[Musketeer]

The problem with that is that most people (including me) arent going to stop shooting to see if their first two shots have been effective. It is a pretty basic principle to shoot till the threat has been eliminated.

Which is why Gabriel Suarez's advice on the matter has made excellent sense to me. There is no pause between 2 COM shots and the following head shot. You make the two COM shots and simply bring the gun back to where the head should be instead of the chest. If it is there then he is still standing so shoot. It it is not then something has changed and additional shots may or may not be needed but at the minimum you must re-evaluate the situation.

Suarez is also a former pupil of Cirillo and did discuss the pelvic shot in his writings. He seemed to be more focused on it with regards to a LEO holding a suspect at gunpoint for the reasons I explained above.

The thing is, if two shots have hit COM with no noticeable effect then the odds plummet pretty rapidly that additional shots in the same area will have any better results in a short enough time to prevent the offender from returning the favor. He may be wearing body armor or he may be loaded up on pharmaceuticals. He may have not been hit in a vital enough area which combined with mental state did not cause him to give up the fight and at this point adrenaline and all its "benefits" kick in resulting in him becoming a bullet sponge until he either bleeds out or you get lucky and take out the CNS. Whichever is the cause of his not going down you now need to change your tactics because your odds of success are not increasing with more of the same.

Attempting to knock a threat out of a fight through pain and psychological means has proven to be unpredictable at best. While a pelvic shot might put your threat on the ground and hurt like hell, it does nothing physiologically to stop his trigger finger.

Putting him on the ground though significantly improves your chances of escaping. When the gunfight is on the most important thing is to NOT BE SHOT. To that end distance is your friend. Preventing him from moving after you or others, inhibiting his ability to shoot you and allowing you a much greater chance to escape may not be as good as an instant stop but it is a far cry better than missing his head should the COM have failed. In addition if we are talking about an attacker using something besides a firearm you have now effectively ended the fight. Distance is always the law abiding citizen's friend.