Getting shot with a .380...just a minor annoyance :)

[BigBlueDodge]

I saw this on MSNBC, and thought I'd share

Synopsys
Woman's husband shooter her in the head with .380 while she is asleep, and then turns gun on himself. Police are called, and when they arrive at the scene, the woman who had been shot lets them in, and offers them tea!

Now, I know there are many on this forum that say the little .380 is too small, but reading this story kinda made me laugh. I'm not trying to say that in bad taste. It's horrible what her husband did to her, but comical in the sense that she acted so cool about it. She made herself some tea and just waited for the police.

Lesson learned, if shooting a .380 to defend yourself, then shoot multiple times.


http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/30268741" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

[TexasComputerDude]

shot placement, shot placement, shot placement! SHOT PLACEMENT!

[stroo]

Heads are hard. People have been shot in the head with all kinds of calibers and only had headaches. That's one of the reasons why the head is not necessarily a good place to target regardless of caliber.

[Rex B]

"Other than that, Mrs. Sexton, how is your evening going?"


Well, that .380 did not fail for penetration. It went in the forehead and out the back.
Fortunately, nothing important was between the two points

[A-R]

I've heard of this kind of thing with .22 and .25 bullets, but never something as relatively large as a .380 ... from the description in the story, I'm thinking this had to be round tip target ammo. I just can't imagine a decent hollow point would do this, even in .380 caliber.

[gemini]

It's possible the .380 HP will expand without sufficient penetration. The FMJ round might be better for penetration, especially through clothing layers etc.. Some guys load alternating rounds of FMJ & HP in .380 mags for "just in case" scenarios.
Then again the old song lyrics of "hard headed woman, soft hearted man" may ring true......just saying.

[Liberty]

shot placement, shot placement, shot placement! SHOT PLACEMENT!

Heads are hard. People have been shot in the head with all kinds of calibers and only had headaches. That's one of the reasons why the head is not necessarily a good place to target regardless of caliber.

The slug from a .380-caliber handgun struck Tammy Sexton squarely in the forehead, passed through her skull and exited through the back of her head, Byrd said. A deputy arrived within minutes and was greeted by the woman.

"When the officer got there she said, 'What's going on?' She was holding a rag on her head and talking. She was conscious, but she was confused about what had happened," he said. "She had made herself some tea and offered the officer something to drink."

I think it is pretty clear shot placement was pretty solid at least according to most common training, and the hardness of her head little to do with her survival.
Maybe the .380 semi-autos aren't the ultimate killing machine. Maybe the gun was loaded with FMJs. Maybe the good Lord wasn't through with her yet.

[The Annoyed Man]

Maybe the bullet penetrated the skin on one side, was deflected by the skull, and dissected between skull and scalp until it popped out the other side? I personally know of at least one instance in which this happened with a .357. A lot depends on the angle at which initial penetration occurs.

[The Annoyed Man]

Nope, I stand corrected. I see that the article states the bullet actually passed through her brain.

Wow. . . .

[LaUser]

From Rules for a Gunfight

2. Anything worth shooting is worth shooting twice. Ammo is cheap - life is expensive.

[ELB]

I would not bet on a shot to the head turning out to be a non-trivial affair, but it is amazing how these things work out. That actress in Switzerland (I think) fell down and bumped her head on what I recall being reported as not a particularly serious fall -- something that happens thousands of time on ski slopes -- but a few hours later she is dead. Couple years ago there was a report of a guy who took some drug (methamphetamine, I believe), shot himself in the head about 10 times, both sides of the head, with a nail gun, then passed out. When he woke up remembering nothing, he went to the Emergency Room to find out why he had such a bad headache. The X-rays clearly showed all these nails, at least a couple or three inches long, embedded straight into his brain, no deflection. In terms of function, he was relatively unscathed. (At least for a meth addict).

Now this gal. Very strange. Good for her, but strange.

