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" Center of Mass shots are proven to be the BEST option in the majority of cases, not the ONLY option. The COM area of a moving person has far less lateral, and vertical movement than their head. The COM is a far larger target. It contains numerous large blood vessels, as well as Central Nervous System components. And, It simply offers a higher hit potential than the head. These are facts, that is all."

Hey, I concur. I don't believe I said to make only headshots. You are preaching to the choir here. I just don't think alot of people think about changing their point of aim after shooting at a bad guy. Heck, I was chastised for making headshots, at my initial qualifying, buy a police officer doing the class. How easy is that, in that environment!!! Man, I was bored to tears. My first quals I went for accuracy. My second quals I went for speed, just to make it more interesting. Next time I'll probably shoot all off-hand.
Look, all I'm try to say is, after you put several round into COM, and the bad guy is still standing there, you need to have a plan B.

Dan

Agree TOTALLY, I just didn't want you to think that I was pointing any criticism toward your beliefs or practices. It is a fun drill though. It will make you acutely aware of trigger control, and "timing" the break.

and that is TOO funny about the quals.....I shot them weak handed last time just for grins. It kinda freaks me out how easy they are. I actually KNOW people that never fired a handgun before, nor since the class. And most of them actually did pretty well on the qual.

I am a little confused. If he hit the BG with no misses with the 1st 2 shots why the need to reload? Shouldn't he have still had quite a few rounds left without having to reload? Is it good practice to reload immediately if the opportunity presents for a full mag even if you have only fired 2 rounds just for the advantage of having a full mag? Not trying to flame what he did just curious as to why the reload after only 2 shots. Is it possible that he emptied the mag on the initial confrontation and only managed 2 hits?

it's called a "Tactical Reload" so you start the second half of the fight with a full weapon.

You keep the partial mag in your possession in such a case.

Gotcha, wasn't sure

RCP wrote:I am a little confused. If he hit the BG with no misses with the 1st 2 shots why the need to reload? Shouldn't he have still had quite a few rounds left without having to reload? Is it good practice to reload immediately if the opportunity presents for a full mag even if you have only fired 2 rounds just for the advantage of having a full mag? Not trying to flame what he did just curious as to why the reload after only 2 shots. Is it possible that he emptied the mag on the initial confrontation and only managed 2 hits?

Precisely my question?? he should have had another 10+ rounds to go in that mag..

why the need to reload

If his department is like most then that is what he was taught to do. Under stress you revert back to your training - that's why it's important to train properly (and often). It doesn't matter whether he fired one round or 10 rounds you're taught to reload, retain your mag and re-engage if need be.

It's easy to second guess shootings but quite a few people have addressed some very good points with their replies. One of the officers that I've worked with for many years was involved in a shooting this past weekend. After we heard some of the basic details of the shooting we all did the same thing - "why did you do this, why did you do that...". Once he answered each of our questions from his perspective at the time of the shooting it made better sense to us.

The bottom line - there is no way to properly critique this shooting (or any shooting for that matter) based upon a newspaper article. A proper review would include at least one high quality video camera with sound (preferably two) along with the officer's step by step commentary as the tape was reviewed.

One last thing - like others have said, until you deal with (and what I mean by that is hands on physical fighting) someone hyped up on drugs you have no understanding about what those drugs can do to a person's strength or ability to disregard pain. The Taser is probably the only current weapon that can incapacitate these individuals and they are still not fool proof. I have been involved in numerous arrest of females who were high on drugs and weighed less than 90 pounds soaking wet. Yet they were able to resist numerous officers who were in top physical condition as they tried to restrain them. The only way to accomplish that is by shear numbers of officers or the Taser.

Prior to the Taser it was usually only accomplished by beating them into submission (or killing them) if you couldn't get additional officers there in a timely manner. A one-on-one encounter with an equally sized and in shape suspect who is high on PCP versus an officer is not a good situation. If it's a deputy or DPS Trooper out by themselves, they can't afford to fight for 15 or 20 minutes until a back up officer arrives. The odds are that they will tire out far sooner than the bad guy due to his drug induced super human strength and endurance. Once that happens they would probably lose their weapon and then their life.

Phddan wrote: I do alot of practice with 2 + 1. Mozambique drill, I do believe it is called. I do it stationary and on the move at varying distances. Personally I think that everyone should. But, to each his own.
If you practice like you fight, its a lot easier to fight like you practice. Something along the lines of reverting back to training when your under stress. But you have probably heard that before, somewhere.

Dan

Oh, OK. Shooting a a piece of paper hanging there not shooting back when you are not under stress is entirely different than when the a problem arises.

