Ok, I’m sitting in front of the TV watching Die Hard II and there’s a scene in the beginning(sp?) where our hero(a cop) enters a bagage area and proceeds to have a bit of a gun fight before kicking the stuffing out of the bad guys, drug smugelers or something. My question:
All the bullets fired missed. What are the odds? Not being a big gun nut, I have no idea how hard it is to shoot a basic hand gun(see, i dont even have a guess at what kind of gun it is). Would the average cop be more accurate then our hero? Also, what amount of training do cops get with their firearms? How does this compare to the training the average person recieves? What could most people do(untrained) if you put a gun in their hand and told them to stay alive? I’m looking specificly for US stuff here, but am also intrested in other countries.
Range is an important factor; place a handgun in the average man’s hand and tell him to stay alive when his target is 10-20 feet away and he will do fairly well. If that target is 100 feet away, forget about it, he may need the whole clip. The average cop gets far more training than a man off the street, but the hero may be a sharpshooter for all I know.
A short barrel coupled with a weapon that is easy to move around means that a handgun’s accuracy drops off quickly as the range increases. It is also important to note that while a semi-automatic gun might be cocked with the hammer in the back, the area behind the slide should be kept clear. Apparently it is a fairly common problem for people to leave their thumb up behind the slide and to have it folded back against their wrist.
TV and movies tend to show pistol shooters flaling the pistol in the air with one hand while they pull the trigger. In real life, only the bad guy would be using that technique (and only if his only training was watching TV and movies). The cop would most likely be taking a stance, supporting his gun hand with his free hand at the wrist, aiming, and firing.
Typical Hollywood fare is grossly incorrect or misleading about most aspects of firearms and action movies of the Die Hard type are among the worst. Good guys hit their target, bad guys miss and magazines run out of ammunition only when it’s convenient for the plot.
Someone with no experience who was just handed a gun with no training would be unlikely to be able to hit a target let alone defend themselves. That isn’t to say it’s terribly difficult but that it has to be learned. The very first time I took my wife shooting she was soon able to put shot after shot in the center of the target after only a little instruction and coaching. She did well very quckly but I’m sure many other people could do the same with the right instruction and suitable firearm. Note that I started her with a .22 caliber target pistol, not a larger caliber a police officer would use. It’s often been my observation that many women pick up shooting skills quickly and well, moreso than men. IMO part of it is that there is no macho posturing and they don’t peg their self worth to how well they do the first time out. I also think it may be that unlike many men they haven’t picked up bad habits from watching too many action movies.
However, shooting at a paper target under controlled conditions is very different from shooting at a target who may be shooting back at you. Even mild stress makes it much more difficult to shoot well. That’s why professionals and many recreational shooters participate in action shooting sports. It’s target shooting with the added element of a time based score and lots of running around, jumping, ducking and crawling to keep you on your toes. Not the same as having a band of Russian mafia diamond smugglers lead by Alan Rickman shooting back at you but shooting under time pressure is much harder than standing still and shooting a bulleseye.
Instead of paper bulleseye targets there may be cardboard rectangles that represent bad guys and various types of reactive steel targets that must be knocked down such as “pepper poppers” or round steel plates that must be knocked off a rack. Sometimes a cardboard targert is designated as a “no shoot” to represent a hostage. Shooting one adds penalty time to your score, considerably less severe than in the real world. Sometimes extra degrees of difficulty are added such as shooting around or under barricades or shooting weak hand (making a righty shoot left handed or vice versa).
Police in the US are very well trained and do several other kinds of drills and specialized training that represent what they’ll see on the street. They have the added real pressure of not knowing ahead of time what to shoot. Is the shadowy figure coming around the corner a baddie with a gun or a kid with a skateboard?
All of your post is true Padeye. I would like to add that even with all of the excellant training, including live-action simulations, it’s still not for real. Added stress and pressure because you are being tested but you know your life isn’t being threatened, that it’s just a test.
In the real world, when your life is actually threatened, you have that good old adrenaline kick in. The adrenaline rush alone will cause physiological reactions that can cause highly erratic accuracy issues. Panic, unfortunately, can also set in and overide all of the training.
As an aside - I have a lot of experience with assault rifles and heavier weapons, but I’ve never fired a pistol in my life. How hard would it be to learn?
