The gunfighter's dilemma

[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?

[electromagnetic]

Not necessarily, it depends what causes the defender to draw. It may take you ~200ms to react, however it also takes the drawer time to act on their decision, and may take longer as there's an incentive to aim as there's no point in shooting first and missing.

Button pressing /= drawing and aiming.

The defender has less incentive to aim, and besides your brain already has the calculations made. In hunting the snapshot is a frequent killer due simply to reaction with no conscious aiming. IIRC the NRA has ~40,000 bullseye shooters who have to have rapidfire accuracy on multiple targets to attain the grade. This requires the ability to make snapshots.

I'm not going to believe any result on gunslinging until someone picks up a properly weighted pistol that has to be aimed and fired (whether it be a blank or using an LED sighter). Otherwise it's not scientific, you're fucking with the variables and the very nature of the experiment.

[run4yourlives]

I was just thinking the same thing... the 20ms difference only matters if the start time of the action is less than 20ms before the start time of the reaction.

Just because you can do something faster, it doesn't always mean you finish faster.

[mattheww]

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

[RiderOfGiraffes]

Niels Bohr should know something about reactions and reaction times - in 1905 he played professional football (soccer) for Akademisk Boldklub, playing goalkeeper.

[cunard3]

This link to an audio interview was posted previously: http://www.aip.org/history/ohilist/4325.html Gamow talks about meeting Bohr and his wit: He says that he was startled to see a horseshoe nailed above the door to Bohr's house. Gamow asked Bohr why he had it there. Bohr said "I've heard that it works even if you don't believe in it."

[jcl]

In a series of mock gunfights with colleagues Bohr always drew second and always won.

Heh... Considering that all the participants were scientists, I'm surprised they concluded that one event caused the other.

[edw519]

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?

[InclinedPlane]

There are existing studies which show that people react faster when startled than when not. There's a nifty little online test to check your own response times: http://www.mathsisfun.com/games/reaction-time.html

As far as I know this is the first test to show that startle response extends beyond reaction time, it's an interesting piece of data. It's worth noting that it's possible to force yourself into a state of mind similar to being startled, which may very well eliminate the advantage to "shooting" second.

[JoeAltmaier]

That game is very telling. Try it at "arms length", then again with your face right up to the screen. See if you don't do much better when the dot fills more of your visual range. Speculation: a startle reflex depends upon the magnitude of the nervous signal, which is larger when more retinal cells fire.

[ajuc]

Strange, I had 0.267 with normal measures, and over 0.5 with surprise measure.

[flatline]

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 in time, action was always faster than reaction in this case. We did it many times over, both of us with the gun. Semi-automatic handguns will not fire when you keep the slide from moving, which is what happens when you grab the whole barrel like this, though I don't think I'd be willing to try the maneuver in real life.

[novas0x2a]

I have to second nfnaaron here. The gun is always loaded. I don't care if you just unloaded it. It's still loaded. That's one of the most fundamental gun safety rules. Violating that rule, in my view, means you are not responsible enough to own a gun. I mean, there are really only three safety rules; it's not like there's a huge list.

There are plenty of ways to simulate the exercise with no risk. If you want to do stress exercises, you need to come up with a different way. This[1] is one of the standard ways. Notice that at no point does a real gun get pointed at a human being? That's by design.

1) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tueller_Drill

[nfnaaron]

"(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.

[bwhite]

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.

[Super_Jambo]

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.

[hedgehog]

Dude, slide immobilized it will still go bang.

[zck]

>In a series of mock gunfights with colleagues Bohr always drew second and always won.

I'm hoping the author of this article just didn't want to elaborate, but Bohr never thought it could've just been that he was faster at drawing than his opponents? Switching it so he was the first to draw some of the time would have been better design.

[fh]

This part of the article is most likely intended as a funny anecdote, not as an accurate description of a scientific experiment. Rest assured that Niels freaking Bohr would have thought of that.

[Super_Jambo]

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.

[arohner]

We had techniques where we try to minimize the "telegraphing" of our own punch. You practice that with a partner, and try to hit the partener's open hand before they can react to it. If the partner notices you moving first, they drop their hand and they "win". Its an effective drill for the partner too, because they have to learn to read your body motion.

[ErrantX]

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.

[albemuth]

Kind of like Bruce Willis in Pulp Fiction

[gaius]

So much for first-mover advantage.

[pbhjpbhj]

The second mouse gets the cheese.

[pbhjpbhj]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TANC4VI8vF4#t=1m18s - draws and shoots and returns gun to holster in 0.02s.

I don't feel lucky!

[roundsquare]

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.

Haha, really? So he formed a hypothesis based on movies? I'm fairly sure its just poorly written in the article but if it is not thats just silly.

Edit: Formatting

[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.

[proemeth]

Then, since Solo shot first, he was a fine duelist. This reconciles the argument: he can be a good guy AND shoot first. Solo did not _intend_ to shoot first, but while reposting his instincts made him the fastest.