I recently read this article on Tom Givens’ Rangemaster Patreon feed. While I’m not a big fan of Patreon’s politics, I love how they allow me to directly support the content creators I enjoy. Rather than subscribing to a digital or print magazine and indirectly supporting lots of second tier authors who may be either inept or not sufficiently well trained to form a cogent opinion, I prefer to spend my money supporting known entities who I trust.
Many of you are supporters of this site through my own Patreon. That is now providing more monthly income for the site than all other forms of advertising and affiliate marketing commissions. My Patreon account keeps me putting out a few articles a week even when I don’t feel like writing. But in addition to being a Patreon content creator, I am also a supporter of a lot of other folks putting out quality information. I directly financially support 21 different writers (mostly in the tactical field) by sending them a bit of cash every month through Patreon. It’s becoming many content creators’ best avenue for earning money for their hard work.
Back to the article below. I saw it in Tom’s Patreon feed and thought the information should be spread more widely. I asked Tom for permission to reprint it here and he graciously agreed. Tom’s feed is a top notch source of tactical information you won’t see anywhere else. I support his Patreon account every month. If you would like to regularly read quality articles like this one, you should support the Rangemaster page. It’s a great value for the small amount of money I donate every month.
-Greg
What Happens in a Civilian Gunfight
Now we know what to train for.
The holy grail of firearms trainers and students has been to know what really happens in an armed citizen gunfight. Not in a law enforcement gunfight nor a military encounter, but in legal defensive gun uses by CCW holders. For decades we’ve bemoaned the fact that while there are excellent data sources for the distances, times, conditions, shots fired, etc. data on law enforcement and military gunfights, there is not a similar database for civilian encounters. After all, if there were such a repository we’d know what to train for and, by extension, largely how to train for it.
I am not a professional statistician, nor do I have a database of thousands of incidents. I have, however, been training people professionally for over 40 years and doing so full-time for the past 25 years. I have trained tens of thousands of students and most of them are in Memphis, which is one of the most violent metropolitan areas in the United States. To give you some idea, the violent crime rate there per capita is about double that of Chicago and over three times that of Los Angeles.
To date, I have had 68 private citizen students that I am aware of who have been involved in using a handgun in self-defense. Although that is not a huge number of data points, we see the same things occurring over and over again in these incidents. A policeman would call this a clue. I believe that this is the kind of data that we ought to be basing our civilian training on, not what works in a military battle overseas, and not what works for police officers stateside.
Differences from the military
As the global war on terror winds down, a lot of military operators are getting into the training business. The military paradigm, however, is vastly different from self-defense in America. The military typically fights with shoulder guns, with handguns relegated to a backup role. In a military operation the planners have to factor in projected losses of friendly personnel. In our world the level of acceptable friendly losses is zero.
Military operations have an acceptable level of collateral damage. We don’t. Military engagements are often offensive in nature; ours are defensive. This is not to say that military veterans, particularly special operations personnel, cannot teach you how to shoot extremely well under adverse conditions. One needs to be careful, however, not to confuse their conflict environment and rules of engagement with those of the private citizen. We also have to remember that while the citizen generally fights alone, military units fight as a team, and that experience can influence what someone teaches.
Differences from law enforcement
Except for a SWAT team, most officer involved shootings can be traced to one of three activities: traffic stops, bar enforcement, and domestic violence complaints. These situations put police officers in different situations and proximity relative to their attackers than street violence does with a CCW holder.
Cops have to get close to people to interact with, interview, restrain, and often handcuff them. Thus, police engagements tend to be very close- in affairs, a fact reflected in the now well known statistic that 75% of police fatalities occur at 10 feet or less. Citizens, by contrast, have none of these responsibilities, and their job is to move away from trouble, not close in on it.
The cop has a sworn duty to seek out, confront, and arrest a person who has broken the law, to chase him if he flees, to fight him if he resists, and to press forward in the face of armed resistance. The private citizen, on the other hand, should be doing none of these things and should disengage at the earliest opportunity.
