The last two days on The Show, we’ve been exploring this enduring American mystery — is there such a thing as a good guy with a gun?
For the third installment in our little miniseries, I wanted to offer my own experience with that question. The story begins on a recent Saturday morning, when I woke up at 6:30 a.m. and drove out to the Pioneer Living History Museum, about 25 miles north of Glendale. I arrived just in time for roll call.
Full conversation
ANNOUNCER: Bad Barrow! Big Bad! Choctaw Kid! Dastardly! Desert Dingo! Desert Gator! Detox! Double D! Dry Gulcher! Ghost Rider! Grey Wonder! Gut Shot Garth! Half Cock Willie! Heartbreaker! Iceman! Moonshine Jack!
By 8 a.m., with everyone accounted for, the crowd’s attention turned towards a dirt path leading to a clearing, where there was an antique cannon with a freshly lit fuse.
ANNOUNCER: Attention, listen up! Everybody still here? Good! Anybody that’s sittin' down there by that cannon, it’s goin’ off, and it’s gonna be loud!
And with that, the Statewide Competition of the Cowboy FastDraw Association was officially underway. An older man in a wide-brim hat stepped up to a microphone and introduced himself as Quick Cal.
QUICK CAL: Good morning everybody. What I’ve got for you this morning is more than just words of encouragement, it’s words of wisdom.
The crowd pressed in close. Everyone was wearing authentic Old West attire: boots, leather vests with tassels, leather chaps, flowing skirts and corsets.
QUICK CAL: This is your sport, as much as it is mine. So God bless you all. Shoot well today.
Somebody rang a bell, and Desert Dingo, Half Cock Willie, Grey Wonder and the rest of them hustled over to a bulletin board, spurs jangling and holsters swinging from their hips. They were looking to see which bracket they’d be shooting in.
I caught up with Gut Shot Garth, given name Matthew Garth Geesling. He was feeling excited. Things had gone well for him at the last statewide shoot.
MATTHEW GEESLING: I won a first place here in the A bracket, and then a first place in the B bracket, which, is kinda like a consolation prize, for losers. I’m sorry, but if it’s not number 1, in the A bracket, I consider it a loser bracket. But I’m competitive.
SAM DINGMAN: No - I was remembering that from our conversation last time. You’re here to win.
MATTHEW: Yeah, that’s right. That’s part of it, part of life.
I first met Gut Shot Garth a few months earlier.
MATTHEW: I come by being a gunfighter honestly, it’s definitely in my blood. [LAUGHS]
Matthew’s dad was also a FastDraw shooter. In fact, he was at a competition the day Matthew was born. When they brought him to the hospital to meet his son, he was still carrying the 2 gallon jug of Jack Daniels he won at the shoot.
MATTHEW: My mom wanted to name me Matthew, and my dad, being a coupla sheets to the wind, took advantage of the situation and named me Matthew Garth. And Matthew Garth is the character in "Red River," with John Wayne - Montgomery Clift’s character.
We’re sitting in Matthew’s dining room with his wife, Deborah, who’s also a FastDraw gunfighter. Deborah started going to the shoots to hang out with Matthew. But before long, one of the other shooters offered her a private lesson.
DEBORAH: And so, I did it. Just for fun - but as soon as I tried it, I was hooked. And I turned around, my husband was standing behind me, he had already bought me a gun.
DINGMAN: Oh, so you were waiting for this moment.
MATTHEW: Oh yeah.
DEBORAH: They were priming me, they were priming me.
Deborah is just as competitive as Matthew — so competitive, in fact, that she says they can’t play board games together anymore. But they don’t need board games. They’re gunfighters now.
FastDraw, to be clear, doesn’t involve actual fighting. It’s an individual sport. You load a revolver with bullets full of wax, and stand in a line of fellow shooters, facing a row of metal targets with a red light in the center. When the light comes on, you draw your weapon and fire at the target. If you miss, you don’t get any points. But if you hit the target, a judge measures how much time it took for you to draw, fire and hit. The fastest time wins.
