earp.”
Notably, Ike Clanton didn’t have a gun.
“The Earps were law enforcement officers...”
Yes, and Wyatt Earp had just pistol-whipped Tom McLaury. Wyatt’s testimony was that Tom was carrying a gun in plain sight, but no other witness saw a gun and Wyatt could have arrested Tom - IF Tom had a gun. Wyatt left Tom lying on the ground, bleeding. But Wyatt was mad at Ike, and Tom was a friend of Ike, so Tom was publicly beaten into the ground hours before the gunfight.
At the time the fight started, several of the ‘Cowboys’ had their horses saddled up and ready to leave. They had access to rifles, but the rifles were in their scabbards - and you have to be stupid to look for a gunfight with a revolver if you have a rifle available. So one of the ‘bad guys’ was unarmed, a couple had rifles they didn’t take out, and no one bothered to loan the unarmed guy a weapon. Does that sound like guys looking for a fight?
They also had promised to either leave town (which they could legally do with their guns) or turn their guns in. The 2nd Amendment didn’t apply to Tombstone...but they had already said they would comply.
“In the 1930s, Left-wing Western writers and historians began to shade the facts so as to call into doubt the correctness of the conduct of the Earps and Holliday...”
BWAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Wyatt Earp’s biography by Stuart Lake was published in 1931. I don’t know of ANYONE who considers it accurate.
“You gonna skin that Smoke Wagon or
Stand there and Bleed!”
"Fast is fine, Accuracy is final."
I think there’s some confusion:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wyatt_Earp
Director John Ford said that when he was a prop boy in the early days of silent pictures, Earp would visit pals on the sets he knew from his Tombstone days. “I used to give him a chair and a cup of coffee, and he told me about the fight at the O.K. Corral. So in My Darling Clementine, we did it exactly the way it had been.” When Ford was working on his last silent feature Hangman’s House in 1928, which included the first credited screen appearances by John Wayne, Earp used to visit the set. John Wayne later told Hugh O’Brian that he based his Western lawman walk, talk and persona to his acquaintance with Wyatt Earp, who was good friends with Mix. “I knew him ... I often thought of Wyatt Earp when I played a film character. There’s a guy that actually did what I’m trying to do.” [/snip]
Tom Mix was one of Earp’s pallbearers, and wept openly during the service. There’s an oddball movie called “Sunset” starring James Garner as Wyatt Earp and Bruce Willis as Tom Mix. Mix later died in a car crash — he was a big fan of the Duesenberg brand, and his death car was repaired and later restored, and is still in use of a private owner. Those things were built.
Oops, I introduced more confusion — it wasn’t a Duesenberg, it was a Cord, which is rarer. At the Greenfield Village auto museum, there’s one of each, and they’re parked next to each other — basically, one of the nexi of the universe.
Slow is smooth. Smooth is fast.
Where does that originate?
Interesting. Also Tom Mix had special tires made for his car that would leave the initials “T.M.” in the dirt roads. Mix had special heavy plywood luggage made for him and he was driving one day and came on a road construction site and hit his brakes. The luggage came forward and hit him in the head killing him.
Also one thing Earp had over the Cowboys in a bar fight or shootout was Earp did not drink. He was sober.
Not sure. we’ve used it forever in sof. it’s been around for a while. at least from the mid 90’s from my experience.
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