A lot of trainers make the mistake of using data like the FBI’s law enforcement officers killed and assaulted summary as the statistical basis for their firearms training for private citizens. The above analysis, though, should cause us to question the appropriateness of using law enforcement data as the basis for training civilians. And indeed, my civilian gunfight data shows that it is not appropriate.
The armed citizen
I have had almost 70 students involved in defensive gun play. These were ordinary citizens, mostly white-collar and professionals, and only about 7% blue-collar workers. The majority of our students are in sales, management, IT work, the medical field, or other professional activity. The majority of these incidents involved an armed robbery, which I believe is probably the most likely scenario for armed self-defense by private citizen.
We’re talking about business stickups, parking lot robberies at gunpoint, car-jackings, and home invasions: all crimes that are likely to get you killed. The reason the bad guy uses a weapon is to create standoff and terrorize the victim into compliance before closing in to take the wallet, purse, car keys, etc. The thug will, however, need to be close enough to his victim to communicate his desires and to easily close the distance and take the goods when the time comes. Thus, the typical armed robbery occurs at anywhere from two or three steps, to the length of a car between
the robber and his victim; that is: at 3 to 7 yards typically. This is the distance at which most (just over 90%) of my students have had use their guns. I therefore believe we should do the bulk of our training and practice at these most likely distances.
Only two of my students’ shootings occurred at contact distance. In one of those cases the physical contact was purely accidental. In the other case physical contact was intentional but the victim missed a large number of cues before he was struck with a club. At the other end of the spectrum we have had three students who have had to engage at 15, 17, and 22 yards. The other 92% of our student involved incidents took place at a distance of 3 to 7 yards with the majority occurring between 3 and 5 yards. The rule of thumb then is that most civilian shootings occur within the length of a car.
Only about 10% of our student involved incidents occurred in or around the home, while 90% occurred in places like convenience stores, parking lots and shopping malls. The majority of the incidents began as armed robberies or car-jackings, with a few violent break-ins involved.
At this writing, the tally among the incidents I know about is 65 wins/ zero losses/ 3 forfeits. Every one of our students who was armed won his confrontation. Only three of those were injured and those three recovered. To the best of my knowledge three people have gone through training
with us and subsequently were murdered in separate street robberies– but none of the three were armed. This is why we put a great deal of emphasis in our training on the necessity of routinely carry your gun.
The author
Training implications
Based on this data, we believe the following are the key skills the private citizen should concentrate on in their training:
• Quick, safe, efficient presentation of the handgun from concealed carry
• Delivery of several well-placed shots at distances from 3 to 7 yards
• Keeping the gun running, including reloading and fixing malfunctions
• Two-handed firing. We train our students to use two hands if at all possible and most have done so in their fights.
• Bring the gun to eye level. This is the fastest way to achieve accurate gun alignment. All but two of our students brought the gun to eye level and as a result they got good hits. Two had to shoot from below eye level due to unusual circumstances, at less than arm’s length from their attacker.
• Some effort expended on the contact distance problem, including empty hand skills and weapon retention skills. However, these are secondary skills for the private citizen.
• Some effort dedicated to longer shots in the 15 to 25 yard range.
Finally, mindset.
One of the things we stress in our training is that the likelihood of your needing a gun in self-defense is not a one in 1 million chance. According to the Bureau of Justice Statistics, part of the US Justice Department, there are over 2.5 million violent crimes a year in the United States. For statistical purposes violent crime consists of murder, aggravated assault, forcible rape, and robbery.
These are the very crimes that one would carry a handgun to defend against. Also, the police will not be there when you are chosen to be the victim of one of those serious crimes. You are actually the first responder. Accepting the fact that violent crime does not only happen to other people, and making carrying your handgun part of your daily routine can go a long way toward making you and your family safer.
