REAL LIFE ONE SHOT STOP
To keep up to date, I try to visit all of the local gun shops on a fairly regular basis. One of these shops recently celebrated its 30th Anniversary. I've known the founding owner for most of those 30 years. Roughly a decade or so ago, he brought a co-owner into the business. Both of these men are interesting. The founding owner has, primarily, a military background. The current co-owner has, primarily, a law enforcement background. These are good guys and I like both of them. Respect them. Consider them to be my pals. To Johanna, my German Shorthaired Pointer partner, this is one of her favorite stops. A place where she gets lots of attention.
To make what could be a longer story shorter, after closing up for the night, my co-owner pal got a call at home. Someone was breaking into his store. The silent alarm was going. It was just past 4 AM. He grabbed his strap on gun pouch and within minutes drove to the store. His feet, on this cold early spring morning, still in slippers. As he approached the rear of the store, he found himself staring into the muzzle of a handgun. He recognized the gun. It was from the store. A revolver. One of several that they kept out of sight and loaded. It was now cocked and 4 feet from his face. Three pounds of trigger pull and that gun was going to go off. Instinct and training took over. My pal had his 40 S&W in his hand. To quote him: "I shot to keep him from shooting me." His 155 grain Federal Hydra Shok JHP bullet hit what was later determined to be the look out man in the shoulder. "He went down like a bag of cement, if I'd tried to double tap him I would have missed the second shot because he went down so fast." Again, to quote: "I wasn't shooting for center mass, I was just shooting at his gun, the biggest thing I could see, trying to stop him from shooting at me."
Next step, call 911. And, be sure to make it easy for the first arriving law enforcement officers to know who is who. This is no time for mistakes. Law enforcement, before they arrive, only know one thing for sure: There has been a shooting. Some sorting out is to be expected. Only fools take chances when guns are involved.
Turns out there were two accomplices who had been in the store. They were now in the wind, but not before bringing out a backpack full of handguns and delivering the loaded one to their look out man. Within just a few hours both had been located and arrested by our local swat team. The look out man turned out to be a talker. His story, told while he was being treated in the hospital for a through and through shoulder wound, the bullet was later found behind the store, matched the one told by my pal.
The look out man who got shot was 18. His two accomplices were 14 and 15. They were not after money. They were after handguns. Quick police work kept those guns off the streets.
I don't know what my pals 40 S&W does with 155 grain Federal Hydra Shok JHP, but, in my Kahr K40, with 3 1/2 inch barrel, I get 1115 fps and 428 fpe. This particular load and bullet has, according to the Evan Marshall data, a rating of 93 percent for one shot stops with a torso hit. That means that the person being shot will, according to the statistics, be stopped, 93 out of 100 times. Stopped means that the person shot has been either incapacitated or killed and, as a result, no longer poses a threat.
My pal trained as a law enforcement officer. This wasn't the first time he had faced a threat. Did he shoot for center mass? No. What did he shoot for? What looked biggest and was threatening him. Did he double tap? No. What did he do? Shot and assessed. Difference between training and real life. This is why each and every one of us has to think situations like this through before we get into them.
Shooting another human being, for most of us, requires more mental preparation than it does physical preparation. If you can't or won't think your own potential self defense situations through, then, maybe, you should not be carrying a gun, period. For if you wind up facing someone who has thought things through, they just might take your gun away from you and hurt you, as well as others, with it.
Think about this scenario:
1) What if the two accomplices had not run?
2) What if they had stayed and started shooting?
In a situation like this, should you choose to use a handgun, as he did, up until the shooting incident, all of the silent alarms had been false alarms, you need a real stopper loaded with appropriate to the task cartridges and bullets. You also need to give some thought to your shot allocation. Some call this shooting and assessing or shooting and evaluating before moving on to your next threat target, as opposed to fixating on one threat target and banging away until you hear a click.
Sometimes, with multiple threats facing you all at once, which, today, according to the FBI, is statistically most likely to occur, practicing your shot allocation and reloading skills can be critically important. If you have trouble reloading quickly, you might want to consider carrying a back up handgun. Going to your back up handgun, depending on where and how you carry it, can be faster than reloading your primary carry handgun.
So, how does one go about practicing their shot allocation skills? Set up a series of targets. Practice shooting at them from a variety of ranges and body positions. As you do this, call your shots. Then, check your targets. The goal is to develop a feel or comfort level or confidence level, whatever you want to call it, for where your bullets are going. Think of it this way: If you just put your bullet into the 10 ring, or the eye cavity of an attacker, why fire a second shot? This is a good time, instead, to check for a second or third or more threat that you may also need to deal with. Options and choices. Life is full of 'em. Some shooter's, become very adept at this shooting and assessing process. Others never master it. This is one of those skill level things where we are not all created equal.
Making informed choices, in accordance with your particular skill level is a critical part of self defense. And, one message, that came through loud and clear, to me, from this situation, just described, is: No matter how many false alarms you may have to deal with, the next one just might kill you. So, prepare as is your life depended on it.
CJ
PS - If you are wondering: Why respond to an alarm at all, let the cops do it. Where I live, law enforcement will respond but only so many times for free, after that you get charged and the charge is enough to make most business owners want to avoid that additional expense. Again: Life is full of choices.
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REAL LIFE ONE SHOT STOP
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