Firearms Training

Let’s assume that you are facing an armed adversary who is intent on killing you or your loved one. You try everything possible to avoid the gunfight, but your adversary leaves you no choice. In the end, you are forced to draw your weapon and shoot. What is your goal in shooting; what are you trying to accomplish? Often times we hear words like “kill,” “incapacitate,” and “neutralize.” I certainly understand all of those concepts, however, the goal is stop. You are simply trying to stop the aggressive behavior the bad guy is displaying towards you or your loved one.

Let’s say you’ve fired a controlled pair to the center of your adversary’s thoracic cavity and the aggressive behavior doesn’t stop. In other words, he continues to fight. This is what we call a “Failure to Stop”. You can see the logic in the name. A failure to stop may be caused by any number of things including body armor, drugs, or a highly dedicated opponent.

Body armor is very common and readily available. A good example of body armor being used in a gunfight is the Bank of America robbery in North Hollywood back in February of 1997. Those guys were covered from head to toe in not one, but two layers of body armor.

Then there are drugs. Drugs are even more common than body armor and frankly, probably just as effective at causing a failure to stop. Drugs affect a person’s physiology. Your adversary may bleed out in thirty seconds or three minutes, but in the meantime you have a failure to stop.

Next is the dedicated opponent. He has no body armor and no drugs other than adrenaline. He’s just a very stout individual and he’s simply not impressed with the caliber of your weapon! He is focused and determined and being shot with a handgun doesn’t stop him. A good example of this was the Miami FBI shooting in April of 1986. One of the bad guys in this shooting continued to fight even after sustaining a serious wound in the opening volley. He took a round to the arm; it shattered the humerus bone, severed the brachial artery, went into the thoracic cavity, through one lung and stopped just short of the aorta. That is about as much penetration as you can ever hope for from a handgun. But, he was determined to continue the fight, and fight he did. He was bleeding so profusely that investigators were later able to track his movements by the arterial spurts of blood on the pavement. This guy was bleeding-out in a hurry. But for the next several minutes, he tore the place up. He killed two FBI agents and wounded five more before he expired.

Ultimately, you don’t care what caused of the failure to stop. Your only concern now is a solution. There are several options:

• More of the same; that is additional rounds to the thoracic cavity
• The pelvis
• The central nervous system

More rounds to the body armor, or more rounds to the drug-crazed individual aren’t going to do anything except waste time and ammunition, neither of which you have enough of in a gunfight. So “more of the same” is not a reliable solution.

The pelvic shot comes from law enforcement as a means of stopping somebody armed with a contact weapon like a knife or baseball bat. If he’s all the way across the room and closing the distance on you with the Louisville Slugger, and you shatter his pelvis, you have stopped him. However, what if he’s armed with a gun? The trigger finger is not connected to the pelvis! What’s more, handgun rounds generally don’t shatter the pelvis. Typically they just bore a little hole clean through it.

So, if “more of the same” and the pelvis are poor choices, what does that leave? It leaves the central nervous system; the brain and the spinal cord. If you sever that spinal cord, you inhibit all the electrical impulses from that point down and he will pile up like a wet rag. But that is an incredibly difficult shot. I certainly couldn’t guarantee that shot; I don’t think anybody could, especially under stress. That leaves us with the brain…not the “head,” but the brain. There’s a whole lot of head that isn’t brain. The best access to the brain is the cranio-occular cavity. The cranio-occular cavity is essentially the eye sockets and the soft honeycomb tissue of the sinuses. In other words, your aim point is essentially the eyes and nose. If you drive a handgun round through bad guy’s cranio-occular cavity, he will definitely stop. In fact, he is very likely to die. Remember, it was his decision to start this fight. You delivered a controlled pair to the thoracic cavity. It was his decision to continue the fight, forcing you into the cranio-occular cavity shot. He made all the decisions in this fight, not you. It is always unfortunate when someone dies; but better him than you or your loved one. Think of it this way; you are shooting at the cranio-occular cavity not to take a life, but rather to save a life.

How are you going to deliver that shot? The cranio-occular cavity is a very small target compared to the thoracic cavity. This is a difficult shot and will require the Three Secrets. Ah, but that’s a discussion for a later date. Stay tuned…