Self Defense: The process of shooting your target after the decision to fire is made

[JustOneGun]

Wow, great thread. Thanks SMEs for your insights. I'll summarize some of my experiences:

Home invasion burglary, no shots fired: no tunnel vision

Shot at with AKs at night by drunk soldiers in a foreign country: no tunnel vision

Knife attack: tunnel vision and temporal compression

Near-fatal SCUBA accident: tunnel vision and temporal compression.

Dog attack: tunnel vision and temporal compression

Cougar on the trail right in front of me: no tunnel vision

Sim scenarios: varies.

USPSA matches: some tunnel vision and major temporal compression.

So, for me sometimes I experince tunnel vision, and it's not always correlated with the actual danger.

One thing that many new people get confused on when discussing tunnel vision, they sometimes believe that they will just go into it during the incident and stay there. With practice of not just fixating on one object it just doesn't happen that way. The only time I had it is when I brought the front sight onto target, looked at a particular object, etc and fixated on it. After the subject was shot and fell, parachute opened, 50# rock dropped, sailor on fire was tackled and put out I no longer had tunnel vision. I just continued to look and think of, "What's next". So the tunnel vision should be occurring for a small and specific amount of time. So when in a knock down drag out fight I had no tunnel vision, etc.

[BehindBlueI's]

Shot at with AKs at night by drunk soldiers in a foreign country: no tunnel vision

The first time I was shot at in the open from a range I had the exact opposite of tunnel vision. I heard the shots and the bullets but had zero idea where it was coming from. I was trying to see so much at once that I "seeing" a lot but processing nothing, to the point I may as well have been blind. I was scanning and trying to see where it was coming from faster than I could process the input, in other words, and what I was doing was effectively nothing.

[Clusterfrack]

The first time I was shot at in the open from a range I had the exact opposite of tunnel vision. I heard the shots and the bullets but had zero idea where it was coming from. I was trying to see so much at once that I "seeing" a lot but processing nothing, to the point I may as well have been blind. I was scanning and trying to see where it was coming from faster than I could process the input, in other words, and what I was doing was effectively nothing.

Yup. Been there. I did pretty well in that encounter--after I figured out they were shooting at me. I turned out my light, and crawled laterally to their position.

[BehindBlueI's]

Yup. Been there. I did pretty well in that encounter--after I figured out they were shooting at me. I turned out my light, and crawled laterally to their position.

I got stuck in the observe/orient cycle until I realized those sounds were bullets then got to cover. Then did the scanning without seeing for a bit, and it was over before I did anything useful. They were, in fairness, way the eff off in the distance and basically trying to get lucky mortaring in AK rounds. Even if I had been able to see them, they were outside my ability to hit with iron sights.

[11B10]

This thread is destined to be one that I know I'LL return to in the future. There's no substitute for experience - and experience just oozes from the posts here. Thanks to all who have contributed.

[DNW]

A couple thoughts.

On stress, to oversimplify, a stress response happens when perceived demands exceed capacity. This is different for every individual, different between amateurs and experts, and different for a specific individual depending on the nature of the threat. This could be a new threat you have never seen before, an emotionally significant threat, a threat under extreme time compression.... Change any of the variables and the stress response changes. An event that would trigger an extreme response in one person might not even register for someone else.

Historically we have spent too much time telling people stress is bad. Stress has both performance enhancing and degrading effects, the key is understanding what can happen, and creating strategies and training to expect the response, decrease the reponse and manage the response.

Gaze patterns or what you see. As noted, your brain decides what you see. Your brain decides what information is relevant, and filters out the rest. As urgency increases the brain filters more and focuses on key pieces of information. Here there is a big difference in the gaze patterns of amateurs and experts. Amateurs don't yet know what information is vital. Experts through their experience can take in a scene and understand the critical indicators instantly and understand what will likely happen next. There is a great video in the Force Science training showing gaze patterns of rookie cops vs experienced tactical officers. The rookies eyes are all over the place because they don't yet understand the patterns of the threat. The experienced cops bounce between hands face and waistband, but constantly tracking the hands.