Survive a real gun fight and I'll be impressed with your criticism of others who have.

txinvestigator wrote:

Phddan wrote: I do alot of practice with 2 + 1. Mozambique drill, I do believe it is called. I do it stationary and on the move at varying distances. Personally I think that everyone should. But, to each his own.
If you practice like you fight, its a lot easier to fight like you practice. Something along the lines of reverting back to training when your under stress. But you have probably heard that before, somewhere.

Dan

Oh, OK. Shooting a a piece of paper hanging there not shooting back when you are not under stress is entirely different than when the a problem arises.

Survive a real gun fight and I'll be impressed with your criticism of others who have.

I think you both might be trying to get to the same point. TXI is right that A live fire situation is very different than paper targets but PHDdan is also right that with out the training you might as well have a rock in your hand. Shooting paper targets will help build muscle memory so that when things do hit the fan it become a more subconscious thought that anything.

But I could be talking out my back side since the only shooting that I was an active participant in a shooting was when I was trying to get away from some two guys in a truck trying to bike-jack me at a stop light one night.

txinvestigator wrote:

Phddan wrote: I do alot of practice with 2 + 1. Mozambique drill, I do believe it is called. I do it stationary and on the move at varying distances. Personally I think that everyone should. But, to each his own.
If you practice like you fight, its a lot easier to fight like you practice. Something along the lines of reverting back to training when your under stress. But you have probably heard that before, somewhere.

Dan

Oh, OK. Shooting a a piece of paper hanging there not shooting back when you are not under stress is entirely different than when the a problem arises.

Survive a real gun fight and I'll be impressed with your criticism of others who have.

Should only those who have been fired upon have the right to opinions on training? This always happens when a cop is involved in an incident. Critiques about the officers actions cause folks to get inflamatory to those who think things could have been handled differently. The thread gets locked. and the learning process ends. We should be able to discuss these actions even if they do involve LEO

Is it so wrong to critique these incidents? Sheesh .. Its about training. I also train using the Mozambique drill as it has been suggested by people that I trust. Its through discussions such as on this forum that we make adaptations to our training and thought processes. I haven't had an opportunity to put holes in people either, so its polite critiques such as these that allow me to make decisions on how I train and plan to react.

Others have commented that we act and react in the manner that we train. This officer trained to find the COM. I and others are wondering if Mozambique drill might be more suitable in the way we train.

Now I don't know whether the officers technique was the best way to handle it,. He came out alive, and the rest of us have an opportunity to learn from his experience, without having the oporttunity in putting holes in someone personally.

Liberty wrote: Should only those who have been fired upon have the right to opinions on training?
Is it so wrong to critique these incidents?.

Your questions and comments have great merit, and I do not think it wrong to critique. However, one must have some basic knowledge or experience in order to critique. The conversation above resulted not from critique, but instead from comments made on the first page of this thread that were made from someone who is obviously not in the position to critique. Stating that an LEO needs to train for headshots just because for whatever reason he didn't make one in the heat of the moment is just armchair quarterbacking and is different from true critique. After-action critique can be very helpful (and not just in law enforcement), but armchair quarterbacking serves no useful purpose.

PhilR.

"Survive a real gun fight and I'll be impressed with your criticism of others who have."

I'm not here to impress anybody, and don't care if your impressed or not, frankly.



"one must have some basic knowledge or experience in order to critique. The conversation above resulted not from critique, but instead from comments made on the first page of this thread that were made from someone who is obviously not in the position to critique. Stating that an LEO needs to train for headshots just because for whatever reason he didn't make one in the heat of the moment is just armchair quarterbacking and is different from true critique. After-action critique can be very helpful (and not just in law enforcement), but armchair quarterbacking serves no useful purpose. "


Ahhh, the "Only LEO can critique LEO" response, and the "armchair quaterback" reference.

Whatever

Dan

txinvestigator wrote: Survive a real gun fight and I'll be impressed with your criticism of others who have.

I will agree that few here are trying to "impress" anyone in their critique of this officer's actions. Apparently, the officer took care of the situation quite well.

We're simply trying to learn something from it; since we don't train on similators and most of us don't train on real thugs, this is a workable method.

Having taken a few of Charles's classes, he has repeated that one will revert to his/her level of training. When you're dealing with your own fight/flight response, I don't imagine you're taking time to think about your response. You revert to what you did at the range shooting paper. No, it isn't the same, but it's all that most of us have.
I think most of us agree that the officer responded very well. Our objective is not to tear the officer apart, but to critique the finer points of his scenario so that we can become better trained mentally.

I retract my previous question.. training to reload is probably a good thing, as I doubt anyone counts how many rounds they fired under that kind of stress.. was it 2, 5 or 7??? RELOAD...

as I doubt anyone counts how many rounds they fired under that kind of stress.. was it 2, 5 or 7??? RELOAD...

You are right on regarding this point