Back in February I started a thread called “Failure to Stop, Head or Pelvic Shot, whats a guy/gal to do?” https://www.m4carbine.net/showthread.php?t=47447.
In this thread we discussed the pro’s and con’s of either a Stop Failure drill using Head or Pelvic Shots. Head Shots pretty much won the day in this debate and I am not looking to start the debate again but to share my experience since we discussed this topic.
I have just finished my companies first training session of the year. My goal was to transition my personnel from a Stop Failure Drill using the pelvis to one using the head. Basically the drill used was your classic Stop Failure drill - 2 rounds to an 8 inch circle in the chest and one round to a 3x5 rectangle located in the head area. Since this was our first go at it I started them a three and five yards working towards a completion time of 3 to 4 seconds. The circle and rectangle were located on a standard IALEFI target which is basically a modified FBI Q target. As predicted the weaker students had troubles while my more accurate students had no problem. Everyone was eventually able to complete the drill so I was pretty happy with the results for our first attempt. Of course as with most drills we are talking a stationary target not shooting back at the student.
The problem cropped up when I changed the head target to a persons picture with a 3x5 outline around the eyes. I did this so my students will understand/visualize the proper position of the 3x5 target area, not the forehead not the jaw but centered on the eye/bridge of the nose area. Now some of my accurate students couldn’t hit the target area to save their lives while some of the weaker students had no problems.
I have seen this problem before when I started using the IALEFI targets that had the scoring area imposed on an actual picture of a human threat target. Law Enforcement Targets has 4 versions - 2 white males, a white female and a minority male. One of my female students when she first shot the Q course using these picture targets cried through the entire course of fire. I told her she was one tough lady since she still qualified even though she cried the entire time. I had a minority student who refused to shoot the minority target, he had no problems shooting the white person targets. It seems when you humanize the target us civilized folks have a emotional problem effectively shooting it. I have read one study that theorized that this is one of the reasons police miss so often in gun fights. They are not prepared to actually shoot a human being no matter how many times or effectively they have shot your typical police silhouette target. After all they got into Law Enforcement to Serve & Protect - they value life and now they are fighting against folks who could give a s**t about someone else’s life. That is one of the reasons I started using the picture targets and we had seemed to work thru the barrier.
Now it crops up all over again. I think my students over came their aversion by concentrating on the chest area and not giving the target a face and thus humanity. Now they are faced with looking the target in the eyes and taking the shot thus humanizing the target all over again.
How many of us just shoot the FBI Q, Trans Tar, B-27, IALEFI or other nondescript targets. It seems to me that there is real survival training value in switching away from our traditional PC (face it the Trans Tar were originally made blue and green or the FBI Q, so as not to offend) blank silhouette qualification targets and using picture targets to help our students get over their qualms about shooting people. As instructors we are not in the business of being non offensive, we are in the business of teaching our students to survive the most horrific traumatic event of their life. I do not discriminate, we shoot all races and sexes. Political Correctness be dammed.
PS: Heck it’s not politically correct to shoot anyone anyway even in self defense.
This statement does not register in my brain. And recognizing gives it validity.
I have tried to process it from several perspectives and just can not accept it as reasonable let alone believable.
Its the theory process of a willing victim.
Its the mantra of failure.
It’s the credo of weakness.
No offense is meant but I’m sorry; it flies in the face of everything I believe and it certainly runs counter to the message Col. (Ret.) Jeff Cooper posits in “Principles of Personal Defense.”
The psychology of a gunfight (or any other fight for that matter) cannot have exceptions…like “politically correct”.
You train to win.
You do what you gotta do.
You make no apologies for surviving.
You explain it through your lawyer later.
That’s just my take and may not reflect the general populations.
Those who believe in PC don’t believe there is a need for self defense. Turn the other cheek so to speak. Since I teach self defense I therefore do not believe in their PC Views.
My point was that in trying to be PC with our targets we may very well have helped undermine our students ability to survive a gun fight.
Unfortunately many of the things that we have done in Law Enforcement training over the last 3 decades has been to serve Political Correctness trying to lessen discrimination lawsuits.
Historically in this field when we lose a lawsuit rather than finding the proper solution we swing directly and as far the other direction, when the proper solution may have been somewhere in the middle.
I have been using pictures of Jihadi dirt suckers for a while.
I have a set of targets I made up that has the “brain box” lightly outlined so you can see your hits.
It is quite an eye opener when you go from shooting 3"x5" cards to a face. Different features, different “terrain refrences”, aim points etc… Also when you are engaging heads from non head on.
If you put old shirts on IDPA targets it changes up the shoot alot. No more clearly defined aiming point.
“This statement does not register in my brain.” Truer words were never typed.
If one thinks that the OP’s statement about what is or is not politically correct spawned from anything but sarcasm, that person has one of two issues.
The Situational Awareness of a ripe summer squash.
OR
The literacy level of a ripe summer squash.
I don’t know which it is you don’t have, so perhaps focus on the topic of focus of the OP, and not the peripheral messages attached to it? Instead of sharpshooting him by evangelizing to the choir?
Actually I gave thought to my post after doing it and want to apologize for it.
