23-Sep-13 – 11:39 by ToddG
An
interesting conversation onpistol-forum.com over the past few days raised the specter of
“too accurate” as it is being taught at some fairly high places including some
programs at the Federal Law Enforcement Training Center.
The
theory, in a nutshell, is as follows: Rather than put multiple rounds into a small
concentrated area, it’s better to shoot wide open and hit someone in lots of
different places all over his body because he’ll bleed from more places and
become incapacitated faster.
Presumably,
this is taught in the same class explaining that the Moon is made of green
cheese, socialism is sustainable, and similar ridiculous myths. Now
admittedly, I am not a doctor, don’t play one on television, and didn’t sleep
at Holiday Inn Express last night. But when the guys who study this stuff
professionally — like Dr. Gary “DocGKR” Roberts and retired FBI Ballistics Research
chief Buford Boone — all scoff at this death by a thousand cuts approach, well, it’s hard to argue with
stuff like “science” and “fact.”
When it
comes to lethal confrontations and typical handgun caliber rounds, I like to
group anatomical target areas as follows:
Group A: places where bullets are likely to cause
substantial immediate trauma to critical life-sustaining organs
Group B: places where bullets aren’t doing a damn thing
So why
does this lots of
fast hits anywhere on the target theory keep coming back into vogue? Lazy instructors. It’s easy
to teach people to launch unaimed bullets out of a pistol really, really fast
and still hit a 30″ high, 18″ wide target at 3yd. It’s particularly fascinating
to a certain subset of law enforcement instructors who’ve been told their
entire career that firing six shots in 30 seconds at 25yd was fast enough and
taught officers everything they needed to know about combat.
I still
remember attending a ridiculously bad class put on for some military
& law enforcement folks about a decade ago. The instructor literally had us
stand less than a yard from a giant B27 target and the “challenge” was to hit
the target five times in one second (measured from first shot to last, so 0.25
splits). The SWAT cops from one local department were so impressed and inspired
that they were almost brought to tears… because he taught them to shoot blind
quarter-second splits while keeping everything within — literally — 2,200 MOA.
When a
few of us offered that we could probably do the same thing from ten times
farther away while keeping our hits in a much, much smaller area we, too, got
the old “make ‘em bleed from as many places as you can!” story. It was wrong then, and it’s wrong
now.
Speed
is good. Speed is important. But speed only matters if the thing you’re doing
speedily is hitting vital structures in a way that will promote rapid
incapacitation. Slicing up a bunch of distal arteries and capillaries might
make for a gruesome appearance and could eventually cause someone to bleed to
death, but not before he’s had enough time to kill you, bury your corpse, and
drive himself to the local hospital.
Hit
what matters.
Train hard & stay
safe! ToddG
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