LaUser wrote: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"