I know your statement was tongue in cheek. The resulting post by me was made on the heels of a meeting at a local gun club where they have decided that human targets and or “bottle” shaped targets are no longer allowed because they suggest a person is training to kill. And as a sportsman’s club it is in conflict with the clubs purpose.
So… My bad on that and I hope no offense was taken.
Here we are mandated to use the IALEFI-Q target for quals, so I found a version of that target that has a man with a gun picture superimposed over the qual target, thus every time my officers responded during the qual it was to a man with a gun turning on them.
I also found different targets of men and women with guns (weirdly enough many of our female officers found this funny and would grab a female target from the target stack when refacing targets during in-service training), hostage targets, etc.
We also do quite a bit of FoF as well.
In my experience shooting fake bad guys with real guns, and real (pretend) bad guys with fake guns, does a great job of getting officers ready for a deadly force encounter.
I grew up in Hunterdon County. Now reside in Roebling which sits between Bordentown and Burlington about 10 miles south of Trenton. I work out of Trenton.
You can always use a generic target set like the one below. Unless your trainees are bald headed, jug eared, broken nosed mouth breathers, they shouldn’t be too offended.
You can later transition them to photorealistic targets.
Over the last two years and running hundreds of scenarios with airsofts I have not had one person report that they were able to target/aim for the head during a scenario. We also seldom have anyone hit in the head. Maybe 1 in every class or so. And the majority of the confrontations shots are exchanged at well under 10 yards. What we do have is incredible amount of people shot in the groin. To the point where some alumni choose to wear a cup.
Kind of makes sense because unlike the head and legs the pelvic girdle does no move independently. During the draw, your pistol is going to travel past their pelvic girdle so why not engage it.
Knowing at what short distances shootings occur I have to wonder where you are getting the time to check out your handy work on COM and decide that you need to shoot for the head. I mean after all you are probably not facing a slow moving Zombie. Another thing to consider is that counting on hitting the head in response to COM not working is like trying to move across four lanes of traffic to your last exit. You miss it and you are screwed. I would rather get over and try to take the first exit (pelvic girdle).
What will be the bodies reaction to a ballistic ball tap? Most likely the head will come forward exposing the top of the head, subclavian arteries, and eventually the spine the further they bend over. Their head becomes COM. And in a situation that has gone from bad to worse and we are trying to shoot at the smallest part of the human body where exactly are those round going that miss?
Is the “pro way” has been two to the chest and one to the head for all these years where is the supporting documentation that it really happens that way.
That people report during a shooting people make a conscious decision to target the head.
It results in the attacker bursting into flames as advertised on the box.
Until I found out how seldom some of our long held wisdom gained on paper targets was to reproduce during force on force scenarios I held onto it as well. I feel some who stick with the same old dogma may suffer the same fate as the dinosaurs.- George
At the recent TigerSwan pistol class I attended, Kyle Defoor specifically mentioned pelvic shots as a good way to go for a variety of reasons. He then proceeded to give real world examples of when he shot BG’s in the pelvic girdle on purpose. It’s a larger target area that makes shooting a moving target easier. With a good shot the BG drops quickly so he can then receive a significant lead infusion. Kyle was definitely in favor of them.
I think it is kind of logical. The more I research and study the more I believe in it. I am just trying to find stories about any defensive shooting in the US where the good guy transitioned to the head after COM shots failed?
Last year I was in Indianapolis doing a Combative Pistol course and I had a SWAT Copper in the class. During my balloon drills (popping ballons on targets) he would two to the chest one to the head every time and pop the balloon. He was never able to get even one head shot during scenarios.
Something else interesting about he balloons is that we expect them to pop when we hit them, well we expect to hit them. And when students don’t hit them they often stop moving and task fixate until that damn balloon pops. I find it hard to believe that many would respond differently if they are putting rounds into the chest of a bad guy and he is not dropping/bursting into flames.
This is like shooting one of those foam deer for bow hunting and thinking that it is exactly how it will be to shoot a real deer.- George
My wife shot you in the face. on purpose, and in close.
It can happen, and does. Ive seen it FoF with airsoft, and with Sims too.
I have always belived though that the drill is more to teach the student to be able to move to a secondary target and go to precision and maintain control.
I have shot targets, people in simulaion, and people in gunfights in the face.
People have an incredible ability to do exactly what is mandated in training under stress, after stress innoculation has been successful.
If your students are incaipable of achieving headshots in simulation or in a fight, I would take a hard look at what the training program is training them to actually do.
“If your students are incaipable of achieving headshots in simulation or in a fight, I would take a hard look at what the training program is training them to actually do.”
ABSOLUTELY!!!
Wow…things must be different out here on the West Coast, as there have been quite a few LE OIS incidents where the head was initially or rapidly became the primary target. Likewise, when using FX/FOF training rounds, folks here are frequently getting big blue or pink splats obscuring the front of their clear goggle lenses. Might want to chat with Scott Reitz or DB, or Don Lazzarini about this, as I know they have seen a fair number of these shots. In fact, I seem to recall a SWAT officer at Lazzarini’s agency using a 1911 to place several shots into the face and neck of a bad guy who was using a child hostage as a shield…
on purpose, and in close.