I don't really agree with that theory.

You might be forced to make a head shot, a hostage rescue shot, a long range shot, who knows. You could see a guy across a 6 lane highway beating up a cop, take his gun, and put it to the cops head to execute him.

It would suck to not be able to intervene because you have an inaccurate point defense gun.

Also, i find that the smaller a group you can shoot when calm, the smaller the group you'll also shoot while you're all juiced up with adrenaline. I have this view because of my experiences hunting live game.

I can do this with my LCP at 25 feet (I jerked the trigger on the last shot and yanked the bullet low into the 9 ring- user error), should i take it back and get a gun that's less accurate?

http://i22.photobucket.com/albums/b3...s/488f274e.jpg

Should i not believe that it is a net benefit that my P7 can do this at 10yds with full power 9mm+P JHP ammunition? Something very few service grade pistols can do.

http://i22.photobucket.com/albums/b3...holepsprt1.jpg

I believe in accurately placed shots. I think they trump caliber, and i think they trump bullet type. All other things being close to equal, i will choose the more accurate pistol, rifle or shotgun every single time.

Wow, first you're helping cops, now you're even saving their lives.... :D:D That is 100% shepherd right there :D ;)

I agree on the accuracy though, just like a slide ruler, a gun should be precise.
That little bit more of accuracy can only be a good thing when it really counts.

Would it be accurate to say "You get what you pay for" with a carry weapon?

Also... Does anybody know how far the average self defense shot is?
Or how far are you from the target when you're actually defending yourself?

Someone must have collected the statistics.

This data is available for police gunfights, albeit scattered across multiple datasets.

It shows that long range shooting, high cap magazines, and combat reloads are just the stuff of fantasy. Lots of gun buffs watch too many movies.

The vast majority of police gunfights are at 10 feet or less. The typical number of shots fired per officer is 3 to 4. The probability of a hit is low, from 15% to 40% depending on datasets. The number of shots fired per officer is higher, and the probability of a hit is lower, when there are multiple officers shooting ("bunch shooting"). The typical gunfight lasts a few seconds to several seconds. It usually happens in darkness or low light.

I haven't found data for self defense citizen shootings, and there probably is none. Police departments collect officer shooting data for analysis and training. There is no-one collecting this data for CCW shootings - which are extremely rare, anyway.

Read away:

http://www.theppsc.org/Staff_Views/Aveni/OIS.pdf

I would say as a rule of thumb it is, but there are some smoking used gun deals out there that can skew the rule. Also, there are a few really inexpensive pistols that shoot beyond their $ value.

So are you proposing we all use 5 shot revolvers and do all our training at 10 feet or less?

Or should we prepare for scenarios that might happen, that HAVE happened to others in the past? I think we should. A lot of shootings require a lot more than 5 shots fired, and some shootings do require a magazine change or reload. Is it the norm? Certainly not, but we are not carrying a gun because we're counting on the norm, are we? I can post an awful lot of stories that required more than 4-5 shots fired. I do pretty much agree with you on the mag change argument- they are probably very rare in real gunfights, but that's not stopping me from carrying an extra mag or two. I'd feel pretty stupid if i got into a gunfight and ran out of bullets.

CCW shootings are probably not as rare as we think, especially as CCW holders proliferate among society.

Some good info here on this google link:
http://www.google.com/#sclient=psy&hl=en&source=hp&q=what+really+happens +in+a+gun+fight&aq=f&aqi=&aql=&oq=&pbx=1&bav=on.2, or.r_gc.r_pw.&fp=a404a1c26a268bba

"CLOSE ENCOUNTERS For many years, we have been taught that armed confrontations occur at very close distances (often times at arm's length), that few shots are fired and the person involved usually misses. These statistics were compiled from the FBI's Officer Killed Summary, which are released on an annual basis. Note that the operative word here is killed; these are officers that lost their confrontation. Have you ever wondered what happened with the officers that won? Did they do anything different to help ensure they would prevail?

In 1992, veteran police officer Dick Fairburn, now a trainer for the Illinois State Police, was commissioned by the Police Marksmen Association to answer this very question. Mr. Fairburn's original quest was to try and answer the stopping power debate of the time, in which he failed because the database of 241 shooting incidents was too small. However, what he did develop were some interesting trends that showed what officers did when they won the confrontation. One of the most interesting was the distances involved. While the FBI statistics show distances as being around ten feet, the PMA study showed the average distance being more like twenty. This makes sense, as distance will favor the person with the most training. This relates directly back to awareness as the sooner you see trouble coming, the more time you have to prepare for war. The PMA study also shows that the hit ratio per encounter was closer to 62 percent instead of the often-reported 18 percent. The history of gun fighting for more than a century has shown that the person that lands the first solid hit will usually win the confrontation. Hitting is hard to do without preparation and relying on luck is an invitation to disaster."

----

That's a really informative article, I usually read it every few months to refresh myself.

I think it is a question of priorities.

