The Firing Line Forums - View Single Post - Distances involved in shooting instances by LAPD, etc.

kilimanjaro · February 5, 2014, 07:12 PM

The FBI says most handgun combat occurs at 7 feet between shooter and target.

I think for us civilians, that is entirely correct. The police are required to engage at any range the circumstances require, we don't quite need to shoot at speeding cars, or at the bad guys coming out of the bank, or take rifle shots at barricaded suspects. A traffic stop shooting could involve half the length of the two cars involved, and any intervening space, could easily be 30 or 40 feet right there.

I note that about 10% of the shootings involved rifles or carbines. I would think that is most of the 14% at 60 yards or more in the LAPD citation. Probably a good number were single shot, as well. The citation could strip out the long gun usage and we would have a better basis for discussion. Number of shots fired would be another good discussion, but not with the long gun data skewing the bias.

February 5, 2014, 07:12 PM	#10
kilimanjaro Senior Member Join Date: November 23, 2009 Posts: 3,963	The FBI says most handgun combat occurs at 7 feet between shooter and target. I think for us civilians, that is entirely correct. The police are required to engage at any range the circumstances require, we don't quite need to shoot at speeding cars, or at the bad guys coming out of the bank, or take rifle shots at barricaded suspects. A traffic stop shooting could involve half the length of the two cars involved, and any intervening space, could easily be 30 or 40 feet right there. I note that about 10% of the shootings involved rifles or carbines. I would think that is most of the 14% at 60 yards or more in the LAPD citation. Probably a good number were single shot, as well. The citation could strip out the long gun usage and we would have a better basis for discussion. Number of shots fired would be another good discussion, but not with the long gun data skewing the bias.