Bob Munden (February 8, 1942 - December 10, 2012), was a world-renowned American exhibition shooter with handguns, rifles and shotguns but is most well known for holding 18 world-records in Fast Draw and having the title "Fastest Man with a Gun Who Ever Lived" bestowed on him by Guinness World Records.
Bob Munden was born in Kansas City, Missouri, United States, and started his shooting career at age 11 out West in California. Beginning in high school, Bob competed in Jeff Cooper's Big Bear "Leatherslaps" shooting competitions at Big Bear Lake, California in the 1950s. The Leatherslaps eventually became the South Western Combat Pistol League (SWCPL). When Bob Munden was 17, he placed second in the 1958 Leatherslap using a Colt .45 Single Action borrowed from Cooper. He claimed to have won over 3,500 fast draw trophies.
After taking up exhibition shooting, Bob Munden gave many demonstrations to audiences, once with John Satterwhite. Munden also gave shooting demonstrations on television shows the world over, including "Super Humans" on the History Channel, American Shooter, Shooting USA, Shooting USA's Impossible Shots and Ripley's Believe It or Not. Munden was also a custom gunsmith.
Video Bob Munden
Record Controversy
The Guinness Book of World Records listed Bob Munden in the 1980 and previous editions as the "World's fastest gun", but they stopped publishing the record in later editions so that the book could be approved as a reference source for school libraries. This led to controversy over the records that Munden claimed to hold and have held in the past. Munden's critics have argued that his records are not sufficiently well-documented to be valid and that he currently holds no official fast draw world record. Fast Draw includes multiple events, each with its own world record. The record with the shortest time is single shot open freestyle (using a light-weight gun) held by Ernie Hill, of Litchfield Park, Ariz., with a recorded time of .208 seconds. Munden has received skepticism mostly due to the absence of both written evidence of his records and for the absence of his supposed 3,500 trophies. After the advent of digital timers, the world records were reset because the older analog timers were less accurate. Munden claimed to have held many of these older records, with a fastest Walk and Draw Level time of 0.15 seconds that he claimed was the fastest shot in history. In a video clip online he's heard telling the time to 1 3/4th hundreds of a second, that he shot during the opening of the Guinness World Record Museum in 1975 in the Empire State Building in NYC. According to the World Fast Draw Association, the official documentation of these older records has been lost, but in the vintage section of the film Bob Munden: Outrageous Shooting on DVD, Munden is seen setting one of his world records.
Maps Bob Munden
Stan Lee's Superhumans
At age 68 Bob Munden appeared in Stan Lee's Superhumans. In it, it was found out that his hand is withstanding 10 Gs of force when his weapon is drawn. In a demo, using a Colt .45 single-action revolver, he shot two balloons eight feet apart in less than a tenth of second.
Death
According to his wife Becky, Bob started suffering chest pains while driving home to Butte from a Missoula hospital after receiving treatment for a mild heart attack. Miles from a hospital, he told his wife to keep driving before dying shortly afterward.
References
External links
- Official Bob Munden Fan Page
- Bob Munden Website. Also home to Munden Enterprises and Munden's Six-Gun Magic by Jeff Ault
- Official Bob Munden YouTube Channel
- 1987 Guns Magazine Feature on Bob Munden
- Fastest Man with the Golden Guns: NRA National Firearms Museum on YouTube
- Bob Munden Fastest Gunslinger ever Unbelievable on YouTube
- Bob Munden on "Stan Lee's Superhumans"
- Bob Munden appears with other fine exhibition shooters on "Shooting USA's Impossible Shots" on the Outdoor Channel Wednesdays
Source of the article : Wikipedia
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