If someone has the time and energy to become truly skilled at everything - reaction shooting at 6 feet in darkness from different positions as well as long-range precision shooting, two shot drills as well as many shots with rapid reloading, etc - then, great.

But suppose one isn't expecting to become such a pistolero. What is the one thing that he should spend his time training for?

The data says, that one thing is: to hit a moving vital zone at <10 feet, with a shot fired in 1 second with no preparation and no time for stance or careful aim, in the dark, from any position including potentially after being knocked to the ground.

Police officers appear to hit the enemy less that 1/3 of the time in that situation. I seriously doubt that the average CCW'er does better. (Wasn't there a Pelican who fired on an armed robber, at point blank range, while laying on the floor - IIRC he either missed or grazed the guy's finger.) Such a low hit rate in the most common situation suggests a lot of work to do, before moving on to hostage rescue shots from across a six-lane road while speed reloading in a hovering helicopter, and similar "movie" situations.

Actually, the data you're looking at is for officers that were killed my friend.

Officers that prevailed scored 60% hits at an average engagement range of 20 feet.

Check the link i posted in my previous post.

Many CCW'ers are trained to a far higher level than the average cop, many of whom are not "gun people" at all, and who never shoot or practice on their own time. Any person carrying a gun should be able to hit a stationary man sized target in his vitals at 25 yards, in my estimation. Any hunter can probably be reasonably expected to outperform the average cop in a gunfighting scenario.

Problem is that so few CCW shoots are even reported in the news. The one here last weekend ended in three hits and killed the bad guy. Not sure how many shots the good guy fired though.

There was a case about 40 yrs. ago in TX where a guy did shoot a bad guy across a large hwy. He was a hunter pulled over in a rest stop and saw a bad guy on top of a cop, shooting him in the head. The hunter took the perp out from well over 100 yds. IIRC, TX DPS gave him a gold plated 1911 as an award for it. Obviously, the hunter faced no threat, so probably wasn't too stressed. Still, I bet it gets the heart pumping to even aim a gun at another person, let alone watch that guy killing a cop in progress.

THE VERY BEST TRAINING YOU CAN GET as a civilian................go to gunsite and buck up for their courses...................or as i have mentioned countless times JOIN A CLUB that shoots COMBAT WOMBAT!



combat wombat aint no punching paper from 7yds. from 7am til high noon you will shoot 325 rds in every position/various distances that you can think of and THEN SOME! moving targets/thru windows/thru doors/around corners/strong hand/weak hand/damn near behind yer back shooting. its FREEKING NUTZ! and every damn match THEY CHANGE IT TO SCREW YA UP AND MAKE YA THINK!


and i guurrantee yer gonna be crying "MOMMY" when it all over the 1st couple of times. i sure did. its a BEAATTCH! i was physically emotionally pyschologically DRAINED! i was soaked to the skin with sweat. it is FAST PACED and you will not realize the time fly by.


you have OEM outta the box class and HOT ROD CLASS! since i am a cheap azz we went with a ruger 22/45 and then jumped into a tactical solutions threaded barrel and compensator. we run against brownings and walthers mostly. HOT ROD class is run what cha brung. and there is some trick azz stuff out there with crazy azz OPTICS! we dont run optics so we are still in OEM class despite barrel change out.


the most fun and rewarding part of it are hitting the moving dinger dongers from inside a culvert pipe thats about 6foot long. what a hoot. once ya get the format down, its a gas.


if ya wanna buck up and shoot what yer gonna carry, have rob leatham(mr springfield) or his wife give you one on one instruction with yer 9mm or .45 or whatever the hell ya carry.


MONKEY SEE MONKEY DO....................watch rob slap leather quicker than spit and watch his drills for a couple of months and the other hot shoes and you will pick up real fast whats right/whats wrong/ and what REALLY WORKS in a COMBAT situation.


best money i EVAR SPENT and MORE FUN THAN SEX! my younger son and i broke the FUN BARRIER and LEARNED A HELL OF ALOT!

No, just the first two tables were for officer fatality outcomes, there is plenty of data there for all gunfights including where the officer survived. Read the rest of the article.

It makes sense that if you study only "successful" gunfights (officer survives), the hit ratios get higher (maybe that's why the officer survived) and the distances get longer (maybe everyone survived). You're deliberately skewing the sample, so you are skewing the data.

At the extreme, if you select gunfights where the suspect does not survive, I imagine you can get hit ratios up to 100% . . .

Personally, I'd be more interested in what went wrong in the cases where the good guy does not survive.

I'd also caution against drawing strong conclusions from small sample sets. A database of 200 shootings is less informative than a database of 1000s of shootings, is less informative than pooled databases of many 1000s of shootings. That is the nature of statistics. At the extreme, a single sample tells you very little - hence we don't conclude that citizen shootings take place at 100 yds with a rifle.

Some CCW'ers are trained, but most? I'm skeptical.

