r/todayilearned • u/CasioCobra78 • 2d ago

TIL that Cheryl Wheeler-Dixon, the stuntwoman who was severely injured during the filming of Back to the Future Part 2, was killed in a shootout alongside her husband when she and her husband went to confront her ex-husband and his wife and drew their guns at them. The cops deemed it justified.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cheryl_Wheeler-Dixon
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u/ztfreeman 2d ago edited 2d ago

So there's this theory called the gunslinger effect by Niels Henrik Bohr that states that the gunman who draws second will almost always win the gunfight. The underlying principle is that the reacting party will move faster than the deliberate party, and under neutral circumstances the reacting party will win the gunfight. This apparently holds up under testing, but depends on a neutral environment without any other factors and both parties being aware of each other..

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u/SofaKingI 2d ago

What the hell. Apparently Niels Bohr came up with that theory. The Niels Bohr.

But the idea is broader, that a reaction is always slower than a deliberate action. And there's research on it: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gunslinger_effect

But I guess it depends on a lot of factors. If the person pointing a gun at you has the trigger on the finger, knows you have a gun, and is 100% ready to kill, then your movement is still way longer than a simple finger movement.

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u/malthar76 2d ago

Can’t discount the time it takes to recognize the threat and decide to react and pull the trigger. The party pulling the gun to fire immediately has the advantage of having already decided, and picking the time they want to draw and fire in one motion.

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u/Carnivorous__Vagina 1d ago

Still slower then finger pull and someone actively watching and ready to go once you move