Lessons from observing 5000 gunfights

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philip964
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Re: Lessons from observing 5000 gunfights

#16

Post by philip964 »

oljames3 wrote: Wed Feb 12, 2020 3:53 pm
Paladin wrote: Wed Feb 12, 2020 3:07 pm
Caliber wrote: Thu Sep 12, 2019 1:29 pm I also watch John daily. I attended most of his classes at the NRA expo in Fort Worth too.
Curious if his list has changed any?
Yes, John Correia's list has changed. From the original post of this thread, John Daub is discussing Correia's list from 2016. I attended the ASP Survive the Fight and Church Safety tour in Lubbock in October of 2019. Correia, as of then, had watched over 20,000 videos. Here are some high points from the ASP slide deck.

1. Carry your gun

2. Most gunfights aren't entangled gunfights. Empty-handed skills are important but rare once the gun comes out. They're necessary for LE more than CCW, by a long shot. For CCW, empty-handed skills are critical for the 80% of assaults that don't rise to the level of deadly force response. So go to your martial arts training.

3. In public, the place for attacks is almost always transitional spaces. A transitional space is any location that (1) allows attackers to prey on potential victims with an element of surprise and (2) provides ready escape for the attackers.

4. Paying Attention (I.e. “situational awareness”) is the most under-utilized skill in avoiding a gunfight and responding to it effectively. Some come at you unexpectedly and unavoidably, but SO often I see people ignore pre-attack cues and lose initiative and options. Attention buys you time, time buys you options.

5. About 1/3 of the encounters of all kinds that I narrate involve multiple attackers. They tend to use numbers to overwhelm people, and tend to be cowards when their advantage evaporates. CCW encounters break fast enough that I seldom see a victim engage more than two attackers with their firearm before the rest run off. CCW holders TEND to use more shots overall against a single attacker than multiples.

6. He who puts the first shot into meaty bits on the other guy, wins. Marksmanship is the Master. Not 100%, but darn near, at least partially because of the FIBS Factor. (“FUDGE, I’ve Been Shot!”) Related to this is FIBSA (“FUDGE, I’m Being Shot At!”) though that has a lesser effect. Therefore, training a fast and reliable draw and first shot in the meaty bits is most important, in my opinion. It is THE critical skill to winning the gunfight. The best cover is fire superiority.

7. Gunfights are won and lost in tenths of seconds sometimes. Being first is foremost. I have seen people killed because they carried their gun with an empty chamber and didn’t have time to chamber a round and be first on target. I have seen people lose the element of surprise in a counterambush
because of the sound of chambering a round. In a real gunfight the gun has to be ready NOW.

8. We owe a great deal of gratitude to those in the LE community for their knowledge of pistol use; that said, we must recognize that CCW gunfights and LE gunfights start differently and end differently. The difference in mission MUST be understood to contextualize Tactics, Techniques, and Procedures to the appropriate place.

9. From what I have seen, most CCW gunfights happen between 3 and 7 yards for the actual shooting. Tom Givens has it right here by estimating it at a car length. That said, shots at 15 to even 20 yards ARE possible in CCW incidents, especially in stopping active killers, and so that skill isn’t insignificant once the 3-7 yard skill is fast and reliable.

10. Follow-up shots are very often necessary regardless of handgun caliber. Terminal ballistics in all handgun calibers are pretty much the same. Often gunfights don’t END with that first shot, so keep at him until he decides he is done fighting. This is where multiple target acquisition is important, because it simulates a moving target to hit.

11. MOST of what is taught in the martial arts/combatives community on gun disarms is hokum. I do see a good number of disarms of attackers, but seldom with any kind of sophistication or “that was a perfect [insert your favorite martial art here] disarm.”

12. People have a crazy tendency to use the gun one-handed, mostly because they have stuff in their support hand. I’ve never seen an injured support hand lead to one-handed shooting. I have seen ONE on-duty cop need to switch the gun to support hand only shooting because of an injured main arm.
Learning to drop what's in your hands and get two hands on the gun is a necessary skill for fast and accurate shooting.

13. You simply WILL NOT stand still while someone wants to kill you in your close proximity. Unless you're counterambushing, when the gun comes out you will move. So learning to move with purpose to put ourselves in the position to shoot well is also a critical skill. Inside of 5 yards, people move.

14. Concealment ain't cover, but it works identically in 99.9% of cases. People won't shoot what they can't see, so if you can get to concealment, you’re
good. Learn to shoot through it if your threat is behind it.

