The gunfighter’s dilemma is whether to draw first or second. I had assumed the trade-off was between firing faster and acting legally in self-defense — but there is no such trade-off:
In a series of “laboratory gunfights” — with pistols replaced by electronic pressure pads — researchers found that participants who reacted to their opponent’s movement were on average 21 milliseconds faster to the draw.
Professor Andrew Welchman, who led the research, puts this down to the “quick and dirty” nature of instinctive responses.Reacting to your opponent’s movement turns out to be significantly faster than the conscious decision-making process involved in choosing to draw your gun.
It turns out that this was already known to science — or to one famous scientist, at least:
It turns out that the celebrated Danish physicist and Nobel laureate, Niels Bohr, liked to take time off from figuring out the structure of the universe by watching westerns.
Bohr noticed that the man who drew first invariably got shot, and speculated that the intentional act of drawing and shooting was slower to execute than the action in response. Here was a hypothesis that could be tested, and with the aid of cap guns hastily purchased in a Copenhagen toyshop, duly proved it. In a series of mock gunfights with colleagues Bohr always drew second and always won.
According to Manjit Kumar, the author of Quantum, Bohr’s prowess as a gunslinger was such that his victims wrote a ditty about him.
On pistols and lead, now Bohr had to prove
The defendant is quickest to move.
Bohr accepted the challenge without a frown
He drew when we drew, and shot each one of us down.
This tale has a moral, tho’ we knew it before.
It’s foolish to question the wisdom of Bohr.