> pistols at dawn duel in front of an old west saloon

Probably not much less likely than a lot of the scenarios people are fantasizing about in here.

well, again, let me preface this with I don't conceal carry nor do I feel in my day to day life unsafe to the point I want to conceal carry. However, I got interested in IDPA, as a hobby, which is a shooting competition that does time trials through a practical scenario. For example, move to a station, fire at 4 targets from behind cover, move to another station, reload, move to another station and fire at 3 targets. Your score is determined by speed through the scenarios and the accuracy of your shots. i'm no stranger at all to shooting firearms having spent a large portion of my childhood hunting and years of going to the range. During my intro to IDPA class I was shocked at how hard it is to keep everything straight in your head and operate a handgun safely and effectively under the very minor stress of a time trial and a group of people watching.

Now, in my 49 years i've been in only one situation where i was attacked, beat up, robbed and would have been justified to use lethal force in my defense. Had i been armed I would not have had it together enough in the amount of time i had to chamber a round, aim, and fire. Unless your brain is trained to respond there just isn't time to think through anything, it's like your mental capacity just grinds to a halt in those moments. If you have it together enough to chamber a round, aim, and fire you have it together enough to use run-fu and escape the situation.

finally, once again, i don't conceal carry and thank my lucky stars my job doesn't involve making decisions like draw and fire or don't. Maybe someone with more training and experience will weigh in in this conversation, i'm just giving my two cents.

This might be the impression one gets from watching movies or television shows, but its not reality. Anyone who has either trained with a handgun, or even just viewed videos of real-world confrontations will know that this isn't the case. In many encounters you have almost no time. Racking the slide and acquiring the target adds a massive amount of time (its even worse when you are under pressure).

Most defensive uses of a firearms occur at a short distance, less than five yards. It takes very little time to cover the distance. For those who are interested, here is a video covering what it looks like when someone with a knife runs straight at someone at 21 feet, you will see why the idea that people have time to rack the slide is absurd (https://youtu.be/_2zfw_4DYdQ?t=79).

> if the attacker misses a shot at you you have time to chamber a round

Is that based on recorded personal times, or are you just assuming?

Because I can shoot the mozambique in 1.9 seconds. Chambering a round is much slower than that.