Monthly Archives: December 2017

Gunfighting- a Few Simple Thoughts.

1 Reply

ColtDSR1

Rule #1 concerning gunfights is this- be somewhere else when they happen. OK, now that we’ve established that, what do you do if  you are forced to violate Rule #1?

There are a lot of people with a lot of theories about gunfighting. I’m not one of them; I understand that as an armed civilian there is no set-piece rule-book. Circumstances are highly individual and things happen very, very fast. You can learn all kinds of things and discover the fight is over before you remember even one of them.  You are better off learning very few things, but learning them bone-deep.

We know a few things about gunfighting these days. One if them is that you will fight as you train. If you train bad habits when the excrement hits the rotary impeller you will do bad things. People make much of the whole stress/adrenaline thing, and to a point they are correct to. But if you have trained actions to second nature when the stress and adrenaline hit you will do those things, and you will do them exactly as you have trained to do them.

A gunfight is chaotic and unpredictable, and it’s not going to happen on your terms. Seriously, if you think there will be a gunfight leave. Rule #1, remember?  OK, it’s going to happen unexpectedly with tons of random variables. Lighting, number of attackers, presence of innocents… there are simply too many things to ever develop a set plan for how to survive and win a gunfight. So you need to control what you can- yourself.

Practice to hit what you aim at, with both hands and either hand. Do it until you can do it consistently, then do it some more. No, a target on a range is not the same as a moving, living person- but putting bullets where you want them is always the same.  Odds are in a civilian self-defense shooting you will not need to reload. Practice it anyway, until you can do it blindfolded and one-handed. Then practice it some more.

If your weapon of choice is a semi-automatic practice clearing jams. Over and over; you’re training muscle-memory, burning in new neural paths. It takes hundreds or thousands of repetitions to get this hard-wired. If your weapon of choice is a revolver think about what to do if it jams. It’s pretty unlikely, but if it happens you now have a very sophisticated rock. It’s better to have a rock and a plan than to just have a rock.

Practice your draw- and practice it from the holster you carry in wearing the clothes you conceal it under. Practice drawing the gun and getting a sight picture. Do it over and over until you are sick of it, then do it some more. Then practice drawing with your weak-hand. Then practice while standing, sitting and lying flat on your back or on your face. Always be able to draw your weapon in any reasonable position you might find yourself in- and do it over and over and over until it is an automatic thing.

Here’s the thing about all this practice- it’s more important to do it right than it is to do it fast. In training don’t hurry. As Fiore said at the dawn of the 15th C., ”Train slow. In the fight anger will give you speed.’  It was true then and it’s true now- as long as you have trained to do it right adrenaline will take care of the speed in the actual event.

You also need to practice basic firearms safety- don’t point the gun at anything you aren’t willing to shoot. Don’t touch the trigger unless you want the gun to go bang. Know what your backstop is. You know theses things, and they apply just as much in a gunfight as they do on the range.

Once you have the basics down you are ready for the ‘advanced course.’ Here it is in a nutshell-

“If you aren’t shooting, moving or hiding you are probably doing it wrong.”

Pretty simple. ‘But Tinker!’ I hear you cry, ‘What about reloading? What about situational awareness? What about…’ etc. Fine, you need to reload? Hide. Nowhere to hide? Move. Need to look around? Do it while hiding or, if you must, while moving.  Let’s make this clear- by ‘hide’ I mean behind something that will stop bullets. Don’t stand there like an idiot while people with guns are trying to kill you. Move behind cover and hide. What about shooting? Don’t worry about it- if you’ve trained properly the shooting bit will take care of itself.

Example- bad guy with gun. Do you stand there like it’s 12-noon and try to out-draw him?  No- get something that will stop bullets between you while you draw your weapon. Move-hide-shoot. Yep, you might find yourself in a situation where you have no choice- but if you have no choice maybe all that training will give you a chance.

Train the basics. Keep it simple. Trust your training. Move/hide/shoot.

So that’s my advice, and you can take it for what it’s worth. Maybe it will help keep you alive, but I hope none of us ever need to find out.

Michael Tinker Pearce, 17 December 2017

Big and Slow Does the Job…

Leave a reply
… unless it doesn’t.
I recently watched ‘Godless’ on Netflix, and in some ways it was quite realistic. Some people were shot and dropped immediately. Others that were shot ran and hid. Some were shot and shot back.
 
Thinking about this it squares with a lot of accounts I have read of ‘western’ gunfights. One of the Daltons took twelve hits from .44 and .45 caliber guns and assorted buckshot. He rescued his brother and rode away- and survived. There are all sorts of accounts of people surviving serious wounds from these weapons. Shots hitting within the pelvic girdle (gut-shots) were nearly always fatal eventually, but other torso hits? Maybe, maybe not.
 
It is common knowledge in gun circles that in the Philippines the US Army went back to the .45 because their .38s weren’t working well at stopping fanatic warriors on drugs. The new .45s did not arrive in numbers before the end of the conflict so it’s difficult to assess their effect- but of those that did make it there are no reports that they were more effective.
Evan Marshall recounts a tale of an off-duty police officer out for an evening with his wife and they were accosted by a knife-wielding thug. The officer drew his .45 and put five 230-grain ball rounds into the man. The mugger promptly stabbed his wife and ran. He was arrested 3 hours later when he walked into an emergency room under his own power.
 
A British officer summed things up nicely, speaking in defense of the .38/200 when he said, “The .38 is an excellent man-stopper; shoot them through the skull and they drop in their tracks!” Yes, it’s kind of darkly humorous, but it touches on a fundamental truth. If a bullet doesn’t hit something important it probably won’t stop someone who is sufficiently determined. 
Big and slow is not automatically a recipe for handgun stopping power. Neither is small and fast. For that matter big and fast isn’t either. Your best chance with a handgun- any handgun- is to hit something they can’t live without. Even a heart-shot is not a guaranteed stop. Yes, they are going to die- but they may not die fast enough to keep them from killing you. No matter what sort of handgun you use the only guaranteed instant stop is a bullet that hits the brain or cervical spine- very difficult targets in the heat of a gun fight..
“But a bigger bullet makes a bigger hole, right?” It may- but human tissue is remarkably elastic. Coroners have said that, in most cases, with a torso hit they cannot tell the caliber until they recover the bullet. Modern hollow-points do tend to leave larger permanent wound cavities regardless of caliber, and are highly recommended for self-defense. Mind you, you still need a good hit or hits to stop an attacker. The tried and true method- regardless of caliber- is to rapidly put multiple hits center-mass. There’s a lot of important stuff there, so you’re likely to hit something that matters.
This is not to say that big, slow bullets don’t work- just don’t rely on the bullet to do your job for you. As long as you can put your shots where they need to go carry whatever works for you.
By the way- I recommend ‘Godless’ on Netflix; it’s a good show. Not only is the story good, but the attention to period details is above average. Among other things it’s not All Peacemakers all the Time; I spotted a number of Remingtons, Colt cartridge conversions, S&W top-breaks and even a Melwin & Hulbert. Rifles are mostly scattered between various Winchesters and Henry’s, but there are a few interesting pieces thrown into the mix as well.
Michael Tinker Pearce  14 December 17