This is why I get so frustrated with those citizen review boards that many cities have. Recently in Austin, a police officer came under review for fatally shootoing a mentally handicapped person who was threatening others with a knife. Many in the community felt that the officer should not have fired his weapon. Of course, these critics had the advantage of an unlimited amount of time to review the situation in a relaxed atmospher. The citizen police monitor similarly had an infinite amount of time to gather evidence from all possible angles and outcomes regarding the event.
The police officer had less than one second to consider his actions while chaos reigned around him and lives hung in the balance.
Let me work on a link. My point, really, is that the officer in the field has a fraction of a second to make life-or-death decisions that end up being reviewed for months by people who weren’t there. If given ample time to freeze a situation and analyze all possible actions, even the officer can usually come up with another outcome. But all the time the officer has is the blink of an eye.
IMO not very hard for someone like you as long as you had proper instruction. New things to learn but a lot of what you have learned now about sight picture, trigger squeeze, etc. will give you a head start.
Umm, no, not necessarily. Some police in some departments are fine, I’m sure. SWAT teams and such train a lot. But many ordinary cops are woefully undertrained and don’t practice any more than their boss forces them to, which is once a year, just enough to barely pass their yearly qualification test (and cheating is not unheard of). I’ve even heard of cops’ guns being rusted solid in their holsters!
I’m not trying to be anti-cop here - I have read this in several places and can get cites for it if needed.
Most recreational shooters I know shoot at least every month or so, although they may or may not do any of the more specialzed training with an instructor.
Perhaps gun nut wasn’t the best term to use, but I think most people got the point that I was looking for someone with more expirence then me considering I have none. Next time I’ll take every possible view into consideration before my I post, you can look for that post in about 10 years or so.
I niether am a gun nut but do own a 9mm handgun and occasionally go to range for shooting - like once a year, with only 200 rounds. Shooting at a range, missing the target(outline of upper body) completely from less than 50 feet is out of the question. I use round targets about 12 inches across as I am a bit uncomfortable shooting at people-shaped targets.
Now, for real life, I was watching an episode of COPS(bad boy bad boy, what ya gonna do). A guy fired at a cop he was actually tounching as he got out of a car, and missed. The cop pulled his gun immediately and started shooting as the guy ran away. Emptied his gun. No one was hurt. Range of the first three shots was less than 3 feet, still no hits. In this case, both the cop and the criminal were lucky, but it underscores how hard it must be to point a gun and pull the trigger in a stressful situation.
Lets hope niether of us are ever in this situation.
To add some statistics to this, in 2002 the NYPD hit the intended target 29 percent of the time, up substantially from prior years. The increase was attributed to better and increased training.
That’s a seriously messed up site – impossible to really read the older stats. I’ll see if I can’t find something better. But that’s the order of magnitude here.
These officers receive extensive training, but would only be armed in public if guarding airports, ambassadors or responding to a call from the regular police.
Since you need to satisfy the police that you need a gun over here (eg a shotgun for pest control on a farm), the average person doesn’t have a gun nor any training.
If you passed a gun to someone here they would be arrested. If they failed to drop the gun, an armed response team would be called. So the way to stay alive would be to drop the gun.
It’s been my observation and experience as well, although I do not know the reasons behind it. Too bad many more girls and women do not participate in shooting sports.
Okay…my two cents. I’ve had extensive private handgun training by a special forces instructor as well as studied and passed the laws governing carrying a concealed handgun in Texas.
Here’s the basics on statistics:
90 % of all handgun engagements between (2) people with guns take place 30 feet away from each other or less, both empty their weapons, and neither hit each other.
Call it adrenaline, panic, etc…but basically the stats show you’re going to wig out and blast away in any ol direction. (obviously this does not include people with police/military or serious handgun instruction)
For every 10 feet you put between yourself and someone shooting at you, their chance of hitting you goes down by 50%. Even my instructor said “although I could be more accurate, someone pulls a gun on me, I’m running like hell…THEN I’m going find some cover and shoot them…”
He confirmed that women are better shooters than men. Not sure why, just works out that way…
All kinds of other stuff if you’re interested…what happens to your vision, reflexes, fine motor skills, nervous system, etc when you are in a gunfight…
