I was looking up information on the recent shootings in NYC when a thought struck me.
Yesterday, six people were shot, one was killed. The fatality was a 1-year-old. The adults are expected to survive.
On July 3rd, there were a series of shootings leaving ten wounded and one dead.
The weekend of the 4th of July saw nine killed and 41 wounded in shootings.
If we hop over to Hey Jackass, the year to date there is 360 killed and 1618 wounded.
This is what I’ve noticed, the ratio of those wounded to those killed:
-
- NYC 7/13 – 6:1
- NYC 7/3 – 10:1
- NYC 7/4 – 4.5:1
- Chicago (total) – 4.5:1
We know that just about all of these shootings are being committed with handguns.
We do not know the calibers or types of ammo being used, but a while back The Trace published a list of the most popular guns used by Chicago criminals from confiscation. Lots of 9mm, a surprising amount of 40 S&W, some 38 Special. Fewer “midnight special” cheap guns than S&W and Glock pistols. A lot of Rugers. This is more evidence that a lot of the guns used by criminals in Chicago are stolen from law-abiding buyers than cheap Pawn Shop pistols. The Rugers were most likely stolen from the Chicago rail yards after gang members used connections to locate pallets of guns being shipped from the factory to a distribution center.
The point is, that you yourself are probably armed with the same gun and same ammo as these criminals.
They are scoring a wound to kill ratio of between 4.5:1 and 10:1.
Someone shot with a handgun seems to be more likely to survive than die.
The lesson for us is that we can reasonably expect that the first shot isn’t going to stop the threat.
You can say “but J.Kb., I apply marksmanship, those gang members are holding their guns sideways as they pray and spray.”
You may be right, but I’ve shot enough USPSA to know that when the buzzer goes beep on a qualifying stage, I can come down with a sudden case of Stormtrooperitis. Stress does bad things to the human body. You may be an A-class shooter but when you are fighting for your life in a defensive situation, there is no guarantee that adrenalin won’t take over.
That is why we train.
We are watching the world’s largest randomized field trial in handgun stopping power, it’s important for us to learn the lessons from that and apply them in our own lives.
Once again, I will leave the last word on this subject to the great Clint Smith:
Evan Marshall and Ed Sanow spent some years accumulating “one shot stop” data. While some are less bad than others, handguns are considerably better than a sharp stick.
I’ve never seen these types of shooting happen with HP ammo, always FMJs. Very rare to find street level guys with HPs unless they are supplied them
I wonder if the “Quell zone” technique of Paris Theodore would be worth dusting off. As I understand it, that’s the notion that there are a couple of (fairly small) areas in the human body that, when hit, produce pretty near instant incapacitation. And he created targets designed to train for hitting those spots. An interesting approach: the front of the target is a regular silhouette or picture; the quell zones are marked on the back and that’s how the scoring is done. You don’t get to see them marked on the target when firing. (https://patents.google.com/patent/US4508508A/en — that patent has expired)
Makes me glad I’ve traded my daily carry from a 6 round magazie (XDs in .45) to something with 12 rounds per magazine.
“The lesson for us is that we can reasonably expect that the first shot isn’t going to stop the threat.’
That’s why people have taught “controlled pairs” even when using a rifle for many years. That’s not a ‘double hammer’ but 2 shots as fast as one can get the gun on target within about 3 inches of the first shot. (and that still can be very fast).
Actually if you look at the HeyJackAss statistics going back just a few years, the ratio of wounded to dead has been going down again. It used to be 6:1 or 7:1, now it is closer to to 4:1 some weeks. They still have a lot of random variance however. One June 2020 weekend the numbers were 39 wounded and 2 dead, almost 20:1.
Is it more Hollow Points on the streets? Bigger Caliber guns? Maybe it is some hitters are more experienced and less likely to get “Buck Fever” the second or third time they are shooting people?
Thanks to better Doctors, better EMTS, better communications, and better equipment, a lot of people wounded in Chicago are surviving compared to the bad old days of the 1950’s to the 1990’s.
https://heyjackass.com
They document and break down the violence in Chicago a lot of different ways. Method, Race, Day of the Week, Time of Day, several on where they got shot, and my favorite, selfies!
Better doctors and ER care is important, but so is response time. I wonder whether the average shot-to-care time has changed, along with the survival ratio.
So Clint isn’t wrong about worrying about the effects of gelatin when you’re in the moment. That’s because it’s the planning stage.
What we can’t do is go to Cabelas grab 4 boxes of hollow points and ask the scumbags to line up while we shoot them with the various brands to see what works best. The way the “Pros” use the gel tests; Find bullets pulled out of bad guys, dead or alive – shoot those bullets into gel. Compare the style of penetration of bullets that made dead bad guys to the bullets that didn’t make dead bad guys – then say “hey peeps: If you want to make dead bad guys make sure it goes xxxxxx far into the gel, cause that’s what the bullets that make dead bad guys do.”
Yes Handguns make holes in; Rifles holes through; Shotguns holes of. Can’t carry my shotgun everywhere, and neither does Clint; and I’ll just bet he carries some premium hollow point like HST or Gold dot or Critical Defense.