15. Chasing deadly threats is another bad habit that I see all the time. Learn to shoot and then scoot. Move AWAY from the threat. In followup action I see a lot of people put themselves back into danger by chasing threats.

16. People love cover so much they give it a hug. Reliably. Like all the time. LEO and CCW alike. Learning distance from cover/concealment is an important skill and one that is necessary.

17. Malfunctions happen. They just do. But if you’re carrying a quality gun, they're rare. In all my videos I have never seen someone clear a malfunction that needed a tap to the baseplate to get the gun back working again… cycle the slide and reassess is necessary though. In a couple of instances, a strip, cycle, reload would have helped.

18. Combat reloads are almost vanishingly insignificant factors in CCW gunfights. I have seen precisely 3 reloads in a real gunfight that weren't on-duty LEO. And none of those affected the outcome of the fight. I have seen about 7 or 8 where a higher capacity firearm or the presence of a reload might have affected the outcome. So, 0.2% of what I have witnessed. I like Tom Givens' focus on the PROACTIVE reload once the fight is over. That has value in my opinion. If you carry a reload and don’t have your trauma medical equipment on you, I would recommend changing that.

19. Knife attacks are brutal, fast, mean, and personal. If you get to see the knife, then refer to the Tueller Principle for getting your gun in the fight.
If you don’t see it until he has a leveraging arm on you, your gun is useless until you have positional dominance and have secured that knife one way or
the other. Thinking you’re going to bring a gun to a knife fight is a good way to die of blood loss.

20. I have seen one home invasion situation where a pistol-mounted light would have been useful for a homeowner, but have never seen one outside the home where a WML would have been a factor for a non-LEO. HUGE CAVEAT HERE: that could easily be because video recording technology for very low light situations is rare (though getting more common and affordable). My gut tells me that if it’s too dark for you to see a threat outside the home, it’s too dark for them to see you as well and so attacks are very rare.

21. There are some things that the defensive training community has great love for that I have never seen in a CCW gunfight recorded on video in any capacity.
(a) a defensive knife used to get to a gun or in any capacity by someone carrying a gun;
(b) a gunfight that required one-handed manipulation of the pistol controls other than the trigger;
(c) a transition in a CCW gunfight from strong hand to support hand and subsequent use of the gun (ONE LE video);
(d) TWICE a gun dropped and then recovered and used in the gunfight;
(e) a CCW use a firearm muzzle strike in any capacity;
(f) a backup gun (BUG) used in any CCW capacity whatsoever, and only once ever for LEO on camera

22. If there’s one lesson that I have learned again…and again…and again from moderating comments on social media from people watching my lessons, it’s the sheer number of people who are woefully, terribly misinformed and uninformed about the legal and moral aspects of using deadly force. Remember, the District Attorney won’t care what you thought the law was; neither will the jury. And you’ll pay your attorney $400+ an hour to sell your story, so make sure they can tell the jury that you acted in an objectively responsible and legal fashion.
thanks for posting.

mrvmax
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Re: Lessons from observing 5000 gunfights

#17

Post by mrvmax »

oljames3 wrote: Wed Feb 12, 2020 3:53 pm
Paladin wrote: Wed Feb 12, 2020 3:07 pm
Caliber wrote: Thu Sep 12, 2019 1:29 pm I also watch John daily. I attended most of his classes at the NRA expo in Fort Worth too.
Curious if his list has changed any?
Yes, John Correia's list has changed. From the original post of this thread, John Daub is discussing Correia's list from 2016. I attended the ASP Survive the Fight and Church Safety tour in Lubbock in October of 2019. Correia, as of then, had watched over 20,000 videos. Here are some high points from the ASP slide deck.

1. Carry your gun

2. Most gunfights aren't entangled gunfights. Empty-handed skills are important but rare once the gun comes out. They're necessary for LE more than CCW, by a long shot. For CCW, empty-handed skills are critical for the 80% of assaults that don't rise to the level of deadly force response. So go to your martial arts training.

3. In public, the place for attacks is almost always transitional spaces. A transitional space is any location that (1) allows attackers to prey on potential victims with an element of surprise and (2) provides ready escape for the attackers.

4. Paying Attention (I.e. “situational awareness”) is the most under-utilized skill in avoiding a gunfight and responding to it effectively. Some come at you unexpectedly and unavoidably, but SO often I see people ignore pre-attack cues and lose initiative and options. Attention buys you time, time buys you options.