DINGMAN: So it was the opportunity to spend time together and the competition that sealed the deal.
MATTHEW: And the fact that we dress in character.
DEBORAH: Absolutely! Our son calls it cosplay for adults.
MATTHEW: We all have aliases. Deborah’s is Arizona Mama Bear.
DINGMAN: And who are you?
MATTHEW: My alias is Gut Shot Garth. And the reason is ...
DEBORAH: I knew it was gonna come to this!
MATTHEW: I have been shot three times, and I lived.
DINGMAN: May I ask about the circumstances of the shooting?
MATTHEW: Three men tried to rob me and murder me. I was not a good person, let’s put it that way. I’d lost my mom when I was 15, left home at the age of 15. Had been on my own from that point on. There were a lot of things that were in my life that I wish I’d never done. Livin’ in Texas, close to the border, back in the '70s, '80s - there was a lot of stuff flowing across the border. I was part of that. Just dealing with alcohol and drug addiction, and stuff like that.
DINGMAN: I’m so sorry.
MATTHEW: Oh no, don’t be sorry. I wouldn’t be the person that I am today if that hadn’t happened.
After Matthew got shot, he was rushed to the hospital, where doctors thought he was dead. After literally dozens of surgeries, he somehow got back on his feet, met Deborah, and became a Christian. He says he doesn’t recognize the person he was back when he got shot.
DINGMAN: Did getting shot change your relationship or perspective on guns?
MATTHEW: Absolutely not. My father bred in me that: You either have evil intentions or you have good intentions and honorable intentions.
Matthew and Deborah, it turns out, have a lot of honorable intentions.
MATTHEW: Our son has a serious mental illness - he’s been in the adult system for about 14 years, it’s a very broken system.
During the day, Deborah runs a nonprofit that helps families like hers navigate the challenges of finding care for adults like her son. That’s where she got her FastDraw alias, Arizona Mama Bear. Matthew’s day job funds the nonprofit, and he also leads a faith-based discussion group for families affected by mental illness. They love their work. But the demands of their work are a big part of why they love FastDraw.
DEBORAH: I do think that the fact that we’re doing this is God’s mercy. It’s very common to hear marriages fall apart in crisis situations - ours didn’t. It was the opposite. And I think that was, again, God’s grace to us. We’ve just done everything together really well since then.
MATTHEW: When I do FastDraw, I can blank out the world, and nothing else is happening around me. But my wife’s right there with me. We can forget the cares of the day for those few hours of just peace.
Those feelings of escapism and peace are part of the kinship Deborah and Matthew feel with the people they shoot side-by-side with.
DEBORAH: We all have a similar story to what we shared with you. I think everyone has a difficult thing they walk through. When we’re together it’s not spoken or said, we’re all just there leaving that behind. We all know each other by our aliases - most of us don’t know each other’s real names.
Deborah and Matthew invited me to a practice shoot in a dusty field at Rio Salado Sportsman’s Club in Mesa, at the foot of Usery Mountain. There, I met another participant.
DINGMAN: Hey, I’m Sam, are you Apple Pie?
APPLE PIE: I am. We’ve got names like Venom and Widowmaker and Grave Digger, all these angry names. And then you’ve got Apple Pie.
They’d set up a shooting line and targets, and club members took turns firing off practice rounds.
JUDGE: Line’s ready! Here come your commands! Shooters on the line … shooters, set!
It was dusk, and the air was filled with purple clouds and gun smoke. I asked Apple Pie how he got his name.
APPLE PIE: That was a military name assigned to me. I was a 17-year-old, and they said, “you look like you should be at home sellin’ mom’s apple pie.”
When I asked Apple Pie what he likes about FastDraw, his voice started to quiver.
APPLE PIE: We’re all represented. And you might be shootin’ against a Purple Heart or an 8-year-old. You never know. That’s what we call “the luck of the draw.” It’s a bond, you know? We’ve got a lot of camaraderie out here.
As I was talking to Apple Pie, Deborah came over and stood quietly next to me. There was a twinkle in her eye. When Apple Pie excused himself to load his revolver, she asked if I wanted to try shooting a few rounds.
