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Lucky,

If you draw a box on the face from pupil to pupil, eyebrows to bottom of the eye socket, you have the target area for the medulla. But, your round needs enough power to get to the back of the head, or almost all the way through the skull.

It works well for rifle snipers, and it is a great shot for a hostage situation with a pistol if you are on TV. Otherwise, it is not a real practical target.

But if you can hit the medulla, it controls the body movement and is supposed to drop the suspect without even a muscular jerk reaction on his trigger (assuming he has a firearm in his hand).

It's the brain stem, above the base of the spine. You can only hit it directly from the rear, but you can drill through the brain from the eye sockets and potentially reach it as well. It's known to snipers as the "apricot."

As an aside, a fellow who was a homicide with the Detriot PD for many years recently noted on another forum that he was continually impressed with how inconsistently effective headshots were, in actual shootings. Even if you *do* hit the head (which isn't easy) a significant number of rounds simply fail to penetrate the skull.

Like everyone else has said....Shoot to get hits, and keep shooting until the threat quits.

Is it just me or has this thread gotten a little surreal?

Front sight. Press. Repeat as needed.

Somehow, targeting specific organs or arteries seems a little unrealistic. I doubt that most of us could accomplish such things on a stock still paper target, let alone a human who is moving around and maybe even shooting back.

Again, I've never pointed a gun at anyone, and no one has ever pointed one at me, intentionally at least. So maybe I don't know what I am talking about.

I think this thread needs some [url=mms://video.wjla.com/wciv/101507_brown.wmv]perspective.[/url]

Frost wrote:I think this thread needs some [url=mms://video.wjla.com/wciv/101507_brown.wmv]perspective.[/url]

Oh the humanity! Do we have to look at that mess again?!

srothstein wrote:Remember that the only shot that will definitely drop a person in his tracks is the medulla oblongata, which is a very hard target to hit (police snipers train for it with rifles at 50 to 100 yards).

Considering some of the police I've seen doing slowfire on a nice, calm range, a Greyhound bus must be a difficult target to hit with a rifle at 50-100 yards.

Result of all of the stories of real police shootings I know of is to shoot and keep shooting until the person is not a threat. I think that was also the consensus here.

I found a couple of givens from which a good mathematician should be able to work it out for us: with a 15" deck gun, one well-placed shot is sufficient to stop any human; with a .25ACP, an infinite number may not work. There should be a good formula that will narrow it down for calibers in between those values.

The instructors here may have already covered this stuff, but I feel that it's probably worth covering again. It has to do with shot placement on a BG who may, or may not be wearing body armor, and/or who is running with a weapon at you or somebody else.

The primary response is pretty standard. You shoot to the torso. A minimum of 2 shots (I think we can all agree on that) with a maximum of about 4 or 5, depending on whether or not you see any effects of HITS (that's important, as only hits count). If there is an effect, and your bullets are effective, then I would imagine that you could continue shooting to the torso. If they are not, then you need to change up your placement. One action is a headshot. That seems like a pretty typical response, but the head is not the easiest part of the body to hit. It moves around really fast, and it is small in comparison to the rest of the body. Also, I have seen some videos where an individual has been shot mortally in the head, but not fatally. He continued to run at the target shooting, and may have been able to fight with his hands, even after being hit in the head. If you get a shot on the head, you can take it, but otherwise, you have one more option to resort to: the pelvic girdle. The pelvic girdle is a line under the naval, going across the front of the suspects waist, between the two hip bones. The reason this is an effective place to shoot is pretty simple: there are a lot of major arteries and guts, so a potential for a lot of damage, but there is also a major bone here. If a round strikes the pelvis, especially a larger round, it's probably going to break it. Anyone in here who has had one can probably tell you that walking (and especially running) with a broken hip is just not that doable. If you get a shot to the pelvis, the suspect should go down. Not necessarily because of extreme pain, although that will probably be present, but because the bones just won't be able to continue moving well enough to keep running.

I'm not sure about an appropriate number of shots being placed in the areas described. I'm not even sure about the number of torso shots, I just noticed that 4-5 was the number I shot to either decided to continue shooting there, or shoot somewhere else.

BrassMonkey wrote:I agree on the render aid. IF I have gloves and a bag mask and all that with me.

stevie_d_64 wrote:I believe it also looks good when you are rendering first aid to one or more sucking chest wound(s) as all that attention rolls into the scene...

But thats just me...

There is something perversely humorous about this. I am drawn back to the memory of working a bad guy (car jacker) and having intubated, having my partner assess breath sounds. He heard them in both lung fields, the abdomen and the legs. This guy was rightly and properly ventilated.

Now when I qualled on the 1911 and then went to MOUT for door-to-door training (1970's) we were taught the triad, double to chest... third in head. This was ingrained to the point that I still have not successfully untaught myself and when I am practicing rapid deployment I will at some time during the session, resort to the triad. The old reversion to your training thing.

That said, I have taught my wife and I am of the (intellectual) school of thought wherein you present and, if the BG is not receding into the sunset, immediately open fire until he has stopped and is down. Then reassess.

I like txinvestigator's model of training with someone who can help you assess. Double the eyes and twice the minds has to exponentially increase SA.