5. About 1/3 of the encounters of all kinds that I narrate involve multiple attackers. They tend to use numbers to overwhelm people, and tend to be cowards when their advantage evaporates. CCW encounters break fast enough that I seldom see a victim engage more than two attackers with their firearm before the rest run off. CCW holders TEND to use more shots overall against a single attacker than multiples.

6. He who puts the first shot into meaty bits on the other guy, wins. Marksmanship is the Master. Not 100%, but darn near, at least partially because of the FIBS Factor. (“FUDGE, I’ve Been Shot!”) Related to this is FIBSA (“FUDGE, I’m Being Shot At!”) though that has a lesser effect. Therefore, training a fast and reliable draw and first shot in the meaty bits is most important, in my opinion. It is THE critical skill to winning the gunfight. The best cover is fire superiority.

7. Gunfights are won and lost in tenths of seconds sometimes. Being first is foremost. I have seen people killed because they carried their gun with an empty chamber and didn’t have time to chamber a round and be first on target. I have seen people lose the element of surprise in a counterambush
because of the sound of chambering a round. In a real gunfight the gun has to be ready NOW.

8. We owe a great deal of gratitude to those in the LE community for their knowledge of pistol use; that said, we must recognize that CCW gunfights and LE gunfights start differently and end differently. The difference in mission MUST be understood to contextualize Tactics, Techniques, and Procedures to the appropriate place.

9. From what I have seen, most CCW gunfights happen between 3 and 7 yards for the actual shooting. Tom Givens has it right here by estimating it at a car length. That said, shots at 15 to even 20 yards ARE possible in CCW incidents, especially in stopping active killers, and so that skill isn’t insignificant once the 3-7 yard skill is fast and reliable.

10. Follow-up shots are very often necessary regardless of handgun caliber. Terminal ballistics in all handgun calibers are pretty much the same. Often gunfights don’t END with that first shot, so keep at him until he decides he is done fighting. This is where multiple target acquisition is important, because it simulates a moving target to hit.

11. MOST of what is taught in the martial arts/combatives community on gun disarms is hokum. I do see a good number of disarms of attackers, but seldom with any kind of sophistication or “that was a perfect [insert your favorite martial art here] disarm.”

12. People have a crazy tendency to use the gun one-handed, mostly because they have stuff in their support hand. I’ve never seen an injured support hand lead to one-handed shooting. I have seen ONE on-duty cop need to switch the gun to support hand only shooting because of an injured main arm.
Learning to drop what's in your hands and get two hands on the gun is a necessary skill for fast and accurate shooting.

13. You simply WILL NOT stand still while someone wants to kill you in your close proximity. Unless you're counterambushing, when the gun comes out you will move. So learning to move with purpose to put ourselves in the position to shoot well is also a critical skill. Inside of 5 yards, people move.

14. Concealment ain't cover, but it works identically in 99.9% of cases. People won't shoot what they can't see, so if you can get to concealment, you’re
good. Learn to shoot through it if your threat is behind it.

15. Chasing deadly threats is another bad habit that I see all the time. Learn to shoot and then scoot. Move AWAY from the threat. In followup action I see a lot of people put themselves back into danger by chasing threats.

16. People love cover so much they give it a hug. Reliably. Like all the time. LEO and CCW alike. Learning distance from cover/concealment is an important skill and one that is necessary.

17. Malfunctions happen. They just do. But if you’re carrying a quality gun, they're rare. In all my videos I have never seen someone clear a malfunction that needed a tap to the baseplate to get the gun back working again… cycle the slide and reassess is necessary though. In a couple of instances, a strip, cycle, reload would have helped.

18. Combat reloads are almost vanishingly insignificant factors in CCW gunfights. I have seen precisely 3 reloads in a real gunfight that weren't on-duty LEO. And none of those affected the outcome of the fight. I have seen about 7 or 8 where a higher capacity firearm or the presence of a reload might have affected the outcome. So, 0.2% of what I have witnessed. I like Tom Givens' focus on the PROACTIVE reload once the fight is over. That has value in my opinion. If you carry a reload and don’t have your trauma medical equipment on you, I would recommend changing that.

