Gunner wrote:
Rules of Gunfighting

I'm surely wasting my time here; but...

I've always liked Izaak Azimov's idea: "Violence is the last refuge
of incompetence."

In other words, if you're in a gunfight, then you've already made at
least one mistake, and all your subsequent choices and decisions are
suspect. In fact, if you can't make good choices BEFORE the shooting
starts, then the odds that you'll do any better when surrounded by
noise, bullets, and mortal danger, are vanishingly small.

Ain't that the whole purpose of this exercise? Ya may not agree with, or
even understand, some of the points brought up in the original post, but I
guarantee ya that everyone who read it spent some time thinking and
visualizing their own responses to action BEFORE (borrowing your emphasis)
the shooting starts.


This also applies to knife fights, fist fights, road rage, and even
arguments that involve loud voices or foul language. If you think of
life as fundamentally confrontational, then YOUR life WILL be; and you
will NOT enjoy what happens when you meet someone else just like you.


And, my friend, what do you do when YOU meet someone who is NOT "just like
you.." "Sweet reasonableness" (while certainly admirable) is a poor
defense when confronted by those
who are neither sweet nor reasonable....



The trouble is, most of the people who write things like these
"Rules of Gunfighting" don't believe a word of what they've written.
And, somewhere deep inside, most of them are secretly praying that
nobody else believes them either. There AREN'T any rules for gunfights.
Gunfights only happen when rules are ignored, and when order, logic, and
all other forms of reason have already been tossed aside. To propose
some logical, "intelligent" way to plan or conduct a gunfight is
preposterous.

To misquote your opening misquote (look it up..), incompetence is the
inevitable state-of-being of the unprepared. The underlying goal of any
interaction must be Personal Survival - and the preferred method of
achieving
that goal must be non-violent. 99 percent of the time, negotiation and
compromise are sufficient, but to fail to plan for that remaining 1% leaves
one depending on luck for survival.

No, thank you -- I'd rather not.

rest of rant - which loses all semblance of "Sweet Reasonableness" --
snipped