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Old April 3, 2008, 10:31 PM   #51
protectedbyglock
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Wow. My head hurts now.
I worked with statistics quite a bit in college.
Statistics can help you understand some things, but I don't believe they are suited to this discussion. Especially averages.

I carry 27 rounds total. One extra clip.
I feel comfortable with that.

3 or 4 shots? No, I wouldn't feel comfortable with that.

You NEVER know what's gonna happen. Period.
Be prepared with what you think prepared is.
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Old April 3, 2008, 10:58 PM   #52
sidroski
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Ancidotal Evidence

Take this for what it's worth - one person's episode.
Went into a cafe with six family/slash friends. New Year's eve so we waited on a table. As our table was being cleaned, two guys walked in and sat down at the table. I went over and politely told them they must have missed us waiting. One guy pulls up his shirt (drunk or doped up) and showed me a large auto. I turned around and not wanting to yell fire in a theater, told the people we would go to another place. The big guy at the end of the our line said something to the perps and I told big guy to shut up and leave.
As we were going back to the lot, the big guy knocked on the window (still not knowing he had a gun) and said something that sent BG#1 outside to confront me. I held my hands up and told him I did not want any trouble. He turned and walked toward the car BG#2 had retrieved and #1 was pulling his pistol at the same time I pulled a North American 22 mag out of my pocket, firing at the same time he started shooting. He shot several times wildly at the big guy as I shot at him (10 yards). He wheeled around and shot at me then, seeing he was not the only one in the fight with a gun. I got off another shot as he ducked and got in the car.
My wife in the mean time had ran to two cops she had seen next door and alerted them (before the shots rang out). The car passed them and then me as I got a .38 Colt snub nose six shot out from the car. The Police fired their glocks as I shot.
End of story - the perp shot 8 shots, I shot 2 from the N.A. and 5 from the Colt (yes, I had two speed loaders), and the Police shot 7 times apiece. NO ONE HIT ANYONE IN 29 ROUNDS (no blood in the stolen car that crashed 500 yards from the cafe and they left on foot never to be found). Start to finish 45 seconds max.
TO FALs POINT, the N.A. did it's job, causing the BG's to break contact but I think about it 15 years later. I now carry a few different small auto's but the hot weather keeps you from carring anything heavy. I constantly second guess myself.
Yes I am proficient with all my guns as I am sure the Police were. Moral to long story, IT AIN'T EASY SHOOTING SOMEONE WHO DOES'NT WANT TO BE SHOT.
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Old April 4, 2008, 12:14 PM   #53
David Armstrong
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Quote:
The report that I brought forward in #3 does not suggest that only 3 or 4 rounds were fired. It suggests that gunfights are fluid and that each shot string measure 3 or 4 shots. every time a lag occured such as a reload or movement it was measued as a new incident.
And I think that illustrates a big part of the problem that Glenn identifies with "Criminological stats are all over the place and very suspect." Your report makes one suggestion. Another report will suggest something totally different. Maybe we are measuring different things. Maybe the way we measure is different. For example, I've run across 4 different ways of counting "gunfights" in the literature. Thus, the stats are all over the place. I do believe you find certain trends and commonalities, which goes to the issue of the shape of the curve and the extremes of the distribution and so on.

Quote:
NYPD was not gathering data on real life events, they were gathering data on the effectiveness of their firearms training.
Sorry, but that is just blatantly incorrect. By gathering data on real life events they used that to develop their firearms training. In fact, the NYPD was rather straightforward with the early SOP 9 documents in saying that there was no correlation between the training and the success in actual shootings.

Quote:
"If you have one foot in a campfire and one foot on a block of ice, on average you're comfortable".
Actually, Tom, I'd suggest that on average you are not at all comfortable<G>!

Quote:
In 2 cases, the defender fired 8 and 11 shots. These were above the average, and neither would have been able to do that with a five shot gun.
But that is of so limited use, Tom, that it becomes virtually meaningless, as you said. A dataset of 10 cases literally has no significance in discussing this, IMO, other than to present an anecdote. Anecdotal information is nice, but for analysis purposes it means little or nothing, and I think that is the point others are trying to make.
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Old April 4, 2008, 05:33 PM   #54
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Maybe the way we measure is different.
DA brings up a valid point. I have seen studies where they determined hit ratio by dividing the total number of rounds fired by the total hits scored (I believe SOP 9 was and may be still done that way). While on the surface that seems the way to do it, it is not the most accurate. The most accurate way to do it is to look at the participants and take the number of hits/rounds per participant.
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Old April 4, 2008, 05:48 PM   #55
Deaf Smith
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Scattergun,

Most people do not want to trade emails. It's a good way to have a nutjob start bothering you. That is the reason for whom ever you are having the discussion with being reluctant to sending a email address.