DEBORAH: Are you gonna try it?
DINGMAN: Uh … yeah? Why not? Uh … sure.
All of a sudden, I found myself being fitted with a holster. A guy who introduced himself as Muletrain handed me a revolver, and showed me how to pull it out, cock the hammer and pull the trigger. Someone handed me a safety release form to fill out. As I leaned down to fill it out, it occurred to me that until that moment, I’d never even held a gun, let alone fired one.
JUDGE: So if you have an alias, or you can just make one up, or you can just use your regular name and put it over there.
DINGMAN: I could make up an alias? I’m frozen, I don’t know what to choose!
MULETRAIN: Yosemite Sam.
DINGMAN: Sold!
JUDGE: Put Yosemite Sam or whatever you’re using there…
I stepped up to the line and squinted at the metal target with the red light in the center. I tried to remember all the steps I’d practiced. Muletrain could see my wheels turning. He leaned over my shoulder and whispered in my ear: “Don’t aim.” The light turned red, and I heard a popping sound.
MULETRAIN: There ya go, nice!
DINGMAN: Woo-hoo!
I didn’t remember drawing or firing, but when I looked over at the target, there was a tiny wax dot near the middle. I turned to Matthew.
DINGMAN: I get it.
MATTHEW: I told you, it’s like cocaine dude! You just gotta do it again.
And, I did. I shot a few more rounds that night. Before I knew it, a couple hours had gone by. And as I walked out to the parking lot, it happened. For the first time in months, ever since I packed up my life and moved to Arizona, 2,700 miles from my fiancée and my life back East, I felt this unmistakable sense of peace.
DINGMAN: OK, this is the big thing I’m thinking about walking away. I just walked out here into the parking lot, I’m looking at the most gorgeous, burnt umber mountain range. Dead quiet except for the pop of the guns. Sunset is purple. Surrounded by magnificent peaks. Deep red orange mountains.
And earlier today I was so stressed out, thinking about the wedding, my friendship with Alan, money, and all I was thinking about for the last 2 hours was just dropping in to this.
And when I was shooting, when I did it the best, it was just - focus on the target, flip the hammer back, don’t aim. Don’t think. And I feel so much more at ease than when I got here. And I haven’t felt that way in a long time.
A few months later, when I got to the state shoot, I wanted to tell Matthew how good I felt that day after practice. But I was nervous. The things I’m going through felt so insignificant compared to what he and Deborah are dealing with every day.
After my first conversation with Matthew that morning, when he told me he wasn’t interested in any consolation prizes, I lost track of him and Deborah. I wandered around for a while, watching gunfighters take the line. One group was playfully squabbling about a defective target. The judges were concerned it was registering hits even when shooters missed the mark. It’s just sensitive, one of the shooters yelled.
JUDGE: Ain’t no sensitivity in Fast Draw!
A few yards away, a solitary shooter was leaning against a fence with a harmonica, playing "Lowrider."
When I finally bumped into Matthew again, I took a deep breath, and told him I’d been reflecting on the whole “don’t aim” thing. How comforting it had been to spend a few hours as Yosemite Sam instead of regular Sam. And how silly I felt comparing those feelings to the power of FastDraw in his life.
When I finished, Matthew just grinned.
MATTHEW: This is very personal - you know, 'cause this is, this is YOU.
He took out his phone and showed me a playlist he listens to when he’s getting ready to shoot. One of the songs he added recently is called "Jesus Saves," by Cooper Alan. It’s a song about embracing your imperfections. Early in the song, Cooper Alan sings, “I ain’t a Sunday morning choir. I’m a dirty boots in the back pew backslider. I ain’t easy to love - more washed in the whiskey than washed in the blood.”
MATTHEW: That’s me - I’m that dirty boot sinner sitting in the back row. I’m more washed in the whiskey than I am in the blood. It’s because this is a work in progress. I’m just not completely there yet. I don’t know anyone who’s completely there yet. But I wanna be.
Ain’t no sensitivity in FastDraw? I respectfully disagree.