19. Knife attacks are brutal, fast, mean, and personal. If you get to see the knife, then refer to the Tueller Principle for getting your gun in the fight.
If you don’t see it until he has a leveraging arm on you, your gun is useless until you have positional dominance and have secured that knife one way or
the other. Thinking you’re going to bring a gun to a knife fight is a good way to die of blood loss.

20. I have seen one home invasion situation where a pistol-mounted light would have been useful for a homeowner, but have never seen one outside the home where a WML would have been a factor for a non-LEO. HUGE CAVEAT HERE: that could easily be because video recording technology for very low light situations is rare (though getting more common and affordable). My gut tells me that if it’s too dark for you to see a threat outside the home, it’s too dark for them to see you as well and so attacks are very rare.

21. There are some things that the defensive training community has great love for that I have never seen in a CCW gunfight recorded on video in any capacity.
(a) a defensive knife used to get to a gun or in any capacity by someone carrying a gun;
(b) a gunfight that required one-handed manipulation of the pistol controls other than the trigger;
(c) a transition in a CCW gunfight from strong hand to support hand and subsequent use of the gun (ONE LE video);
(d) TWICE a gun dropped and then recovered and used in the gunfight;
(e) a CCW use a firearm muzzle strike in any capacity;
(f) a backup gun (BUG) used in any CCW capacity whatsoever, and only once ever for LEO on camera

22. If there’s one lesson that I have learned again…and again…and again from moderating comments on social media from people watching my lessons, it’s the sheer number of people who are woefully, terribly misinformed and uninformed about the legal and moral aspects of using deadly force. Remember, the District Attorney won’t care what you thought the law was; neither will the jury. And you’ll pay your attorney $400+ an hour to sell your story, so make sure they can tell the jury that you acted in an objectively responsible and legal fashion.
So for 17, 18, 20 & 21 is he insinuating those are not necessary? It kind of seems like it the way he states it. Some training scenarios are far fetched but just because he hasn’t seen them in videos doesn’t make all of them unnecessary. The majority of people will never be in an armed encounter but it doesn’t mean we shouldn’t train for it. I’m not saying I practice all those because I don’t but just trying to follow his logic from his statements.
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PriestTheRunner
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Re: Lessons from observing 5000 gunfights

#18

Post by PriestTheRunner »

mrvmax wrote: Thu Feb 13, 2020 9:08 pm So for 17, 18, 20 & 21 is he insinuating those are not necessary? It kind of seems like it the way he states it. Some training scenarios are far fetched but just because he hasn’t seen them in videos doesn’t make all of them unnecessary. The majority of people will never be in an armed encounter but it doesn’t mean we shouldn’t train for it. I’m not saying I practice all those because I don’t but just trying to follow his logic from his statements.
The way I see it, it is the same as training or hardening against an active shooter. The likelyhood is very small but the consequences are very VERY high. Similarly, the likelyhood of a FTF or FTE are very low in a firefight, but the consequences are VERY high. As such, they should be trained for but in reality they are not likely to happen.

Same thing for knives, BUGs or one handed manipulations. There is a pretty good quote that can't be fully repeated on here, but: "If you get in a knife fight, every single [freakin] thing you did that day was [freakin] wrong since you woke up in the morning." This was stated to a group of Marines. If it gets to that point, the whole situation is so messed up'd that you need to just finish it and win. Same thing for one-handed gunfighting or manipulations. If you did everything right, the situation should never get there.
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Paladin
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Re: Lessons from observing 5000 gunfights

#19

Post by Paladin »

mrvmax wrote: Thu Feb 13, 2020 9:08 pm So for 17, 18, 20 & 21 is he insinuating those are not necessary? It kind of seems like it the way he states it. Some training scenarios are far fetched but just because he hasn’t seen them in videos doesn’t make all of them unnecessary. The majority of people will never be in an armed encounter but it doesn’t mean we shouldn’t train for it. I’m not saying I practice all those because I don’t but just trying to follow his logic from his statements.
I think he is trying to point out what are "primary" things we need to think about and train on and what is not.

That said, #17 "loose magazine" happens. Sometimes the mag doesn't get properly seated... sometimes the mag release button gets accidentally hit. Happens in competition... and on the street. I will continue to practice tapping the baseplate.

#18 says to me that we shouldn't spend an in-ordinate amount of time practicing reloads. Lots of schools/drills/competitions practice reloads, but focusing on primary skills like drawing from concealment are more important and should be a focus of training. This is one area where many competitions often go wrong. Competitions often have one draw and shoot up to 20 rounds with a reload on five+ targets... so draw speed is not as big of a factor in competitions as it is in real life.