[G.C.Montgomery]

There are such things as a miracle is just about all I can say for the woman's survival and apparent health. Without getting too gross, the sad fact is heads are hard bone and handgun bullets don't fair well against such things. But the brain is also a curious thing. In theory, one could remove the frontal lobe of a man's brain and, while he may no longer get every joke you tell him, that man may remain quite capable of killing you afterward.

We've got two plausible possibilities in this case. One is that, as Rex B suggested, the bullet simply failed to hit anything important on its way through. I don’t know if that’s a knock against the woman or not but, it may prove to be true. The other possibility, as Annoyed Man mentioned, is the bullet may have traced a path between scalp and skull before exiting the skin on the other side. I honestly think this is the most likely explanation and I've heard of many other examples of people being shot in the head or face and surviving or even continuing to fight after being shot.

My memory of the incident is a little fuzzy but, HPD had an officer shot in the face during a traffic stop some years ago. The bullet went in under the officer's left eye and exited behind his left ear. The suspect immediately drove off but, the officer never lost consciousness. In fact, the officer ran back to his unit for cover, got on the radio to tell dispatch he'd been shot and the suspect had left. I don't remember if it was ever verified but one version of the story had a bit of dark humor. It is claimed the officer was able to give the suspect's home address as a place where the suspect could be picked up because the officer still had the suspect's license in hand at the time he was shot.

I'll say this; I'm not willing to test any theories with getting shot by a .380. It may not be the most powerful caliber in the world and has spectacularly failed to kill people as has every other handgun cartridge in the world. Still, it’s quite capable of killing me.

[The Annoyed Man]

It may not be the most powerful caliber in the world and has spectacularly failed to kill people as has every other handgun cartridge in the world. Still, it’s quite capable of killing me.

Bingo. I certainly don't want to get shot with one.

[Skiprr]

From Rules for a Gunfight

2. Anything worth shooting is worth shooting twice. Ammo is cheap - life is expensive.

Yep. When physics meets anatomy, the result can be a very strange beast. I'm not sayin' in any way, shape, or form that shot placement isn't important, but with a handgun I think trusting too much in shot placement is just a stone's-throw behind the myth of the one-shot stop. This isn't a comment about Tammy Sexton's story, just something I think we CHLs might take away from it. (I'm launching into another one of my diatribes, so immediately jump to the next post if inclined. FWIW, I've been working on and off again for a few months on a book about defensive shooting, and that's why these subjects sometimes trigger me (pun intended) into long, pedantic posts. Sorry.)

Not singling out TexasComputerDude, but we hear the "shot placement" mantra an awful lot, as if shot placement always can be expected to win the day. And, being pragmatic, I think that can give newer defensive shooters a false impression.

Follow with me a sec: First, the epinephrine pump. If you find yourself in a life-and-death confrontation, we all know about the wacky physiological changes your body is going to go through in the blink of an eye: jacked-up heart rate, cardiac output, and respiration; blood-pressure jump; adrenaline dump; tunnel vision; loss of fine motor control; etc. In other words, the pinpoint marksmanship you practiced at the range against defenseless paper targets is pretty much out the window.

Second, sighting. Tunnel vision is reduced peripheral vision, but along with it in life-threatening situations comes distance-only eyesight, a phenomenon that happens when we instinctively focus on the threat. This is easier to override than tunnel vision, but it requires a conscious effort, and precious time, to refocus your eyesight to a closer distance, like the front sight of your pistol.

This is one explanation for why so few gunfight survivors remember ever seeing their sights at all. Many trainers have adapted their instruction accordingly over the last decade. For example, Gabe Suarez teaches what he calls "Meat & Metal Shooting," a phrase that implies you'll see the threat and you may see that blob of metal in your hand superimposed on the threat, but that's about the best you can hope for at defensive distances and speeds, and you'd better practice to get the hits that way.

