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Wyatt Earp Interview on GunFighting
Am Shooting Journal ^ | 9/25/2017 | S Lake

Posted on 09/25/2017 5:27:13 AM PDT by w1n1

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To: w1n1

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.


21 posted on 09/25/2017 7:05:20 AM PDT by dblshot (I am John Galt.)
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To: w1n1

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!


22 posted on 09/25/2017 7:26:54 AM PDT by Ruy Dias de Bivar
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To: w1n1

Slow is smooth and smooth is fast.


23 posted on 09/25/2017 7:34:04 AM PDT by Georgia Girl 2 (The only purpose of a pistol is to fight your way back to the rifle you should never have dropped)
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To: Ruy Dias de Bivar
100%... if it comes out, it damn well better bark
24 posted on 09/25/2017 7:51:00 AM PDT by Chode (You have all of the resources you are going to have. Abandon your illusions and plan accordingly.)
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To: SargeK

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.

Advertisement

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


25 posted on 09/25/2017 7:55:50 AM PDT by mad_as_he$$ (Not my circus. Not my monkeys.)
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To: Undecided 2012

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.)


26 posted on 09/25/2017 8:42:22 AM PDT by sima_yi ( Reporting live from the far North)
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To: Mr Rogers
Judge Wells Spicer, who cleared the Earps of murder charges in a preliminary criminal hearing, wrote in his order that "Considering all the testimony together, I am of the opinion that the weight of evidence sustains and corroborates the testimony of Wyatt Earp, that their demand for surrender was met by William Clanton and Frank McLaury drawing or making motions to draw their pistols."

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.

27 posted on 09/25/2017 11:31:55 AM PDT by Rockingham
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To: w1n1

Fair fights are for people that are willing to lose. I had that lesson beat into me in the third grade.


28 posted on 09/25/2017 1:46:46 PM PDT by Garth Tater (Gone Galt and I ain't coming back.)
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To: Rockingham

“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.


29 posted on 09/25/2017 3:46:47 PM PDT by Mr Rogers (Professing themselves to be wise, they became fools)
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To: Chode

“You gonna skin that Smoke Wagon or
Stand there and Bleed!”


30 posted on 09/25/2017 7:27:26 PM PDT by Big Red Badger (UNSCANABLE in an IDIOCRACY!)
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To: Big Red Badger
heh heh heh heh... "dying ain't much of a living boy"
31 posted on 09/25/2017 7:28:56 PM PDT by Chode (You have all of the resources you are going to have. Abandon your illusions and plan accordingly.)
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To: StayAt HomeMother; Ernest_at_the_Beach; decimon; 1010RD; 21twelve; 24Karet; 2ndDivisionVet; ...
"Fast is fine, Accuracy is final."

32 posted on 10/02/2017 6:55:55 PM PDT by SunkenCiv (www.tapatalk.com/groups/godsgravesglyphs/, forum.darwincentral.org, www.gopbriefingroom.com)
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To: nevergore; 4yearlurker; Moonman62

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.


33 posted on 10/02/2017 7:05:07 PM PDT by SunkenCiv (www.tapatalk.com/groups/godsgravesglyphs/, forum.darwincentral.org, www.gopbriefingroom.com)
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To: nevergore; 4yearlurker; Moonman62

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.


34 posted on 10/02/2017 7:18:40 PM PDT by SunkenCiv (www.tapatalk.com/groups/godsgravesglyphs/, forum.darwincentral.org, www.gopbriefingroom.com)
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To: w1n1

I've read this before
Thanks for posting
Great Article

35 posted on 10/02/2017 7:29:16 PM PDT by Fiddlstix (Warning! This Is A Subliminal Tagline! Read it at your own risk!(Presented by TagLines R US))
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To: w1n1

Slow is smooth. Smooth is fast.


36 posted on 10/02/2017 7:39:57 PM PDT by Theoria (I should never have surrendered. I should have fought until I was the last man alive)
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To: Theoria

Where does that originate?


37 posted on 10/03/2017 3:00:07 AM PDT by Lee'sGhost ("Just look at the flowers, Lizzie. Just look at the flowers.")
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To: SunkenCiv

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.


38 posted on 10/03/2017 5:18:52 AM PDT by 4yearlurker (Space for rent.)
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To: Mr Rogers

Also one thing Earp had over the Cowboys in a bar fight or shootout was Earp did not drink. He was sober.


39 posted on 10/03/2017 5:20:52 AM PDT by 4yearlurker (Space for rent.)
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To: Lee'sGhost

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.


40 posted on 10/03/2017 7:21:03 AM PDT by Theoria (I should never have surrendered. I should have fought until I was the last man alive)
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