10 ft and real person, I’d say that his chances are as good as anyone’s. Even trained people usually end up point shooting at close quarters when shit hits the fan. And since people do end up getting shot, the percentage chance would have to be above 0%.
Here is some discussion at another board that examines Israeli-style technique and how/why it evolved. The short version is that it is the safest and quickest way to bring an automatic pistol, carried with an empty chamber, into action.
Good point. I’ve been shooting since I was 9 years old. Recoil and noise does not surprise me.
I’ve tried to teach my Wife to shoot. But the recoil from a .22 Mark II with a bull barrel surprises her so much that she concentrates on that other than the target.
I blame this on some ass that was camping with my Wife and friends and had a .44 (many moons ago, pre me.) My Wife was convinced into shooting the .44 magnum. Lot’s of set up, my Wife was a bit intimidated by it. All was ready to go….yada yada yada, biggest handgun in the world… And
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Hah hah hah…. The gun wasn’t loaded. Since then dear Patty has been a bit suspicious of guns. (I won’t tell you what I think of the asshole that did that).
The .22’s recoil is like catching a can of pop dropped from 5 feet.
The recoil from a .357 is like having a friend pitch a softball at you.
With the pistol in correct firing orientation you have to reach up and over, twisting the arm. Turning the pistol to the side (and keeping the muzzle pointed out in front of you, always) allows a less contored reach to grab the slide. This is even more important if you grasp the slide by the forward part (doing a chamber check or covering the ejection port as many professionals instruct) rather than by the rear serrations. It’s an entirely reasonable thing to do if you carry the gun in Condition 3–certainly smarter than pointing the muzzle upward right in front of your face and pulling back the slide as you see many Hollywood actors do–but you’d return the pistol to the vertial position for aimed fire.
People with arthritis or other musclar problems can often fire a pistol safely even though they can’t go through the contortions of racking the slide. I’d agree this isn’t an ideal situation because they won’t be able to clear a jam should that happen, but that’s the breaks.
Slim. Most people who have never been trained to shoot will tend to jerk at the trigger (again, you can see nist actors doing this), pulling the muzzle well off to the right and down (assuming they’re firing with the right hand). Others will try to compenstate for this by “milking the cow”, suddenly gripping the gun hard, pulling it back to the left and up.
Even at ten feet, which seems like a very modest range, it’s quite easy to miss a human sized target–which after all, is only about ~18" wide for the torso–and put the bullet in the white, especially under stress and in conditions where sight acquisition is challenging at best. You know those movies where the cop gives his civilian buddy his backup piece to “cover him” and he ends up head-shotting the villian’s henchman from 90 feet? Yeah, that’s movie bullshit. In contrast, a trained pistol-handler should be about to routinely hit a man-sized target with a quality service pistol at 50 yards or more under ideal conditions, and 9-ring the target at 25 yards. So, training and proper marksmanship are critical to hitting anything with a pistol, hence Scumpup’s observation about bangers not appreciating the hazard of having a firearm pointed at them due to gross ineptitude.
Stranger
Well, thanks to Stranger for the explanation about the sideways racking thing.
I am confused, though. It seems the estimates of my chances of hitting the target range from “nearly 100%” to “slim”.
If this helps: I am assuming a paper target, or (as tends to happen in movies when a gansta fires the gun sideways) a cowering and defenseless real person. I am short and lightly built, with small hands and wrists. I have no disability.
Stranger, you need to not say things like “condition three” and “9-ring the target” to me. When it comes to firearms, I am an extremely knowledgeable baker. 
I shot with a lady friend of mine. Her first time. We talked through it, while people were shooting nearby. I had her dry fire one time. I explained about recoil, reacquiring the sight picture as the weapon falls back from recoil, had her mimic it.
Put two rounds in the mag, gave it to her. She worked the slide, used our little mantra. (Had her shouting stop, stop, stop as she aimed and then fired at the final exhale.) She put one in the nine ring, followed immediately by one in the black, but high and to the left. (Target at 15 feet.) Second set of two at ten feet, she put both in the nine ring. (one almost a ten)
Ten feet is nearly a point blank shot. I had her work at 21 feet, the rest of the day. Her hand got tired after about 25 shots. (Glock, 9mm) By the end of that, she was putting half her shots in the 9 ring, and the rest inside the 7 pretty much at will.
Her first try.
Tris
People vary in their natural ability, of course, and for what it is worth, back when I was doing firearm instruction I found that women almost always picked up advice and recommendations much faster than men. Going through a first course of dry firing is very helpful in uncovering grip and trigger manupulation problems that recoil will hide; it’s also good (with a revolver) to alternate or leave out a few rounds so that the student can see how much they’re flinching. However, if someone picked up a gun with just prior verbal instruction and used it for the first time in a combat situation (which is how I interpereted the question), the odds of hitting a target, even at close range, are surprisingly bad from my experience. Heck, I’ve seen professional law enforcement officers (with admittedly only the very limited training and qualification standards required by some organizations) completely miss paper targets at 10-15 feet in stress tests; they revert to cow-milking and other bad habits and jerk the muzzle this way and that. At 10 feet a 5° divergence from the target is almost a foot, enough to completely miss with a torso shot, and 5° is no stretch with bad trigger technique.