As for Street Survival, right now I'm looking at that book in one of the book shelves in my office! It's a very good book.

I'm sure the NYPD is TRYING to read the tea leaves from what they get from their stats. Weither they go by average (50 percent) or 80 percentile or 90 percentile I dunno. I do know they tend to win most of their gunfights. But times change so they keep recording what they do.

The sad part is they have so many officers and so little time to train. And add the anti-gun atmosphere then you find it difficult to see many well trained officers.

Nothing is perfect.
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Old April 4, 2008, 06:27 PM   #56
Scattergun Bob
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Mr Smith, thank you for the post

First let me say that I am in no way discrediting NYPD, God forbid that Ron Ice should hear of that, he is far to serious for me to offend. I know for a fact that this department has much refined training from the mid 1980's to which I was speaking. OK

This subject has generated some fire and maybe that is good? I am not really interested in being a confrontational individual over electrons in space, just got carried away, couldn't hold back the fire. Some of the most famous battles happened just so.

What I really wanted to convey was for us to look at the report correctly, and understand what it was defining, not whether on not it was correct.

Good Luck & Be Safe
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Old April 6, 2008, 02:15 PM   #57
jwfuhrman
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Ive been taught and told to shoot until the threat stops. No matter the amount of shots it takes you shoot until the threat cease's
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Old April 16, 2008, 06:13 PM   #58
redhart
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bad shot!

Had a shooting in the city of providece yesterday, my buddie was on the scene,found12 ,9 mm empites, the guy who was shot took 1 (one) rd. to the leg, and drove himself to the hospital. I dunno how many is enough or anything ,but I carry a 45 and two extra mags.
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Old April 16, 2008, 08:44 PM   #59
Lon308
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Years ago, our Department switched from revolvers to automatics. The transition course was given by a representative from the company that built the large-capacity automatics.

After officers had a familiarization course of fire and demonstrated basic proficiency with the pistols, the last drill that the company representative had officers do was to fill their pistols with 15 rounds, chamber and hold their pistols at the low ready.

He then told the officers that, when the threat charged at them, they should empty their pistols into the target before it got to them. Being a state firearms instructor and already having done semiautomatic transition, I operated the range equipment. When I tripped the "return" button, it took the life-sized silhouette targets about 5 to 6 seconds to go the 50 feet and reach the officer. All officers emptied their pistols at the targets.

When the shooting stopped, we checked targets. Almost every officer got 3 hits in the target.

I asked the Company Representative for his indulgence to conduct another drill. We repaired targets, sent them down-range, and I instructed each officer to load their pistols with 3 rounds. When everyone was ready, I told them to put 3 well-placed hits in the target before it got to them, and tripped the target return. Every officer successfully placed 3 hits in the target.

I then told them to write a Department Inter-Office Report explaining where the 12 missed rounds from their first course of fire went.

I'm not pointing this out to insult anyone who believes in high capacity pistols. Working plainclothes narcotics, I had a 10-round Glock 26. After reading some of Fer-Fal's excellent observations of the need for high capacity pistols in a highly volatile civil environment, it seemed prudent to get a few 17-round magazines to have handy, just in case.

It's a fact of life that virtually all agencies that have gone from revolvers to high capacity automatics have experienced a decline in the percentage of hits in live-fire situations. This seems to indicate that it's human nature to think that, if you have lots of ammo, you can use lots of ammo.

A person can train himself to take single, well-placed shots, but this requires discipline.

We later designed an outdoor combat course with traveling targets, pop-ups, and "pie plates" behind a car's engine compartment that simulated a bad-guy's head. Each officer had to neutralize each target before going to the next.

Each officer started with a 12-gauge pump shotgun, his pistol with 15 rounds in it, and a 14-round spare magazine. We ran about 120 officers through the course.

When the officers went through the course, about 2/3 of them expended all of their ammunition and still had 2 bad-guy targets not-yet engaged.

1/3 of the officers neutralized all of the targets, and still had between 12 and 15 rounds remaining.

