I have had almost 70 students involved in defensive gunplay….
Only two of my students’ shootings occurred at contact distance. In one of those cases the physical contact was purely accidental. In the other case physical contact was intentional but the victim missed a large number of cues before he was struck with a club.
At the other end of the spectrum we have had three students who have had to engage at 15, 17, and 22 yards.
The other 92% of our student involved incidents took place at a distance of 3 to 7 yards with the majority occurring between 3 and 5 yards. The rule of thumb then is that most civilian shootings occur within the length of a car.
Training implications
Based on this data, we believe the following are the key skills the private citizen should concentrate on in their training:
- Quick, safe, efficient presentation of the handgun from concealed carry
- Delivery of several well-placed shots at distances from 3 to 7 yards
- Keeping the gun running, including reloading and fixing malfunctions
- Two-handed firing. We train our students to use two hands if at all possible and most have done so in their fights.
- Bring the gun to eye level. This is the fastest way to achieve accurate gun alignment. All but two of our students brought the gun to eye level and as a result they got good hits. Two had to shoot from below eye level due to unusual circumstances, at less than arm’s length from their attacker.
- Some effort expended on the contact distance problem, including empty hand skills and weapon retention skills. However, these are secondary skills for the private citizen.
- Some effort dedicated to longer shots in the 15 to 25 yard range.
Givens, Tom: “What Happens in a Civilian Gunfight: Now we know what to train for.”
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“Only three incidents occurred at contact distance. In one of these cases, physical contact between the attacker and the defender was deliberate; in another, contact was purely accidental; in the third, there was no actual physical contact….”
“…The rest of the shootings, 93.1 percent of them, occurred between 3 yards and 7 yards with more than 80 percent occurring between 3 and 5 yards... Based on that, we do the majority of our training and practice at that 3- to 5- yard distance.”
Givens, Tom:
Concealed Carry Class: The ABCs of Self-defense Tools and Tactics. 2019, Caribou Media Group, LLC. Chapter 12, Training Priorities, pp. 85-98.