We all know the staple scene of any movie that involves guns is one in which two or more characters have their handguns trained on each other, at close range, and remain at a standoff for a prolonged period of time while they have a little chat.
This has bugged me ever since I was a child and started thinking “if one of them just fired, would the other really have the time to react?” Especially if the bullet simply went into the head or hand (the one holding the gun), it seems like it would be very difficult if not impossible for the other to immediately return fire.
Statistically, wouldn’t their reaction time be longer than the time it takes between trigger being pulled and bullet entering brain? Would there be some kind of automatic body response mechanism set off in the one being fired at that would at least ensure they both went down? How would this play out in real life?
I don’t think you could do it fast enough realistically. Most trigger pulls on handguns are pretty long and require pounds of finger pressure. You can’t do it slowly because it would be obvious what you are doing. In such a situation you would only have 1/5 th - 1/2 second jump on your opponent and that probably won’t be enough. He will start his trigger pull before your trigger pull is complete and you have to kill him instantly and that is a very tricky proposition.
I think you answered your own question. Unless you knew the answers to the questions you posed, would you fire first? Shooting a human is not nearly as easy as this thread, among others, would lead you to believe.
Is the gun cocked? If so, yeah, I think you could get a round off before the other person knew you fired. If not, in order to not make the trigger squeeze obvious (they’d see the hammer pull back), you’d have to jerk the trigger, which is a sure fire way to miss someones head, unless you’re at a range of like 3 feet. At any distance, a hard trigger jerk will most likely pull your shot off target. If the gun’s cocked, I think the first one to pull wins. There’s such a slight pull weight with a pistol that’s cocked that I doubt they would know you even pulled before the bullet pierced them.
The History Channel seriously debunked the classic gun-to-gun standoff. Very few eyewitness accounts exist. Most gun battles were less than heroic - more likely was the loser shot, or shot at, by an assistant. There are lots of examples of shooting from behind barricades, etc. There are also examples of one of the combatants using crude body armor, considered “cowardly” in the times.
As to the reflex question: I suspect Mythbusters would find that, yes, a fast person could at least draw their weapon, but may not have the time to squeeze off a round. Lesser still are the chances of either round hitting their mark. Firing from the hip is outrageously inaccurate. What seems to have happened in the 'ol West is that one or both missed, and they ran away blazing at each other. They’d run to shelter then blast away until someone was killed, they ran out of ammo, or just got tuckered out. Alcohol seems to have been a big contributor to these events - go figure.
Not a direct answer, because I don’t know the direct answer, but a little pertinent info from a forensic pathologist.
First, in our police homicides (I mean people killed by police), there are frequently bullet holes all over the body. The police tell us that when it starts going down, everything happens like instantly - they pull the trigger, they hold the trigger down, bullets go everywhere. We’ve seen guys shot through the soles of the feet. What does that mean? The dying guy fell on his face and the cops continued to pump bullets. Not that they thought mentally, “I shall go on shooting him,” but that it all seems to happen in a flicker.
Second, many of the bullet holes in a multiple gunshot wound case are not fatal injuries. A friend of mine who’s a police pistol instructor tells me how hard it is to hit anything other than center mass. If the other guy shoots you, and it’s “only a flesh wound,” you can shoot back, and maybe kill him. Maybe the two of you will trade flesh wounds for a few shots. I once autopsied a man shot by police from three directions (he was standing on his porch waving a shotgun, they were behind police cars). He was shot fifteen times and only two of them were fatal. That leaves thirteen nonfatal shots. They also missed him with more than twice as many bullets as hit him (detectives on the scene counted the cartridges and told me the number).
If the other guy shoots you in the chest, misses your heart and gets your lung, you can shoot back. You might have all of five or ten minutes to shoot back after a single lung shot. In the 1800’s you would have died, but nowadays a chest tube and maybe some antibiotics you’re fine. Even a heart shot, direct heart shot, leaves you 20 to 30 seconds of useful life. There have been police shot by people who had been heartshot and still managed to squeeze off another round.
If the other guy shoots you in your head, it’s all over. Your hand will go limp as you collapse. You will not be able to get off another shot.
I have seen one, count 'em, one, case of a man shot in the hand. He was in the passenger seat of a car surrounded by police with guns drawn, shouting, “Put the weapon on the ground and get out of the car with your hands behind your head.” He had a gun in his right hand. A police sharpshooter standing 4 feet away behind the right side of his head shot him through the right hand. His hand shattered into fragments of flesh and bones - it’s not pretty; it’s unbelievably ugly, a real mutilating shot, not the kind thing I always imagined it would be in childhood adventure stories. The guy managed to transfer the gun to his other hand. At that point three police shot him dead through the head and torso.
So the answer is, if the other person doesn’t shoot you through the head, yes, you could shoot back. Even if they shot you in the hand, you could shoot back. You might not be able to tell who had started shooting first if everything seemed to happen in a flicker.
In a classic face-off (Gunfighter A and Gunfighter B staring each other down) could it be that B sees body language like narrowing of the eyes, a muscle twitch, etc.) so that he could react to that, rather than the actual trigger pull?
