Originally Posted by
Tom Givens
Sigh…. As often happens, a complex subject that was discussed at length, in several segments over the course of a three day class has been distilled to one sentence.
A single pistol hit, to just one lung, often does not bring about any noticeable impairment to the shootee in a time frame that would be of any benefit to the shooter. Platt, in the FBI shootout in Miami in 1986, is a perfect example. He took a hit to one lung, which also knicked an artery and filled that one lung with blood. However, he still had a perfectly good lung and a functional heart and fought for an additional three and a half minutes AFTER taking that hit.
Nephrology wrote, “Destruction of the lungs and/or airway can cause incapacitation by airway obstruction or hemo/pneumothorax, as well as direct damage to the lungs themselves. This can eventually cause the wounded to asphyxiate or lose consciousness from lack of oxygen, but its highly context dependent and not guaranteed to occur. More of a consideration for the treatment of penetrating trauma rather than something to think about in the context of self defense. Also worth noting there are large vessels that perfuse the lungs; serious damage to those can also cause death by exsanguination or cardiac tamponade.”
Note the word “destruction”. Unlike rifle bullets with velocities above 2,100 feet per second, pistol bullets don’t destroy lungs. They poke holes in them. You can poke a hole in a lung without striking bone (between two ribs) and without hitting an artery. If this occurs, you have not accomplished much IN THE SHORT TERM, which is what we are concerned with.
This is why multiple hits to a fairly small area in the upper torso are often required to force someone to stop. We try to get across to students that only quality hits count when faced with a determined aggressor, and multiple hits are vastly better than single hits. The human body has a lot of redundancy (two lungs, two kidneys, etc) and a lot of resiliency. If faced with a determined attacker, it may take a lot of accumulated damage to force incapacitation in a survivable time frame.