Now here's the heresy:

The officers that did best on the combat course participated in a pistol league that fired NRA Bulls-Eye type competition.

Most points in the bulls-eye course are gained (or lost) in the slow-fire event. This is 6 minutes to fire 10 rounds. The target is engaged at a distance of 50 feet, and the 10-ring in the slow-fire event is about the size of a nickel.

Also, ironically, the bulls-eye shooters actually finished the course faster than the non-bulls-eye shooters, because they would neutralize each target with 1 or 2 rounds and go to the next. The non-bulls-eye shooters were losing more time on the targets, because they were expending more non-productive shots.

The best rapid-fire combat course shooters were slow-fire bulls-eye course shooters.
(Just something to think about.)

Last edited by Lon308; April 17, 2008 at 04:11 PM.
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Old April 17, 2008, 07:21 PM   #60
Deaf Smith
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Truth Lon308, you speak the truth!

In a perfect world the high capacity simi-auto should be the answer to all prayers... in the real world, a very high precentage of users use it to spray-n-pray!

Not saying to take away all the 17 shooters, but alot of the users depend in high output instead of high hit rate. And high hit rate takes skill and nerve.
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Old April 17, 2008, 07:55 PM   #61
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Quote:
In a perfect world the high capacity simi-auto should be the answer to all prayers... in the real world, a very high precentage of users use it to spray-n-pray!
used to shoot bowling pins,now I know they don't shoot back so don't go there. had the '93 shotgun champion explain when I asked why he didnt have an extended mag tube "the absolute fastest way to get 5 pins off the table is with 5 shots if I miss more than once I'd lose anyway"
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Old April 17, 2008, 09:21 PM   #62
Deaf Smith
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Mav,

Jim Cirillo, of the NYPD Stakeout Squad, used his revolver to get hits on three bad guys with just his six shots. He knew he had only six so he used them right!
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Old April 17, 2008, 09:48 PM   #63
mavracer
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the older I get the smarter dad was, used to hate he made me put just one round at a time in my shotty hunting,but I learned to make it count.

Thanks to him now even when I shoot my benelli my mind thinks one shot one bird.

In SD make every shot count you may not get another.
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rather be judged by 12 than carried by 6
Quote:
originally posted my Mike Irwin
My handguns are are for one purpose only, though...
The starter gun on the "Fat man's mad dash tactical retreat."
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Old April 17, 2008, 10:08 PM   #64
Lon308
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This digresses from centerline slightly, but as a Hunter Safety Instructor, I disagreed that our State had the special season for black powder after the regular deer gun season.

If it was held before the regular season, there would be more hunters interested in single shot black powder guns (in order to get in on the first Opening Day), and it may break some of them of the habit of attempting to empty all ten rounds from an SKS at a running deer.

Again, it can influence the psyche of the man with the gun, and reinforce positive behavior enough to (hopefully) develop it into the habit of making every shot a single shot, even if it is from a large capacity automatic.

Ask a shooter in a Service Rifle Match. He shoots 10 rapid fire rounds at 300 yards with a magazine change required, and a competitive rifleman will NEVER fire a miss (he may shoot an 8 or a 9, but not a miss).
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Old April 17, 2008, 10:29 PM   #65
Lon308
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Doesn't this bring us full-circle in this discussion as to how many rounds you should carry?

If you can take out 6 assailants with a revolver or a single-stack .45, that may be enough.

If you need a full Glock magazine to hit each assailant, bring 5 spare mags.
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Old April 23, 2008, 01:34 AM   #66
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Here in Houston there are alot of gangs and with that being said you most likely wont see a BG by himself. Even since Katrina we got in about 300,000 refugees from Louisiana and we soon became the next murder capital.

I always carry 4 magazine with me and when I purchase I firearm one of the main things I look for is how much ammo it can carry. I go to the range on a regular basis so having extra magazines comes in handy both ways.
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Old April 23, 2008, 01:28 PM   #67
Hook686
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I'm curious if anybody has any data on folks with a 5, or 6 shot revolver running out of ammuntion and then getting blown away by the BG ? I liked the situation presented by Lon308, "... where the 12 missed rounds from their first course of fire went."

3 rounds in 5, 6 seconds ... 3 hits.
15 rounds in 5, 6 seconds ... 3 hits.

It seems if the ammunition is a smaller amount, more 'care' is exercised where it goes.
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