In the Burr-Hamilton duel, both men fired their guns. Some reports say Hamilton shot to miss, but in any case, both men fired.
In the opening to the TV series Gunsmoke, Marshall Dillon clearly fires second, but his aim is better and he brings down the gunfighter.
And of course, in Star Wars Han fires second. He always fired second.
There is just such a scene in a movie I saw last night, “Shade”. The 2 characters are holding guns at each other’s head at a distance of about 2 feet (from gun to opponent’s head). My opinion: the first one to fire wins, assuming you make a killing head shot. (Which, of course, is not guaranteed, even at this short distance.)
I’ve taken quite a few handgun training courses, and I participate in a handgun shooting sport as described at http://www.ipsc.org.
One of the things that I learned is that “action” time is about 1/4 of a second. “Reaction” time is about 3/4 of a second. This was graphically illustrated in a scenario one instructor set up: You’re in your house and you see an intruder with a gun. Do you tell him to freeze, drop the weapon, whatever, or do you shoot? I happened to be the homeowner in this scenario. I said “freeze”. Almost before I finished that one syllable, the intruder had gotten a shot off. We tried this same scenario 10 times. EVERY time the intruder was able to get a shot off before me, EVEN THOUGH I knew, and was expecting him to shoot.
So that is the basis of my opinion.
Regarding a couple of other responses: Whether the gun is cocked or not only applies to revolvers, not (generally) to semi-autos. In revolvers, you do have a longer trigger pull if the gun isn’t cocked, but I still think you can fire within the 1/4 of a second action time. In semi-autos, your finger will be on the trigger with all trigger slack taken up. The amount of movement needed to fire is tiny.
Distance: this is very important. As stated, it is VERY easy to miss, even at short distances. I’m assuming the OP meant a point-blank standoff. If the standoff is 10 feet apart, my answer would be, “don’t shoot”.
Bullet travel time: Assuming 1000 ft/sec bullet speed (which is typical), 2 feet would take 1/500th of a second – essentially instantaneous. 10 feet would take 1/100th of a second, still way faster than anyone could react, so I’d say bullet travel time is ignorable.
I would bet money that the first person to shoot could come out of this whole thing unscathed. First of all, we speak pretty glibly in terms of tenths of seconds, but reality is not like that. First of all, one’s eyes need to be 100% focused on the other gun. Secondly, this is a standoff. Whatever got the combatants to this point is predicated upon not wanting to kill the other person. There are subtle rules in such a situation which work to impair good judgment-don’t shoot if the other guy wants to back down-how do I know if he wants to back down-what if that movement in his hand is his trying to disengage the weapon-what if he had a twitch-what if he is being a clown with the ol’ ‘gotcha’ before he lowers the weapon. If one actually focuses on the other’s face, they won’t lock in on a movement of a trigger finger. They will have to assimilate facial movements, interpret them at face value, weigh whether the opponent is being genuine in face movements, all that. Then tie them in to hand movements, after locking in on what the hand movements are. After all of this, and more, the shootee will have to recover from the sheer treachery of shooter…‘this was supposed to be honorable!’ Each one of these will slow one down substantially long enough to get a bullet in the face.
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Hollywood has lead us to believe that a person immediately falls afte being shot. This is often not the case in real life. A person who has been shot will often be physically capable of fighting for many more seconds, even minutes.
My M9 Beretta that the Army gave me has a much larger pull weight uncocked (of course, if a round has been fired, the weapon stays cocked, but if you just pull the gun out and point, you have to pull the hammer back as part of the trigger squeeze. While this can be done quickly, it’s more obvious than a pre-cocked pistol. Also, because of the larger pull weight and length, it’s harder to get an accurate shot off quickly (doing it fast so not to have the other guy notice would likely lead to a pulled shot).
Hollywood goes beyond that and wants us to believe that the energy contained in slug weighing at most 150 to 250 grams can lift a 200 or 300 pound person into the air and through a window.
I’ve read numerous accounts of Russian soldiers in WW2 killing Germans after having large parts of their body blown off. Based on that alone, I’ll go with the person being shot first having the ability to return fire against the other person unless it’s a center head shot or heart shot which kills the person almost instantly.
I’ve always thought this movie cliche (guns drawn and pointed, not the old west quickdraw) was particularly stupid. Not due to reaction time, but due to human nature… I think most anyone with a gun pointed at someone and a gun being pointed back at them is going to pull that trigger and try to get out of the way as fast as possible. The chances that not one, but both people involved would have the inclination to not fire has always struck me as absurd… but it’s a movie staple, up there with cocking the pistol to add emphasis, I guess.
I like it when they rack their weapons as they gather at the car just before rushing the door. Then, when they get inside, they rack them again just before they rush the door the bad guy is behind. Then they rack it again while trying to make him talk by acting bad ass with their weapons and yelling at them …
I’ll bet you could lift a person off their feet with a 250 gram projectile travelling 400 m/s or so. It is after all 0.50.250kg(400m/s)^2=20,000 joules. What’s that, about 15,000 foot pounds?