Here is an example of that difference in gaze patterns between amateurs and experts from sport:

https://youtu.be/2NcUkvIX6no

So, what are you going to see? It depends on a whole lot of variables. As indicated just in this thread, some people experience tunnel vision while other may experience increased visual acuity.

If it were me, I would focus on playing whatever your game is, a lot. That is how you learn the patterns, rules, threat indicators, whatever you want to call them. Plus, the more experience and skill you have with a specific type of threat/environment, the more likely you are to be on the positive side of that demands/capabilties equation, hopefully leading to less of a stress response.

[JustOneGun]

This thread dropped off with out me asking my last question. Sorry. Got busy and distracted.

One of the reason I wanted to discuss this is to ask, if we had problems seeing, can't see, etc see a gun/knife/reason for the lethal force fall/stop then how do we regulate our shooting to not overdrive the pistol. What I'm asking is how do we square the concept we're talking about during the actually time we're pulling the trigger and with DB's idea of not shooting too fast?(I know that's not quite how he said that. Those are my words.)

[BehindBlueI's]

This thread dropped off with out me asking my last question. Sorry. Got busy and distracted.

One of the reason I wanted to discuss this is to ask, if we had problems seeing, can't see, etc see a gun/knife/reason for the lethal force fall/stop then how do we regulate our shooting to not overdrive the pistol. What I'm asking is how do we square the concept we're talking about during the actually time we're pulling the trigger and with DB's idea of not shooting too fast?(I know that's not quite how he said that. Those are my words.)

Some mix of:

Training:
1) Metronome training. Few people know what a .50 second vs a .30 second cadence feels like because they've never used a timer, etc. Building a cadence makes it feel more natural, even under stress. It took me awhile to figure this out.
2) Failure drills. Not only does it give you a slight pause, it forces you to move your focus.
3) Realistic and stressful scenarios that allow repetitions of the above so your brain says "I've done this before" when it happens for real.

Hardware:
1) Longer triggers. Pretty much everyone I've seen who's kept track has reported fewer shots fired with DA revolvers than with the semi-autos that replaced them. It seems to me a reasonable hypothesis is that the amount of time spent shooting has been pretty constant, but the number of rounds one can expend in the same time has increased.

Legal/ethical:
1) The realization we cannot instantly perceive and process data nor do we instantly make decisions and implement them. Shooters (and admin, and grand juries, etc) need to be educated that there is a valid reason that "extra" shots are both legal and ethical.

I am a big believer in the failure to stop (or Mozambique) drill and translating it into a real tactic when available. Especially since my shooting, in which I fired the first two but the fight was over and I was able to realize it before firing the third, I practice it every single range outing. Originally, I thought the primary benefit was in the brief time pause, but I now think the forcing you to move focus visually and mentally is just as an important a component (or maybe more so).

[Wondering Beard]

Hardware:
1) Longer triggers. Pretty much everyone I've seen who's kept track has reported fewer shots fired with DA revolvers than with the semi-autos that replaced them. It seems to me a reasonable hypothesis is that the amount of time spent shooting has been pretty constant, but the number of rounds one can expend in the same time has increased.

I had thought, and this is from some years ago, that back in the day of the revolver the gun got emptied in fights (on average) and that when semi autos were brought in, there was indeed an increase in the amount of shots fired but that after a while (maybe a few years), the average turned out to be 8 shots. There was an argument that LEO revolver shooters, on average, would have shot more (had they more in-gun ammo) but just couldn't while "hi cap" semi auto LEO shooters, on average, didn't shoot anywhere near as much as was expected.

I think this was from an analysis of the NYPD's reports and some other cities. I never delved into the detailed statistics to verify anything, so I'm not sure if it's exactly true and, as I said, this was some years back and I can't really remember the exact source of the analysis and arguments.

[octagon]

While I don't have the stats to back it up I think the difference between number of shots fired and/or speed of shots fired is less dependent on revolver's longer trigger as it is on known capacity and speed/complexity of reloading compared to a semi auto. The easiest and likely clearest way to determine if it is trigger pull length or capacity and ease of reloading is to compare how many shots fired when revolver were used to an agency that switched to DAO semi auto with similar length trigger pull. I don't know any off the top of my head but there probably are some.

I don't think it is trigger weight related or NYPD with their heavy triggers would be an obvious source.