Very good point. If one is shooting at, and hitting cover, is that really a miss?Originally Posted by txdpd
Very good point. If one is shooting at, and hitting cover, is that really a miss?
That’s the only scenario in which I’ve thought suppressive fire was justified in LE use as opposed to the way it’s performed in a military context. Shooting the cover keeps the suspect’s head down, allowing another officer to flank, and the cover absorbs the rounds, preventing them from ending up in bystanders and fellow officers. I’d not count those as misses.
My posts only represent my personal opinion and do not necessarily reflect the opinions or official policies of any employer, past or present. Obvious spelling errors are likely the result of an iPhone keyboard.
Our scenarios are modeled on actual events. Often from our own department, but sometimes from other agencies.
Sorta around sometimes for some of your shitty mod needs.
Isn’t this the same study Tom Givens posted about here: https://pistol-forum.com/showthread....c-Expectations
It isn’t the first study on this issue. A book from ALERRT on room entry and search methodologies with research looked at multiple previous studies on the subject. The data is there, I’m on the road and don’t have access to the material right now. Roughly, the numbers are consistent.
Not a cop, but statistical analysis is my professional lane. I don’t have an issue with the study’s computational methodology, but applying this data to real world UoF cases is problematic .
First, 10% of the incidents had to be discarded for evaluation due to insufficient bullet trajectory data. Considering the effectively infinite ways a shootout can propagate , that’s valuable and relevant data which can’t be evaluated. Those incidents might be circumstances where officers did deliver a 90% initial hit rate; but we won’t know.
Which brings me to the next point; gunfights are designed to foil efficient statistical analysis.About the only two variables an analyst can count on are human participants and firearms . The rest -age, gender, weapons, participants, time of day, location...are incident dependent; again , the study had to be limited to one-on-one Officer and offender shootouts for practical analysis. Which again means multiple offender/ multiple officer shooting data is ignored, despite both offenders and officers typically operating in teams.
Lastly ; training and tactics can’t be statistically expressed. One would not act the same in using a gun to stop a knife armed offender at 1’ vs a rifle armed assailant at 75 ft. Both will show on paper a single response incident where an officer engaged an armed attacker, but the response tactics are totally different. At close range with a knife armed assailant an officers probably going to shoot more then when carefully engaging a rifle armed shooter at longer range . Yet again, on paper.....”single officer vs assailant”.
While I’m not concluding statistical analysis of UOF cases is doomed to impossibility, careful evaluation of any study is required before drawing conclusions and modifying training appropriately. This study is moderately useful for single vehicle officer agencies with a track record of single subject stops, and next to irrelevant for a two person per vehicle agency in a city with multiple suspect stops.
The Minority Marksman.
"When you meet a swordsman, draw your sword: Do not recite poetry to one who is not a poet."
-a Ch'an Buddhist axiom.
I am a big fan of force on force training with simunitions so it's more realistic (ie you feel pain if you screw up). When working with the US Marshals Task Force, we did numerous trainings with simunitions and it helped greatly. Our department converted an area to a simunitions shoot house and conducted training there. It made training more realistic and ensured you would know immediately if you screwed up. Can't beat that.
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