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CC Italian wrote:Last time I saw a group of local constables talking together they were all carrying 1911s. I love 1911s but I thought they would want more rounds. Every city cop in Houston I have seen carries a High Capacity 12+ handgun. Maybe the constables in the suburbs have less restrictions on what they can carry? I don't know but if I was a LEO I would take 12-17 rounds over a single stack 1911.

I don't know, either. I have a couple of high-capacity, double-stack .45s, but I carry a 1911. So I'm guilty.

That's the trade-off I've chosen. A 1911 is nice and flat so I can carry it easily; I'm very familiar and practiced with its use and manual-at-arms; and the 8-round count is something I'm willing to accept in lieu of a smaller caliber. Going back to those SOP-9 statistics, officers fired an average of 5.2 rounds. That tells me I probably don't want a 5-shot revolver as a primary (your mileage may vary); a 6-shot revolver is minimal; 8 rounds is a reasonable place to start. Especially if you practice your reloading skills. And, yeah, I carry two extra mags.

JeepGuy79 wrote:I am toting a sig p238 most days right now. and I feel 100% safe with it. Good training, quality ammo, and good training matter more to me than caliber. The gun is super accurate with low recoil and I have done loads of Mozambique drills with it.

Just a note that you may want to rethink your your concept of "good training."

Mozambique drills are useful...but are seldom practical in real-world applications unless you practice them on moving targets. The problem is that bodies move. The part that moves the least is at the center of gravity: from the navel to the thighs. The parts that move the most are at the extremities, hands and feet, followed by...you guessed it, the head. Just watch some NFL running plays.

Placing an accurate shot at stuff that moves the most--especially in an encounter where everything is likely to be moving--is an unrealistic thing to expect.

A head-shot with a handgun at a moving target is unrealistic.

It's particularly unrealistic in an urban environment where innocents may be within the trajectory of the shot.

I guess my ultimate message is:

Please. Please!

Don't overestimate yourself.

Excaliber wrote:4. A knowledgeable defensive tactician should expect his initial shots to fail to stop an attacker, and should continue his active defense until the threat is no longer a threat.

Great post, as always, but I just wanted to comment on this point relative to the discussion.

I also liked snatchel's ranking structure:

1. Shot Placement
2. Amount of rounds put into subject
3. Caliber of rounds put into subject

If there's one thing I've learned about defensive handgun shooting, it's this: everything will be moving. Whether it's at ECQ distances or 20 yards, once weapons come out, nobody stands still. Not the bad guy (or guys), or the defender, or any bystanders, or even, seemingly (stress and adrenaline dump), the rest of your environment as all the actors are moving over and through it. And it happens in 360 degrees.

Without real-world experience like Excaliber has, the only practical way to even try to simulate a portion of this is force-on-force training with Simunition or, to a lesser degree of effectiveness, Airsoft. Nothing about our typical square-range shooting options allow us to practice this sort of thing. Competition like IDPA puts you under a degree of stress and has you moving a bit, but the scenarios are predefined and predictable, and have to be performed all in one direction, toward the berm. And nobody is shooting back.

There's a reason officer-involved shooting statistics show what seems to be an abysmally low hit rate...and it isn't because the average LEO is a far worse shot than you or me. In an SOP-9 update for the years 1990 through 2000, NYPD Gunfight Statistics show these as mean values: NYPD Gunfight Hit Probability: 15%; NYPD Shots Fired per Gunfight: 10.3; NYPD Shots Fired per Officer: 5.2.

Everybody involved in a gunfight is moving. You may think you can stand and take a quality, sighted shot, but the probability is extremely high that you cannot. From the original SOP-9 study: "Good sight alignment is fundamental to target shooting, yet 70% of cases reviewed indicated that no sight alignment was employed when the [service weapon] was fired." The tendency to use sighted shooting increased some as the threat distance increased, but "aiming" was described in the study as widely as merely using the barrel as a pointing reference up to and including full alignment of front and rear sights. Even then sight alignment was reported only 20% of the time. A substantial number of officers, over 10% on average, stated that they couldn't remember whether or not they used their sights.

Add to that, as many as 77% of police shootings are believed to occur under some degree of diminished lighting. So you've got everything moving, probably in low-light conditions, and all the effects of an adrenaline dump are hitting you.

Under those realistic conditions, good shot placement will be as much--or more--about luck as skill.

There's a reason we're taught in defensive shooting to go for COM, Center of Mass. Whatever is the biggest piece of the bad guy you can see, aim in the middle of it. The only one-shot physiological stop is brain stem or top of the spinal cord...and unless everything has pretty much stopped moving and you're at a close distance, that's just not a shot you're going to make under stress in a gunfight.

So I like snatchel's ranking. In a perfect world, perfect shot placement is all you need.

Next up (this assuming a reasonable defensive caliber; no .25 ACP), give me a tool that will allow multiple, rapid, follow-up shots without having to reload. I'd much rather have multiple rounds of 9mm on board than a two-shot .45 ACP derringer.

Last, I'd prefer a large caliber over a smaller one. If I know I'm not going to be able to select highly accurate targets during a gunfight, I want the largest wound channel I can get.

What you choose is all a balancing act. It has to be comfortable enough to carry; you have to be able to present it quickly and effectively; you have to be able to shoot it well and be willing to practice with it; and you have to understand certain basics about what a deadly-force encounter might actually look like.