Carl, those were awesome videos. Thanks for posting them. I lived in SoCal when all that was going down in Newhall. I graduated from high school that year - 1970. I have the vaguest recollection of the Newhall incident having happened, but remember none of the details. That said, I was/am very familiar with the roads over which all of that took place. Some of them were part of my motorcycling playground.
The Miami Dade shootout analysis was very interesting to me because this is the most detailed recounting I've ever seen of it. What is remarkable about both shootouts is that they mark the beginning of a very steep (and expensive in lives lost) learning curve. A LOT of the knowledge that many of us take for granted today came at the expense of the men who survived these shootouts and pass what they learned on to us, or in the lessons of what those who didn't survive might have been able to do differently.
Agent Mirales's words about not giving up, the will to live, and staying in the fight, are timeless wisdom. We humans are a paradox. We are remarkably easy to kill. We are also remarkably difficult to kill. Absent an
immediately fatal injury, the difference is entirely psychological.
One thing of note from the case of the Newhall shootout....... The suspect Twining who killed himself in that home - after he shot himself and responding officers returned fire from the length of a fairly long hallway (at 36:25 into the video), one can see where one charge of buckshot hit him in the chest, and the pattern is still nice and tight. I cropped it down so the picture is not all bloody, and since Twining was already dead when this was fired, there's no bleeding from the wound. That ought to allay anyone's fears about buckshot pattern spread from an 18" barrel inside a house. That pattern, judging by its size relative to the rest of the picture, isn't more than about 2" across. Granted, even a long hallway inside even a pretty large home is not a very long distance, but it is long enough that it worries some people. If you can hit your target with a shotgun inside the house, you don't have to worry too much about pattern spread.
“Hard times create strong men. Strong men create good times. Good times create weak men. And, weak men create hard times.”
― G. Michael Hopf, "Those Who Remain"
#TINVOWOOT