[Glenn E. Meyer]

That's a PM question and not relevant to the topic.

Back to the issue - Gerald has something of a point. Folks tend to look only at central tendency stats and really don't move beyond that. Furthermore, they really don't get the multivariate factors that produce any outcome.

However, good stats really don't exist that breakdown civilian gun fights along lots of dimensions. We know some very crude things like most don't involve shots fired. We know that calibers of >= to 38 SPL seem roughly equivalent.

I asked Kleck - whom I've met several times - if we know how deterrence relates to caliber of gun - and guess what - we don't know. We just have a story or two. Nor did Gary Mauser, a well known scholar of the issues.

Lately, I've discussed with a local medical examiner what happens in rifle based homocides - she's trying to get a handle on that.

Like I said - for really useful info - we would need more studies that take a reasonably large sample of DGUs and break them down.

Otherwise - the mean number of shots and average distance are interesting but not useful in predicting your behavior.

If you want a good read about how such stats aren't that useful in prediction, read the Black Swan - a book about prediction and take a good research design course.

PS - to read about me - my sig is relevant.