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| Davis Tutt helping himself to Bill Hickok's favorite watch, over which Hickok would kill Tutt and be arrested for murder.* |
Wild Bill Hickok was rumored to have killed hundreds of men in gunfights throughout the West. In reality it was closer to ten. Still a substantial number for any one man. After becoming friends, Buffalo Bill Cody hired Hickok to star in his traveling Wild West show. Upon seeing Wild Bill's shooting skills Cody derived Hickok's successes in gun fighting came from his decisiveness.
"In addition to conjuring calm in the heat of the moment," said Cody. "Bill beat them to it. He made up his mind to kill the other man before the other man had finished thinking, and so Bill would just quietly pull his gun and give it to him."
Unlike Bill Hickok, however, armed citizens in 21st century America do not have the legal latitude to assume an adversary is going to use deadly force. We cannot "go to gun" because of how someone postures or verbally threatens us. A threat must constitute grave bodily harm or death before armed citizens and members of law enforcement can respond with deadly force. We must confirm that we are faced with criminal deadly force before we respond with legal deadly force, which places us at a significant disadvantage in relation to timing.
But just because action is faster than reaction does not mean the first to act, as in Hickok's case, is always the first to win. The first to throw a punch is not always the victor, nor the first to shoot the survivor. Force multiplication is the determining factor in who wins a violent confrontation, not simply who acted and who reacted. And in the context of dangerous and deadly confrontations the key force multipliers are mindset and training.
What, as an armed American or LEO, is your mindset and training? Do you have enough of both to survive a deadly force encounter without being the one who instigated the conflict? Having only one, or neither, means you are more of a liability than an asset to those around you.
In our increasingly dangerous and litigious society armed Americans need Wild Bill Hickok's timing and accuracy without his "decisiveness." Make sense? As armed citizens we never want to see the inside of a criminal or civil courtroom for actions we believed legal, righteous, and necessary.
Mindset and Training for armed civilians, LEOs, and Military:
http://www.elitetwo.com/
http://www.elitetwo.com/sheepdogs.html
*Two days after shooting Davis Tutt through the heart at 75 yards Bill Hickok was arrested for murder. Charges were later dropped to manslaughter. In August of 1865 a jury trial acquitted Hickok, deciding he had acted in self-defense.