Third, movement. According to what they teach at Gunsite, the actual shooting portion of a defensive encounter with a handgun is generally over in less than 2.5 seconds. During that time, you'd sure better not be standing still unless you're already behind good cover, and the odds are high the threat won't be standing still, either. "Moving shooter, moving target" (I think G.C. is teaching this course at the TexasCHL Forum Day at PSC later this year) is what should be expected if ever something really goes down. You gotta get off the "X" right now while you draw, present, and get the hits on a moving target...and if you can't do it in about two seconds, you're too slow.

Fourth, target size. When preaching shot placement above all else, there is only one, small target area that has a realistic chance of immediately stopping a threat: a hit to the brainstem or severing the spinal cord in the cervical region. Go into the kitchen and find a cooking knife with a heavy handle, a knife smaller than a butcher knife but larger than a steak knife. That's about the size of your one-shot-stop target.

If you have a friend handy, try this experiment. Have him or her hold the knife handle-up, point-down; you stand 8 or 10 feet away and you're gonna use your index finger as your pretend-gun (a Blue Gun is better, if you have one). Have your friend say, "Go!" and start moving sideways and away in a direction of his choice; simultaneously you start moving sideways and away in the opposite direction, pretend to draw (realistically; don't just touch your hip), and use your index finger to get on target and get the hit within a two-second time limit. Odds are, it's not happenin'. I'd wager that even Robbie Leatham would need a good dose of luck to make that shot reliably.

Defensive shooting isn't so much about pinpoint accuracy as it is about speed and combat accuracy. In the experiment above, substitute as target your friend's torso rather than the kitchen knife. The likelihood of a hit will go up exponentially.

That demonstration is one reason a lot of folks believe there is a minimum floor for defensive ammunition. You will probably need to really get the threat's attention under all the conditions we just described. A .25 round to the torso is unlikely to do it; remember, the threat is all amped-up on adrenaline, too...or even external influencers. I carry a .32 caliber as a BUG almost all the time, but I don't expect it to replace my primary carry: it's there mainly in case I need to fight for retention of my primary gun at contact-distance.

I'm a bit concerned with the astronomical popularity of the P3AT and the LCP, as well as the evidence of vanishing .380 ammo availability, because I'm afraid too many people new to carrying are looking toward comfort first before function. Mind you, it's always better to carry a .380 than leave the .45 at home, but I think folks should think long and hard about a primary carry that's less than a 9mm. I'm not volunteering to take a .380 to the chest, either. But you get my point.

Yes, I do have too much time on my hands.

As more evidence, here are some links that show outcomes like Tammy Sexton's are not all that uncommon. I snagged these first intending to just post quickly about examples where shot placement was smack in the head, but the injured party survived. Then I felt I needed to do more 'splaining than that...

http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,351472,00.html
4/16/2009 -- "Florida Woman Survives Gunshot Right Between the Eyes"

http://www.kspr.com/news/local/41289052.html
3/15/2009 -- "Man Shot Twice in the Head Survives"

http://www.keyetv.com/content/...
3/30/2009 -- "Man shot in the head with a 6 inch spear survives"

http://www.nbcsandiego.com/news/local/...
2/23/2009 -- "Carlsbad Man Gets Shot in Head, Survives"

http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,465325,00.html
12/11/2008 -- "Boy Survives After 16-Inch Arrow Is Shot Through Head"

http://www.nydailynews.com/news/ny_crime/...
10/12/2008 -- "Male model survives a head shot during robbery"

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/26604942/
9/8/2008 -- "Clerk survives execution-style gunshot to head"

http://www.scoopthis.org/2008/08/...
8/15/2008 -- "Turkish journalist shot in the head - and survives!"

http://www.usatoday.com/news/offbeat/20 ... lets_x.htm
11/11/2006 -- "Brazilian woman survives after being shot in head 6 times"

http://www.cnn.com/2005/SHOWBIZ/Music/0 ... index.html
8/9/2005 -- "'Walking in Memphis' singer shot in head, survives"

[ELB]

We've got two plausible possibilities in this case. One is that, as Rex B suggested, the bullet simply failed to hit anything important on its way through...

The article (at least the version I read) notes the bullet traveled right between the right and left lobes of the brain.