There's been a boom in buying of CCW guns, and plenty of those people go to the range a couple times and then never practice again - or are the people missing the paper at 6 feet, who we've all seen. Most of the people at my local range aren't even shooting at 25 yards, and they are doing well to hit a dinner plate at 10 yards with slow fire in good light.

I don't know about hunters - don't know enough of them - to say if their proficiency with a scoped bolt-action or an over-under 12 ga carries over to a snubby .38.

All the people I know who regularly carry also regularly practice. I'm sure they're not all doing the Hogan's Alley, tactical shoot house thing (I've done a few of those). But they're doing more than most cops do for their annual range quals. I make it to the range about twice a month. As long as I can competently shoot all the guns I ever carry with me, I'm satisfied. I almost only shoot paper plates at between 7-10 yds. Anytime I can't make real tight groups within the first 50 rounds I put through a gun, that gun gets sold or traded.

Exactly. I don't disagree with Odd Job, nor do I think that money spent on custom work is wasted. I just think that if you want to shoot your .357 better, instead of taking your spoon to a gunsmith and writing a check, it might be more economical to buy a used Single Six and shoot a couple thousand rounds. Likewise, spending on a 22/45 and trying to shoot it to death is probably going to pay better dividends than tricking out your 1911.

Of course that's pretty much the same as saying that shooting .22's in the backyard is fine, but the "Combat Wombat" shoots will be better prep for a life or death situation.

The only 2 pieces of advice I feel qualified to give about carrying a weapon are: Purchase a firearm you will actually carry, and shoot a lot.

If you aren't comfortable carrying the spoon, then you probably won't have it when you need it.

The way to improve your marksmanship is to shoot. Shooting a bolt rifle 100yds off of sandbags isn't really a hunting situation, but when all the mechanical elements are second nature, even bench rest practice pays dividends when shooting offhand at moving game. Rimfires offhand in the backyard is fun, a great way to spend time with the kids, and a super way to tighten those groups.

I agree with all of this.

It is useful to pick out the surviving officer stories and examine what their specifics were. it can help us to see what they did to win. (Which the article i linked to goes into). A few of the things it shows to me is that extending range favors the more trained shooter. (Ie, me). It also tells me that good marksmanship results in a higher hit rate. Most of the cops that fare well in gunfights are also the guys that spend extra time at the range and shoot distinguished.

A long range gunfight is extremely unlikely. Not impossible. Again, "Can't happen to me" is not a defense that will save your life.

Where hunting experience helps most is in the familiarity with "buck fever", that moment of adrenaline where you've got a live animal in your sights and you still take careful aim and make that shot count. A seasoned hunter will be used to taking life with a firearm, he'll be used to the adrenaline rush at the moment of truth. He'll have experience at killing that the non hunter lacks.

This is a hugely invaluable bit of experience to have, IMO.

You also have to think about how police gunfights differ from citizen gunfights.

A police officer is not just shooting to defend himself. He has a duty to pursue, to press the attack, and to apprehend a suspect. He cannot let the suspect run off into the neighborhood.

A citizen will only be shooting to defend himself, aside from some extremely rare cases (e.g. the 100 yd shot mentioned by Rick). So citizen gunfights will, logically, be at shorter ranges, on average, than police gunfights.

More reason, I think, why CCW'ers should focus on practical accuracy at short ranges under very bad conditions.

Obviously, most of us like to shoot tight groups at 25 yds. We're having fun with target pistolery. There's many aspect to recreational shooting, they don't all have to be pertinent to CCW, let's not fool ourselves that they are.

(Did you notice there was one dataset where the hit ratio was compared to the officer's pistol qualification score? There wasn't any clear correlation. Meaning, the officers' skills with a 25 yd paper target did not correlate to their ability to actually hit the enemy in a gunfight.)

My only piece to add is make sure that it is reliable. If you need it to go "bang", it better go "bang"!

I think one should be practiced at as many things as one can afford to practice in. I think if a shooter has skills at range, he should choose his equipment to suit those skills.

I think that in a gunfight- or in hunting- nothing is as important as shot placement. The more precise the better. I think accurate shot placement is the whole key. If possible, I want a gun that can put bullet after bullet in the same hole, over and over, as long as i do my part.

My P7 can do that. It's more accurate than I am, and I am pretty darned accurate.

I also think we should not think that just because 90% or some other x% of gunfights occur at X range that if it happens to us that we will face those conditions. If it happens to you, you could very well have a gun fight at 0 foot muzzle contact range. But you could also find yourself in that position where you can put down a bad guy on a shooting rampage and end a mass murder spree- IF you can make a precise 25 yard shot.

Don't think it can't happen to you. It can. Anything can happen, including nothing at all.

well, you guys got me to go to the range today. it was a lot of fun. my shoulder is now sore. the burris bipod on the black powder cannon is awesome. i also realized that i need my corrective eyewear when shooting with iron sights at 100 yds. my eyesight is not what it once was.

anyway, great thread, very informative. i think i need to get some reloading equipment for the handgun.