Among real life gunfighters, I suspect that few, if any, equaled Delf Bryce, called "Jelly" because a man he killed said that he hated being shot by a "jellybean", meaning a neat, businesslike dresser.

Re the post about Peter Brown's pants leg in one photo, I can't see the issue. Is he referring to the way the jeans caught at the top of one boot?

I saw Bill Jordan draw and shoot and he was very good, indeed. I saw Elmer Keith shoot, but only at a 200 yard target from a bench. He took awhile to see the target and fire, but hit it. He was then in his 70's and said that his eyesight wasn't what it had been. I met Bob Munden in a Ruger hospitality suite at the SHOT show and was impressed but never saw him shoot in person. In videos, he was simply amazing, as is Jerry Michulek. (sp?) I met Jeff Cooper briefly, and would have liked to see him shoot. He told me in a letter that he'd killed three men with handguns, so he had been there and seen the elephant. Not everyone who can draw fantastically fast can shoot well and not all of them have the killer instinct to draw and fire effectively when the chips are really down. Say what you will about Askins, but he was the real thing: very quick and accurate and with little or no hesitation about killing men. My limited exposure to him was such that I saw we'd never be friends, but he'd be a good man to have on your side in a shootout.

Back to fiction, Donald Hamilton once had Matt Helm note that he didn't have the fastest draw in the West, but if he pulled his gun, he'd shoot it. Matt carried S&W snub .38's but preferred to use a knife or a rifle. But he was certainly competent with handguns, as a US agent sent after enemy agents who were especially dangerous. He often cleaned up situations that the CIA was too timid or too PC to tackle.

I loved Peter O'Donnell's character Modesty Blaise in both the excellent novels and the UK comic strip, read in 57 countries. Modesty was extremely fast and deadly with handguns, but the author seems not to have been really familiar with the capacity of a good handgunner. In one scene, he had Modesty deck a bad guy with a S&W .41 Magnum at the amazing distance of...20 yards! I hope that was a misprint for 200 yards. Most of his other info was really pretty good, especially for a British fiction author. Modesty later tagged a really hot gunman by engaging him beyond his preferred close range quarters, so that 20 yards may have been a misprint, indeed, or readers let him hear about it.

An awful lot of what you see in movies or on TV just isn't realistic. That makes me respect the better examples. Even Hickok brought his gun up to eye level and aimed at any distance. Col. Rex Applegate, who trained some really deadly gunfighters for OSS and CIA, said that he followed Hickok's written advice for longer ranges. His CQB instruction came from Fairbairn and Sykes and was probably a lot like what Jelly Bryce brought to the FBI. This was my basic instruction, overlaid by what I read from Jeff Cooper in his early days.

One of the fastest and best handgun shots I've known was Jo Anne Hall, Ladies World IPSC Champion and a Dallas Cowboys cheerleader. She favored Colt .45 autos; a Colt .380 for concealed use. My son told me that what he learned from her and from me stood him in good stead on a number of occasions in Iraq when matters became close and quick.