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« Youtube of CCW defender | Main | NY Times acknowledges change in 2nd amendment scholarship »

Not so smooth, and very lucky

Posted by David Hardy · 4 May 2007 07:11 PM

Here's another Youtube. An undercover officer sets up a drug deal, but the other guy decides to kill him. (The attacker seems to be having trouble with the gun, another bit of good luck. Upon watching this several times, I think the attacker was stopping to cock for single-action fire after each shot, and going a very clumsy, two-handed job of it). First shot grazes the officer, he goes down. Killer aims at him on the floor, he kicks and deflects aim, another graze.

Officers in the adjoining room come thru the connecting door. In the meantime, the undercover guy gets up and rushes the shooter (I assume he's unarmed, and maybe figured that trying to get out the door would just get him shot in the back, so rushing the guy was the least-worst move). They blast the shooter, and now the undercover officer is in the line of friendly fire (which isn't), and has to leap out of the way.

It illustrates another effect--we can talk about stopping power (and I personally use .44s and .45s) but the human reaction is to go down when hit, in any degree. The undercover guy took a graze, and probably a hand cut up by muzzle blast, and the muzzle blast, and went down, even when it meant his life was now in danger and if he'd stayed up he'd have been much more likely to survive. After he went down the survival instincts kicked in, and he spotted the guy, kicked, and rose up and rushed him.

[UPDATE: The FBI has, I'm told, a training program along the lines of "just because you're hit doesn't mean you're dead." What they'd found was that the majority of people hit crumple, not because anything vital was damaged, but because that's a natural reaction to realizing a hole has been punched thru them. The problem with that in officer vs. perp is that the perp is given a chance to finish the officer off. So the gist of the training was take the hit, stay on your feet, and keep shooting back.]

3 Comments | Leave a comment

Jim W | May 5, 2007 7:33 AM | Reply

Drugs are illegal because they are dangerous.

They're dangerous because you might get shot by police for possessing them.

straightarrow | May 5, 2007 12:59 PM | Reply

I take exception to the fall down theory. I have been shot twice and didn't go down either time. One of those times shattered my left femur.

I don't think being shot does it, probably surprise and the initial jump back reflex. I haven't seen the video, but watch it again and see if that isn't what happened here. In trying to jump back he just wasn't prepared from a balance standpoint.

JKB | May 5, 2007 11:18 PM | Reply

Strangely, people tend to fall from being shot due to their Hollywood expectation that a bullet will knock you down. It is an impossibility of physics for a bullet to knock a man off his feet since firing such a bullet would knock the shooter off his feet. And yet when we are shot at, we fall. Because our minds believe that is what happens when you get shot.

See THE DEMONSTRATIVE BULLET FALLACY in this article http://www.forcesciencenews.com/home/detail.html?serial=68 ..."the 'stopping power' of a 9mm bullet at muzzle velocity is equal to a one-pound weight (e.g., a baseball) being dropped from the height of 6 feet,"... Note how the drug dealer takes 3 rounds point blank but doesn't start crumpling until he looks at the shooter.

It is quite amazing what the Hollywood training makes our minds go to in stress situations. Even without Hollywood, our natural reactions tend not to be the best for survival sometimes.

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