First off, what this IS NOT: This is not targeted violence, which often looks different. This is not police actions, which often look different. This is regular non-criminals who were approached by armed criminals in an attempt to rob them for the most part, although some were attempted sex crimes and some were thrill murders.
This is also not inclusive of situational awareness fails, etc. The reader is expected to be familiar with the OODA loop, MUC concepts, etc. We all realize we win every fight we don’t engage in, and many of these were avoidable…but that’s not the point of this thread.
What this IS: Trends I observed across roughly 100 cases of failed self defense by regular citizens faced with irregular circumstances of random targeting for crime. The majority of these were cases I personally worked as lead or assisting detective, with the remainder being cases worked by other detectives I worked with who I could question on the circumstances, review case files, etc. None are from media accounts, 3rd hand accounts, or self-reporting alone. Note these are not in order by percentage, and multiple factors were present in some cases, but these are by far the most common factors in a loss:
1) Presenting a non-functioning weapon. Empty chamber carry, failure to get a thumb safety off, mechanically inoperative gun, or mental inability to pull the trigger. Pulling a gun without the will and ability to pull the trigger got people shot and/or stabbed and/or disarmed in multiple cases. In cases of serial robbers, often when the robbers had never shot any other victim who was compliant.
2) Off body carry. Reaching for off body carry often tipped off the bad guy that non-compliance was coming, got their attention on the defender, and resulted in being shot or trading shots as both parties pulled triggers near simultaneously.
3) Entanglement. Particularly with long guns which otherwise enjoy a *very* favorable win ratio, entanglement often resulted in disarmament or a gun that became non-functional. Entangled defenders were often disarmed, had their gun disabled, or were injured/exhausted until ineffective and the attacker either continued the attack or disengaged and fled.
4) Multiple attackers. Especially when combined with entanglement. Multiple attackers at a distance tended to flee, but still win rates were lower due to some exceptions which I’ll touch on more in a bit.
There were other factors that appeared much less frequently, but those are the major 4.
One on one encounters, speed/surprise/violence of attack was nearly 100% effective in either outright killing the bad guy, injuring him to the point of surrender (physical or psychological stops counted), or putting him to flight. Everybody, win or lose, ran out of time before they ran out of ammunition regardless of what they were armed with. One side or the other was down or in flight. Multiple bad guys was harder. Generally they were put to flight once the fighting started, but if one or more were in close proximity and went for the grapple they tended to fight it out until they either won or disarmed the victim and fled with or without shooting/stabbing the victim.
On very rare occasion a crew was professional enough to have an overwatch who shot the defender from ambush while he was engaging the bad guys he saw, but this was always occupational violence (targeting delivery men, armored car guards, etc) and not random in the same sense a street robbery or stranger rape attempt is.
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Originally Posted by BehindBlueI's
