5 Gunfighting Myths Debunked By Massad Ayoob

5 Gunfighting Myths Debunked By Massad Ayoob

“IF YOU CAN’T DO IT WITH SIX, YOU CAN’T DO IT AT ALL!”

Alas, that’s not always the case. Sometimes you can’t do it with six, but you can end the deadly threat with, oh, seven…or eight…or 19…or maybe 33.

“MY CAR IS NEVER FAR AWAY, SO I’LL JUST KEEP MY HANDGUN/LONG GUN/SPARE AMMUNITION THERE.”

That’s a convenient excuse for not carrying those things, but it’s unrealistic. In the case just mentioned, Sergeant Gramins began in his patrol car with a 12 gauge Remington 870 pump shotgun in an overhead rack and an AR-15 patrol rifle in the trunk, and it happened so fast that he was never able to deploy anything but the pistol on his hip and the magazines in his belt pouches.

The history of gunfighting is, when the fast and furious shooting starts, what we have on our person is all that we’re likely to have to fight with.

“YOU MUST PRACTICE ONLY POINT SHOOTING, BECAUSE YOU’LL NEVER BE ABLE TO SEE YOUR SIGHTS IN A GUNFIGHT!”

However sincerely some seem to believe that, it’s simply untrue. I’ve lost count of how many gunfights I’ve studied where the survivor said something like, “I was pointing the gun and firing as best I could and nothing was happening. Then I remembered to aim with my sights, and the other guy went down and it was over.” If you study the history of Wyatt Earp, you’ll find that he may well have killed 10 men with gunfire. He told his biographer Stuart Lake that—with one exception—he was always careful to align his “foresight” with his “back sight” and to squeeze, not jerk, the trigger. Wyatt Earp died at a ripe old age, never having sustained a gunshot wound himself.

“YOU MUST PRACTICE ONLY AIMED FIRE, BECAUSE YOU’LL NEVER BE ABLE TO HIT ANYTHING POINTING!”

This is also over-simplistic and untrue. I just quoted two great gunfighters, Wyatt Earp and Bill Allard, who won many shootouts carefully aiming their guns. But notice that each had “one exception.”

Wyatt Earp confronted Frank Stilwell, believed to be the murderer of his brother Morgan Earp, at the train station in Tucson, Arizona. Stilwell grabbed the barrel of Earp’s shotgun in an apparent attempt to disarm him. Earp levered the butt of the shotgun down and the muzzles up, jammed the twin barrels into Stilwell’s midsection and cut loose. The battle was over.