{"id":75555,"date":"2024-06-15T00:42:24","date_gmt":"2024-06-15T06:42:24","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/thetacticalhermit.com\/?p=75555"},"modified":"2024-06-15T00:42:24","modified_gmt":"2024-06-15T06:42:24","slug":"lessons-from-the-past-3-reasons-to-carry-backup","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thetacticalhermit.com\/index.php\/2024\/06\/15\/lessons-from-the-past-3-reasons-to-carry-backup\/","title":{"rendered":"Lessons from the Past: 3 Reasons to Carry Backup"},"content":{"rendered":"

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Lessons from the Past: 3 Reasons to Carry Backup<\/a><\/h1>\n

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To some, notorious Old West gunfighter John Wesley Hardin was a psychopathic murderer and racist. To others, Hardin was a genuine American hero. Whether Hardin was a terrorist or a freedom fighter was a question that dogged him throughout his lifetime. Now, 150 years after his birth, historians continue to debate the issue. Was he a murderer and a racist, or a genuine American hero? Even if Hardin wasn\u2019t a \u201cgood guy,\u201d the good guys and gals can always learn something about gunfight survival from a man who was involved in so many shootouts. Few would debate that Wes \u201cI never killed anyone who didn\u2019t need killing\u201d Hardin filled more graves than any of his contemporaries. Estimates of his body count range from 27 to almost 50, but figures cited by most researchers are either 40 or 41.<\/h2>\n

Practice!<\/em>\u00a0Hardin constantly practiced live-fire when he could, and dry-fire when he couldn\u2019t.\u00a0Compete and hone your skills!<\/em>\u00a0Hardin biographer Lewis Nordyke implies that Hardin did so at every opportunity, though on an informal basis. Finally,\u00a0If you need to carry one gun, you\u2019re better off to carry two.<\/em>\u00a0Hardin lived this rule for most of his life and, according to Nordyke, regretted it when he didn\u2019t. Let\u2019s examine his experiences in that regard.<\/h2>\n

When the First Gun Fails<\/em><\/h2>\n

In\u00a0John Wesley Hardin: Texas Gunman<\/em>, Nordyke tells of a fight between Hardin and a Mexican trail boss on the Newton Prairie in Kansas. \u201cFor the sake of comfort, Wes was carrying only one pistol,\u201d says Nordyke, when his adversary rode at him armed and waving a revolver. \u201cWes spurred his horse into zigzagging movement. The Mexican fired and missed. Wes swept out his pistol. The firing mechanism failed and he realized he had no weapon. By some strange coincidence, the Mexican\u2019s gun also failed. The two men fell off their horses and charged together like two infuriated bulls.\u201d<\/h2>\n

During the subsequent fistfight, Hardin was shot at twice by his opponent\u2019s men and was unable to defend himself until his own party rode up and took the others at gunpoint. When the fisticuffs ended in a draw, and the parties separated without bloodshed, Nordyke writes that immediately thereafter \u201cWes buckled on his two-gun trappings and filled his holsters with smooth-working .44-caliber pistols.\u201d He would never be found without a second gun again, at least not for reasons of mere comfort.<\/h2>\n

RTWT<\/a><\/h2>\n

 <\/p>\n

Additional Reading:\u00a0 Of Kith and Kin\u00a0<\/a> –\u00a0(<\/a>Original Short Fiction)<\/h2>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Lessons from the Past: 3 Reasons to Carry Backup   To some, notorious Old West gunfighter John Wesley Hardin was a psychopathic murderer and racist. To others, Hardin was a genuine American hero. Whether Hardin was a terrorist or a freedom fighter was a question that dogged him throughout his lifetime. Now, 150 years after…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false,"jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false}}},"categories":[1307,6199,981,475,5064,478,479,14918,17121,5754,398,6644,10,404,405],"tags":[17564,4551,16222,8798,826,16011,11284,6314,14806,219],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thetacticalhermit.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/75555"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thetacticalhermit.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thetacticalhermit.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thetacticalhermit.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thetacticalhermit.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=75555"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/thetacticalhermit.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/75555\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":75558,"href":"https:\/\/thetacticalhermit.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/75555\/revisions\/75558"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thetacticalhermit.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=75555"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thetacticalhermit.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=75555"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thetacticalhermit.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=75555"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}