I’m not disputing your story, but from my experience, most people upon first picking up and shooting a gun would have difficulty intentionally hitting anything at much more than contact distance, especially under stress.
Stranger
Since it seems the question has been clearly answered, I’ll try to muddy the waters a little.
Imagine, if you will, that the path a bullet travels is a smooth arch rather than a straight line. If one was to look down the barrel it would be pointing above the intended target, as the bullet is subject to gravity and thus will fall, right? So, the sights on top of the gun are set to take this into account and, properly aimed, the bullet will go approximately where you want it.
Now imagine gravity is no longer beneath the firearm but instead is off to the left somewhere (or the gun is held sideways) - The path the bullet will take is no longer related to what the sights are targeting. Instead of a smooth arc up and then down, as far as the sights are concerned the arc is now to the left (or “down” from the shooters POV), and since the sights should be set to compensate for a drop towards the bottom, the bullet will also miss left (or “up” from the perspective of the sights).
This is assuming that the shooter in question is actually aiming, which I believe may be fairly unlikely.
That was pretty much the question. Someone says to me, “Here’s a pistol. You put the bullets in that slot, pull this whatzit and press that doohickey there. Now pull the trigger.”
No real disagreement, just some (hopefully) pithy quips:
You really think real “gangstas” are worried about sight picture? From the incident of “collateral damage” from dirve-bys, I’d guess spray-'n-pray is their preferred method of hitting a target.
Well, until Col. Cooper died last year, I would have tended to agree. Still, I’d give better than even odds of a couple of weekend shooters I know wiping the floor with Steven Segal at the range.
Hey, she was Annie Friggin Oakley, I know.
I have no experience whatsoever in situations where I, or someone near me actually pointed a gun at another person, much less fired for effect. I know I would be seriously stressed, even if it wasn’t a surprise situation. If it was a surprise, I know what I am gonna do. I am gonna die. I might have time to wonder what the fuck happened, but then again, with my reflexes, maybe not so much.
Sure, I love to imagine! Of course the difference in trajectory at fifteen feet is only technically not imaginary.
The sight alignment should intersect the path of the bullet at the distance the sight was “zeroed” to. In many cases, that is a non adjustable distance, generally twenty five yards, but often different. Really high end weapons have adjustable sights. But the action of gravity, at the distance a hand gun is accurate for is measured in millimeters, and damn few of those. The problem with gangsta grip is that it pretty much makes sighting impossible. If you did sight appropriately, (Yeah, yeah, I know.) you would hit the target pretty much the same. But you won’t, ‘cause standing there aiming is lame, man! You got to demonstrate your cool, and fire a few right away. Don’t you know nothin’ man?
Tris
I suspect that if any one gives you a 5 second introduction to the use of any weapon, they will keep running…
Follow them and then take the first right or left you can and then run like hell.
Keep the gun. It may make a good club.
I’m sorry to sound so glib. But…… I think everyone should know the basics of firearms and firearm safety. Just like they should know how to cook a meal or learn to swim.
I shot a 380 before. Everytime I ever shot it, I held it sideways at first, cause that is how everyone else was holding it. But when I actually pulled the trigger, I straightened my wrist…cause that is what everyone else was doing.
The ‘sideways’ thing is just a stance that the shooter assumes, before actually pulling the trigger. It is just cooler to stand that way. The same way they put a swagger in their walk, or lean back while driving.
I can only speak for the guys I knew, though. They weren’t ‘bangers’ because there are no real gangs in New York, so I don’t know if my answer applies to why ‘bangers’ do it.
High end? My Makarov and most of my Rugers (except the sp101 and one of the .45LC’s) have adjustable sights, yet my customized 1911’s don’t. Of course, I don’t have a really high end handgun.
Anyway, I acknowledge that a 3" variation at 25-50 yards is essentially unnoticeable to a “spray and pray” gangbanger or to someone at point-blank range, which is why I didn’t chime in with my benchrest attitude earlier. Also, I don’t think anyone holding their gun like that is going to be aiming anyway, so maybe that’s the real reason it’s inaccurate - the idjits don’t aim.
Hmm. Well, the question as posed was hypothetical. I’m well aware of my limitations when it comes to guns. If I weren’t, I wouldn’t have needed to ask.
But as to whether I should, as a matter of course, be aware of firearms, I dunno. I mean, I need to eat, thus I may need to cook. I’m also more likely to fall into some body of water (and thus need to swim) than I am to find myself accidentally holding a gun.
And if I deliberately choose to hold a gun, damn straight I’ll get training so that I know what to do with the thing.