Wyatt Earp Interview on GunFighting

[Sanguine]

Wyatt Berry Stapp Earp (March 19, 1848 – January 13, 1929) was an American Old West gambler, a deputy sheriff in Pima County, and deputy town marshal in Tombstone, Arizona Territory, who took part in the Gunfight at the O.K. Corral, during which lawmen killed three outlaw cowboys.

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....

http://americanshootingjournal.com/wyatt-earp-interview-on-gunfighting/

[RoosGirl]

Great article.

[Bigun]

Great article.

Indeed!  Much wisdom there and much of it can be applied to things other than gun fighting.

[truth_seeker]

Pima County is Tucson.

[goatprairie]

As a typical kid growing up in the fifties and sixties like many boys I saw and loved a lot of westerns. So it was to my deep chagrin when watching an interview of an expert on western history he debunked the stories of the fast draw hero (or villain) that was the staple of many western plots.
The historian said that the fast draw duels just about never happened...at least not the way the movies and tv shows depicted them.  He made a lot of sense....no law man was going to trust that he could draw his gun faster than some deadly outlaw. When attempting to apprehend some bad guy, the good guy would already have his gun out cocked and ready. The fast draw duels were all an invention of  dime store novelists of the period and abetted by the movies and tv.
He also informed his interviewer that no one tried to shoot a gun out of somebody else's hand, another staple of tv good guys. If they shot at someone, they were trying to kill them.