#21a: Any life and death fight that goes to the ground is a time when having a fixed blade defensive knife is crucial. I think John's focus on martial arts underestimates this.

#22f: While John may not have a lot of videos where backup guns were actually used... there that does not mean backup guns would not be useful in a wide range of circumstances and there are not people on video who died for want of a backup gun.

Living in the information age it can be easy to get distracted with stuff we are not likely to ever need for self defense. All and all John provides us an excellent list of things to focus our efforts on: carrying our gun, situational awareness, practicing to draw from concealment, moving, getting fast and accurate hits at ranges of 3-to-7 yards, being able to properly handle non-shooting situations, and knowing how to handle the legal and moral aspects of using deadly force. I would add gun safety and keeping your weapon secure to the list.
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mrvmax
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Re: Lessons from observing 5000 gunfights

#20

Post by mrvmax »

Paladin wrote: Fri Feb 14, 2020 9:30 am
mrvmax wrote: Thu Feb 13, 2020 9:08 pm So for 17, 18, 20 & 21 is he insinuating those are not necessary? It kind of seems like it the way he states it. Some training scenarios are far fetched but just because he hasn’t seen them in videos doesn’t make all of them unnecessary. The majority of people will never be in an armed encounter but it doesn’t mean we shouldn’t train for it. I’m not saying I practice all those because I don’t but just trying to follow his logic from his statements.
I think he is trying to point out what are "primary" things we need to think about and train on and what is not.

That said, #17 "loose magazine" happens. Sometimes the mag doesn't get properly seated... sometimes the mag release button gets accidentally hit. Happens in competition... and on the street. I will continue to practice tapping the baseplate.

#18 says to me that we shouldn't spend an in-ordinate amount of time practicing reloads. Lots of schools/drills/competitions practice reloads, but focusing on primary skills like drawing from concealment are more important and should be a focus of training. This is one area where many competitions often go wrong. Competitions often have one draw and shoot up to 20 rounds with a reload on five+ targets... so draw speed is not as big of a factor in competitions as it is in real life.

#21a: Any life and death fight that goes to the ground is a time when having a fixed blade defensive knife is crucial. I think John's focus on martial arts underestimates this.

#22f: While John may not have a lot of videos where backup guns were actually used... there that does not mean backup guns would not be useful in a wide range of circumstances and there are not people on video who died for want of a backup gun.

Living in the information age it can be easy to get distracted with stuff we are not likely to ever need for self defense. All and all John provides us an excellent list of things to focus our efforts on: carrying our gun, situational awareness, practicing to draw from concealment, moving, getting fast and accurate hits at ranges of 3-to-7 yards, being able to properly handle non-shooting situations, and knowing how to handle the legal and moral aspects of using deadly force. I would add gun safety and keeping your weapon secure to the list.
Good points, thanks
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Re: Lessons from observing 5000 gunfights

#21

Post by oljames3 »

Guys ... chill. Correia is simply stating what he has seen. You make your own judgement as to how this evidence does or does not apply to you.
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Re: Lessons from observing 5000 gunfights

#22

Post by Caliber »

I took a 2-day knife class with Steve Tarani. Some info was very interesting and very scary. Interestingly, he showed us the eight stab spots that are kill spots and the heart was not one of them. If you're interested in karambit training, Steve will be teaching a class in Fort Worth in September.

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Re: Lessons from observing 5000 gunfights

#23

Post by mrvmax »

oljames3 wrote: Fri Feb 14, 2020 1:20 pm Guys ... chill. Correia is simply stating what he has seen. You make your own judgement as to how this evidence does or does not apply to you.
If he was just stating what he had seen it wouldn’t be called “lessons learned” and there would not be 22 statements of his on the videos. I could be reading it wrong but the way it’s presented it appears he is making conclusions from all the twenty thousand videos he’s watched.
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Re: Lessons from observing 5000 gunfights

#24

Post by Paladin »

From John's original statement:
I’ve watched about 5,000 gunfights at this point, and the patterns that emerge are pretty clear. Some thoughts you might want to consider that I don’t think that the training community really wants to hear...Just some random thoughts…I hope we have met your jimmy rustling needs for today.
John knows he's stirring the pot with his "lessons". I very much appreciate his summary, but we do have to recognize that not everything important happens on video.

After all it was said long ago:

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