Yes. Crafter_Man is correct in stating that even a shot to a vital organ (aside from the brain or spine), even if irrecoverably lethal, may not immediately incapacitate that target. This is especially true with handgun rounds which do not have enough energy to cause a significant amount of hydrostatic shock that does significant damage beyond the permanent wound channel caused by the passage of the bullet. (Comparing a rifle round like the .223 Rem round that moves at 2700-3700 fps to a pistol round moving at 8-1400 fps is like comparing a paring knife to a katana.) Even a shot that damages the heart may allow a perpetrator to keep going for scores of seconds, and under the stress of combat there’s no way to be sure of striking a vital organ, so Crafter_Man’s statement–that you should continue firing at center of mass until the perpetrator is no longer moving toward you or performing any threatening actions–is correct, and is what law enforcement agenies train peace officers to do in the eventuality that they do have discharge their weapon.
Anyone who thinks that the ~400 ft-bs of energy in the typical large bore handgun round is going to pick someone up and throw them backwards needs to go out in the back 40, find a ~100 lb, fairly rotted deadfall (for safety, so the bullet doesn’t riccochet), stand it up and shoot at it from a safe distance. You’ll find that at most you shift it a couple of inches, and this is an almost perfectly inelastic transfer with high impulse, not like a like situation where much of the energy goes into deforming the bullet and damaging tissue. Given sufficient penetration, the difference in terms of stopping potential (or “power” if you like, though it has very little to do with the physics concept) between one large bore (9mmP or larger) round and another is much less than where the bullets are placed, and in no case can you argue that any handgun round will cause immediate incapacitation.
In a home defense scenerio, I’d take a short-barreled (18.5") pump action shotgun loaded with #4 or lower buckshot over any handgun round. (I don’t know where the notion of using a single-shot break-open gun comes from–certainly no one here mentioned it–but a reliable pump-action shotgun can be had for much less than a reliable new handgun.) And while a shotgun certainly does need to be aimed–as already addressed, the spread of even an open bore barrel at typical household defense ranges of 21 feet or less is minimal)–it’s far easier to learn to shoot a shoulder weapon accurately than a handgun, particularly under stress, and the long sight radius makes it much easier to aim even with crude post-and-groove sights. Maneuvering a longarm through the tight confines of a house is problematic–if I were clearing a house I’d want something smaller–but as a defender your best bet is to take up position behind a heavy piece of furniture, call the police, and hold out until the cavalry arrives. With any luck (and unless someone is coming after you with extreme prejudice) the security of your position will deter a potential invader without a shot fired, which is the ideal in the (rare) case of having to deal with an armed home invader.
I agree they aren’t stopped until they’re dead or unconscious.
British Army experience was that a man shot twice in the head with a 9mm Browning carried on firing .
It was after that the "Double Tap " was retired and troops were told to empty at least one mag into the bad guy (hence Gibraltar)
Apparently criminals are increasingly wearing vests so Id always advise going for the head shot.
For those who feel they aren’t proficient enough to do that then you shouldn’t be
armed in the first place,you are quite frankly completely irresponsible and are much more of a threat to the general public and your loved ones then any criminal.
If you dont accidently shoot yourself or some one close to you just carrying the weapon around with you day to day then when you are required to use the weapon for self defence , frightened ,sweaty, possibly shaking you are very probably going to be lethal to everyone around you except for the person you’re aiming at.
Get some one skilled to train you in the first place ,not your next door neighbour or someone who says “well its all common sense really” and be wary of old soldiers ,they may have spent their entire war in the stores and only fired a weapon in basic training what ever their tall stories.
Get the safety drills engrained before anything else and then practice ,practice,practice .
If you haven’t the time or cant be bothered to do that then do yourself and everyone else a favour and get rid of the weapon.
My, don’t you have some strong opinions! How much training and experience do *you * have? Are you late of the SAS, perhaps? Otherwise, I’m going to discount a good bit of what you have to say. Always go for the headshot? Very few agencies or schools here teach that. Head/pelvis shots are taught to be used in conjunction with COM shots as part of an overall failure-to-stop policy. Too much of your post reads like standard HCI rhetoric for me to take you seriously.
Not only that, but imagine you were being questioned by the police about a man you’d just had to kill.
Would you want to talk without a lawyer?
I wouldn’t.
How much is a lawyer going to want to have in hand before representing someone who has commited homicide and is being questioned by the cops?
I’ve never had to make that phone call, but I’ll bet the price he quotes is more than my next paycheck. $25K doesn’t sound too far off for lawyer’s bills, especially if his next of kin make wrongful death noises…
Oh, incidentally, my suggestion is that the reason some animals and people fall down when shot is not that being hit is enough to knock them down per se, but that it just knocks them off balance when they’re not expecting to have pressure exerted on them.
I’ll wager that if you go up to the average guy and deliver a few pounds of quick pressure to his center of mass while he’s not paying attention to you, he’ll likely stumble, if not fall.
As others have said, this is a highly litigious society.
Remember when Carroll O’Connor, after his son Hugh’s death, was “defaming” the guy who sold him the drugs? Well that guy sued Carroll O’Connor for defamation of character. I’m glad to say that the guy lost the lawsuit.
Still, it gives you some idea of how “lawsuit happy” we have become doesn’t it?
Twice it has been pointed out that you should not fire a warning shot, and nobody seem to disagree. I’m not saying I am, but you gotta tell me what everyone else knows:
Why not shoot a warning shot?
(Assuming there would be time to do it, and assuming that you’d prefer not to put a bullet in someone, if you had the choice, even if s/he was about to steal your car or something.)
No, but the key word is “always”. However the head shot training is taught to equal amount to shooting at center mass. And I’ve been told that withing the next 3 years almost all reactionary shooting drills will be head shots.
Because that bullet is going to go somewhere. You’re not isolating a target when you just cap one in the air.
Also, in many jurisdictions, one cannot use deadly force to protect property. So unless someone were threatening lethal force during a car jacking, your scenario of shooting a thief would not be legal in many areas
Say a bad guy threatens you. You fire a warning shot. Bad guy continues to come at you, and you shoot him in the chest. The prosecutor (or the bad guy’s attorney) will say something along these lines:
“So, Mr. Wakinyan, you claim you shot my client because you were ‘afraid for your life.’ But before you shot him, you fired a warning shot. A person who fires a warning shot is usually not afraid for their life. If you truly felt your life was in danger, you would never have fired a warning shot.”
As can be seen, firing a warning shot sends a conflicting message to the jury. (You claim your life as in danger. But firing a warning shot implies the situation may not have been life-threatening.) Hence you should never fire a warning shot. Bring the gun to eye level, focus on the front sight, squeeze trigger, repeat.
Firing a round in the air is a potential hazard to other people. Firing into the ground could riccochet. The only warning you need to provide (assuming that the perpetrator in question is doing something that merits the application of force) is, “Stop and leave, or I’ll shoot.” If he doesn’t believe you, that’s his problem.
I read that in light of the London bombings the British are considering training for headshots only, in some circumstances without warning, for suicide bombing suspects. Whether this has come to pass, I don’t know.
If I recall from a previous thread, the last folks who were still trained to fire warning shots were in the military.
I don’t know if that’s current procedure ANYWHERE or not.