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Here is a link to a YouTube video showing or reporting on violent attackers being shot or shot at by their intended victims. Many times only one shot is fired and the attacker either runs away, or runs away while firing at the intended victim. This is why people need to train to fire until the threat is over. Any of these violent attackers could have fired on the victims instead of turning and running. Fire -- assess - fire - assess is essentially my turn - your turn - my turn - your turn until someone hits. Not a good defensive plan in my view.

Chas.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-EgsW2vRn1g

Good video, thanks for posting. It's easy to predict how some of those people would

I've occasionally toyed with the question of how many shots to fire, as well as how fast to fire them. My instinctive (and regularly practiced) inclination is to instantly whip out the gun and fire 4 or 5 shots as fast as possible, maybe even more if there are multiple assailants, before pausing for a half-second to OODA. My only concern would be an overzealous anti-gun DA whining to a jury, "...and he shot him FIVE TIMES!!!!"

Good video, Charles.

"Why didn't you stop shooting?"
"Because he wasn't done attacking."

A sheriff deputy I have trained with said you keep firing until the threat stops. There is no pausing and if you run out of bullets, you reload and keep firing until the threat is stopped. This is why police fire so many rounds generally in a shooting. They are waiting for the threat to stop. Not shoot 2 and see what he is going to do next. You pause, bad things happen. Have to assess while shooting.

The first responding officer to the Sikh temple shooting a couple years ago was hit 15 times with 9mm Federal 147 grain jacketed hollowpoints. Three rounds struck body armor, but the rest hit him in all limbs, torso, and TWICE in the head. His fired back at least once, but his pistol was shot out of his hand. Unfortunately for him, he had decided not to carry his back up gun that day. However he was able roll under a vehicle -- and absorb more shots -- until another arriving officer shot the bad guy.

Now in this case a "failure to stop" turned out to be a good thing, but strictly from the point of view of effectiveness of a shot, it is an interesting example.

Thanks for posting Charles.

Some good video clips there, including a couple we use in training classes. I completely agree that firing only one round and then stopping is generally not a good plan. Rather, as stated, firing until the threat no longer presents itself is usually a better course of action. This is because, for the most part, handgun bullets stink for stopping power. Even with good shot placement, short of a debilitating CNS hit, it takes people several seconds for the plumbing to leak enough for blood pressure to drop in an attacker. In those several seconds, if they are still attacking, rather than running as in these videos, your life is still in danger.

Unfortunately, the option of carry a long gun with its much better stopping power is not usually available, so handguns it usually is....

The lessons I saw from these are:

1. You don't need to be trained to use a gun. It is better to have training but a number of these folks were not trained at all or looked like they had little training and yet they still successfully defended themselves. This leads to the second lesson.

2. Have a gun. Each person defended themselves successfully because they had a loaded gun. Without the gun, they probably would have been killed.

Having said that, training would have helped most of them.

gthaustex wrote:
Unfortunately, the option of carry a long gun with its much better stopping power is not usually available, so handguns it usually is....

Then there's this option:

bblhd672 wrote:

gthaustex wrote:
Unfortunately, the option of carry a long gun with its much better stopping power is not usually available, so handguns it usually is....

Then there's this option:

That movie drove S&W Mod. 29 prices from $169 to $500 overnight!

Chas.

Charles L. Cotton wrote:

bblhd672 wrote:

gthaustex wrote:
Unfortunately, the option of carry a long gun with its much better stopping power is not usually available, so handguns it usually is....

Then there's this option:

That movie drove S&W Mod. 29 prices from $169 to $500 overnight!

Chas.

And before the movie you could find a used one at a pawn shop along with a free box of shells with 6 missing for a decent price!

I am inspired to practice more on reloading time. I'm not very fast with that. Thank you Charles.

This thread reminded me of several studies I have read. Basically the one I linked and the others post similar results. It takes on average 2 shots to stop a threat with a defense caliber handgun and we all need to be carrying rifles or shotgun. This study does show that for handguns, the 357 is the king, even over Dirty Harry's 44 mag.


http://www.buckeyefirearms.org/alternat ... ping-power

jason812 wrote:This thread reminded me of several studies I have read. Basically the one I linked and the others post similar results. It takes on average 2 shots to stop a threat with a defense caliber handgun and we all need to be carrying rifles or shotgun. This study does show that for handguns, the 357 is the king, even over Dirty Harry's 44 mag.


http://www.buckeyefirearms.org/alternat ... ping-power

Thanks for the link, interesting data and information.
Thought I would never carry my 357 Blackhawk, maybe I should.

Do factory .357 loads use hotter powder than .38spcl? Or are they just longer with more powder?