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The gunfighter's dilemma

news.bbc.co.uk

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Re: The gunfighter's dilemma

#21

Post by bwhite »

flatline wrote: post #10

I could see this being the case, but it's got to be very narrow timing, and it probably only applies for the same type of action. A friend and I used to do a drill with his Glock 9mm. (After ensuring the gun was unloaded) one of us would point the pistol right at the other's head. The pointee would initiate action by grabbing the gun and the pointer would try to pull the trigger. It was impossible to pull the trigger…

A Glock will certainly fire with the slide immobilized. If the slide cannot move with respect to the frame the current round will not be ejected and the next round will not be chambered, but it will certainly fire the chambered round. It is not clear from "grab the whole barrel" what you were doing. Glock is like many (most?) semiautos in that the trigger cannot be pulled when the slide is not all the way forward, is that what you meant? That you could yank the slide out of battery and hold it there, thus preventing the trigger from being pulled?

If you intend to replicate your experiments in the future, you can explicitly seat a snap cap in the chamber and leave the magazine out (no mag safety on the Glock). That way you are still violating rules 2-4, but possibly not rule 1.

Re: The gunfighter's dilemma

#22

Post by omgsean »

Super_Jambo wrote: post #13
flatline wrote: post #10

I could see this being the case, but it's got to be very narrow timing, and it probably only applies for the same type of action. A friend and I used to do a drill with his Glock 9mm. (After ensuring the gun was unloaded) one of us would point the pistol right at the other's head. The pointee would initiate action by grabbing the gun and the pointer would try to pull the trigger. It was impossible to pull the trigger…

From what I remember of KravMaga gun disarms they agreed with your experiments. They taught moving your head out the way at the same time as grabbing.

A Krav Maga gun disarm involves twisting the body while redirecting the shot. Grabbing the gun isn't supposed to prevent the gun from firing, it's supposed to prevent the shot from killing you. In a real life situation when someone's got a gun to your head you probably don't have time to think about the gun's mechanics.

Re: The gunfighter's dilemma

#23

Post by philwelch »

ErrantX wrote: post #15
Super_Jambo wrote: post #12

So optimally you want to be startled into action by something other than your opponent drawing. Then you get the speed advantage & a head start... Wonder if anyones done any research on training this for martial arts.

A friend who does Aikido says it's not explicitly taught quite like that - but that he does train to watch, for example, an attackers shoulders for slight movement prior to their attack.

Which implies that you could probably throw off someone like that just by, for instance, feinting the shoulder movement.

Re: The gunfighter's dilemma

#24

Post by v3rt »

Apparently, it's incorrect that the winning strategy is to move second - while the drawing motion take ~20ms less when reacting, it takes ~200ms to react in the first place, leaving you quite dead. See http://scienceblogs.com/notrocketscience/2010/02/why_does_th...

Did the BBC misinterpret the data, or did the scienceblogs article make a mistake?

Re: The gunfighter's dilemma

#25

Post by ErrantX »

philwelch wrote: post #23
ErrantX wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A friend who does Aikido says it's not explicitly taught quite like that - but that he does train to watch, for example, an attackers shoulders for slight movement prior to their attack.

Which implies that you could probably throw off someone like that just by, for instance, feinting the shoulder movement.

My thought to.

Believe me: doesn't work ;)

Re: The gunfighter's dilemma

#26

Post by nfnaaron »

flatline wrote: post #10

I could see this being the case, but it's got to be very narrow timing, and it probably only applies for the same type of action. A friend and I used to do a drill with his Glock 9mm. (After ensuring the gun was unloaded) one of us would point the pistol right at the other's head. The pointee would initiate action by grabbing the gun and the pointer would try to pull the trigger. It was impossible to pull the trigger…

"(After ensuring the gun was unloaded) one of us would point the pistol right at the other's head."

Fail. Absolute fail.

We say "the gun is always loaded" even when we "know" it is not, because if we never, ever point a gun at something that we don't want to destroy, we will never make that one in a million mistake.

Fail. Sorry for the forcefulness, but this kind of gun "play" always deserves to be called out and discouraged.

Re: The gunfighter's dilemma

#27

Post by dkarl »

RiderOfGiraffes wrote: post #20
dkarl wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Seems like a pretty crappy experiment to pit the reaction time of an ex-professional athlete against (presumably) more typical people.

I can't tell if you're joking or not ... are you? Given the context it seems odd that you should interpret the anecdotes as being entirely serious and make such a serious comment, but perhaps I'm just having a sarcasm-detect failure ...

It's dual-purpose. Anyone who thought the article was tongue-in-cheek can assume that I too am being light-hearted. Anyone who thinks the article took Bohr's results seriously can take my comment seriously. Between the dry humor of Brits and the general idiocy of science reporting, I don't think there's any way to tell which is more appropriate.

Re: The gunfighter's dilemma

#28

Post by billswift »

It would also depend on the first-mover not being adequately trained/experienced. The goal of training, and the effect of extensive experience, is to automatize the action, so that it will occur without conscious intermediation.

Re: The gunfighter's dilemma

#29

Post by rubinelli »

edw519 wrote: post #16
mattheww wrote: post #3

You can't skip the story about Niels Bohr at the bottom.

I know what you're thinking. "Does the nucleus have six electrons or only five?" Well, to tell you the truth, in all this uncertainty I kind of lost track myself. But being as this is an isotope of uranium, responsible for slow-neutron fission, and would blow your city clean off, you've got to ask yourself one question: Do I feel lucky? Well, do ya, punk?

Hah, this is a trick question; the nucleus doesn't have electrons. And if it blows up, you don't bury the survivors.

Re: The gunfighter's dilemma

#30

Post by albemuth »

Super_Jambo wrote: post #12

So optimally you want to be startled into action by something other than your opponent drawing. Then you get the speed advantage & a head start... Wonder if anyones done any research on training this for martial arts.

Kind of like Bruce Willis in Pulp Fiction
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