It was more of a southern thing but certainly there were plenty of occurrences of it. President Andrew Jackson seemed to have been involved in quite few before he became president but he had a bullet in him from one of his many duels even while he was president. He was sort of tough guy. His plan for the duel in which he got shot was to take the first shot, survive it and then use his time to be sure to kill his opponent- which is exactly what he did. Yeh, it's good to have a plan. I would like to see it revived a bit or some variation where you at least get a fair shot at the other guy's lawyer or maybe even your own.