G. I. Earps

The patients who hobbled, or were carried, into the emergency room at William Beaumont General Hospital in El Paso were young Army or Air Force men; all had been shot in the leg. But not in defense of their country. Most had delayed for many painful hours--one as long as eight days--before seeking help, and they were extraordinarily sheepish about telling how they had been wounded. After Captain Michael M. Duffy of the Army's Medical Corps wormed the story out of the first such patient, he learned to spot similar cases quickly. They were victims of the fast-draw craze that has swept the country, and especially the West, in the last five years. Each one had shot himself.

In three years, reports Captain Duffy in the Annals of Surgery, he saw 24 such cases in El Paso, and surgeons elsewhere have seen scores more, mostly around military bases. For whereas the organized fast-draw clubs, encouraged by the firearms industry, make sure that their would-be Wyatt Earps and Marshal Dillons use only blank ammunition or wax bullets, too many young servicemen practice the game with full-load ammunition complete with lead slug. For economy's sake, they usually content themselves with a .22-caliber weapon. This can do plenty of damage, but a heavier weapon is far worse. One of Captain Duffy's patients used a .38, which broke his leg and left it partly paralyzed after 48 days in the hospital. Another used a .45. and the massive slug drove three coins in his pocket an inch deep into his thigh.

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