Gun Fight Statistics.

[Music] [Music] hi today we're talking about statistics specifically those on citizen involved shootings and especially the two big questions how many shots does someone fire on average and at what distance well that subject comes with a laundry list of caveats first being that all I'm gonna do today is talk and I do not like to lecture secondly you're gonna have to put up with my Shatner esque pauses and my very annoying habit of tripping over words and transposing syllables third everything I'm going to tell you is based on my education my knowledge my training my experience different people have different training and experiences so they have different conclusions and opinions and finally in doing the research for this I had to look at quite a few source materials and source materials do not always agree with each other so with all that's having been said let's get to it in talking about how many shots someone shoots in the citizen involved shooting the first thing I'm going to do is spend most of my time talking about police shootings hopefully that'll make sense in a few minutes and there's a whole bunch of studies out there that attempt to answer the question of what is the average number of shots that police officer fires but you gotta really look at those studies some of them aren't as definitive as we might want to think there was one study attempting to answer that question but inadvertently included negligent discharges they also inadvertently included cases where police officers had used their issue firearm to commit suicide which I guess technically that's a police shooting but it's hardly what we're talking about so the study was fundamentally flawed there's another study that failed to take into account anytime a police officer discharged his firearm but failed to hit anyone for example there's a case where answering the call of an armed robbery the police officer shows up at 7-eleven just as a suspects coming out the door they exchanged gunfire the police officer shoots eight rounds misses suspect escapes shootings like that didn't even make their list the study is again fundamentally flawed so are there any good studies there was one done by and about the NYPD that a lot of people like to quote I have not really had the chance to look at the fine print of it but it's supposed to be a compilation of data collected over a period of over a century and it's something that a lot of people consider a definitive study and the conclusion they came to was that back in the revolver days the mean number of shots someone fired was three point five nine and after pretty much everybody transition to autoloaders that number went up to about eight okay that sounds great a couple of problems on our it's specifically about the NYPD and the average that uses a mean so you get partial numbers you can't shoot 0.59 rounds and that'll come up again in a couple of minutes there was also a study done quite a while ago by the FBI and the FBI study came on the heels of a very well-known police shooting called the Newhall shooting or the Newhall incident well the Newhall incident took place in 1971 and yes that was a long time ago but it's still relevant I'm of the opinion that if you are somebody who considers yourself to have a level of expertise in the area of firearms usage as it pertains to self-defense concealed carry home defense or law enforcement you must study the Newhall shooting I'm of the opinion it is still very relevant but anyway the very short version of this and I could go on for a couple of hours just about the Newhall shooting but the very short version is several calls were made into the police reporting that two people had been driving around in a car shooting road signs brandishing their guns threatening people and things like that so the police get out there find the suspects pull them over now remember back in those days it was very common that you had two police officers in so the full suspects over the two police officers get out of their car the two suspects get out of there isn't a shooting ensues while that's going on another patrol car with two police officers in it pulls up they get out and they join the fray the gun battle lasted one or two minutes and at the end of it the two suspects escaped and all four police officers were dead the suspects ended up holed up in house one committed suicide to avoid capture the other surrendered dive in prison many years later and that's the very short version of it that event when that one-day shocked the law enforcement community and it led to a whole bunch of changes in the way a whole bunch of thing you've done it became the defining moment for a couple of generations but one of the things that came from that was a really big study done by the FBI on police shootings and they discovered a lot of things but what the big thing was that came out of that was to statistics one being the mean number of shots the police officer fires and the lethal confrontation is 1.8 okay well that's a very interesting result the NYPD study said three point five nine so I find it interesting that two studies that are supposed to be well done and definitive come up with conclusions that vary by a factor of 99% three point five nine is basically double one point eight and I find that result very interesting the other statistic that came out of that was one with distance now if you've seen very much of my work you've heard me say this the FBI has been telling us for decades that the mean average distance relief of confrontation is 7-yard it's been telling us for decades that the mean average distance for a leap of confrontation is 7 yards now the FBI has been telling us for decades that the mean average distance for leap of confrontation is 7-yard and that's where that comes from is the study the FBI did in the early 1970s and I have to point out that I'm not a proponent that that really is the mean I'm just reporting that that's what they say but is 7 yards really correct well some of my presentations you may hear me go through that 7 yards mantra and then I'll say and we're gonna push that today and shoot from 10 yards recently I've had a few viewers point out how ridiculous shooting from 7 yards is and even more so how asinine Lee superfluous it is to shoot from the excessive distance of 10 yards and some people have described me with some really colorful adjectives and then people will point out that shootings are really more likely to occur at distances of 5 or 6 feet and some people have been generous enough to send me a link to a study that proves that hypothesis well I looked at that study and it's not a study of citizen involved shootings it's a study of police shootings and it's not really a study of police shootings it's a study specifically of police shootings where the police officer in question was killed it does not include cases where gunfire was exchanged nobody got hit it doesn't include cases where the police officer emerged unscathed and he killed or subdued the suspect specifically only where police officers were killed and it only takes into account where the actual fatal shots were fired and what I mean is there's a case where a state trooper is driving home and he's ambushed from across the street by somebody with a rifle well he's badly wounded and then his attacker walks up shoots him point-blank with a handgun finish him on that study then shows that he was shot and killed from just a few feet away when in reality the real fight took place at a distance of 35 yards that study might not be the definitive all-encompassing study that some people think it is and this is a point where I have to say that statistics can be a funny thing when you look at them you really got to read that fine print and you may have heard this before statistics are like a bikini what they reveal may be very interesting but what they conceal may be even more so and that's a thing about statistics so with all of that what can I really tell you about the statistics of citizen involved shootings frankly not much quite often when there are citizen involved shootings there aren't really even records kept of how many shots somebody fires or at what distance and even when records are kept a lot of times they're not really all that accurate people who are in shootings are notorious for under estimating the number of shots they fire one of my favorite examples is I was rabbit hunting with somebody and he was using a pump shotgun and it had a seven plus one capacity and he had it loaded full well he ends up shooting at a rabbit and chasing it around the mulberry bush and he finally kills the thing and while he's doing that I'm counting his shots and I asked him how many shots did you fire and he looks at me as confidently as if I'd asked him his name he says - he did not believe me when I told him he'd fired six shots don't check your gun which he did and discovered he had one in the tube one of the chamber and that was it and he still didn't believe me until I walked him back through his footprints in the sand pointed out all the empty shell casings and he finally had to concede that he had fired six people are notorious for under estimating the number of shots they shoot besides that eyewitnesses can be very unreliable there was a case where I shot four shots one of the people that was worth with me would say that I emptied the magazine that would have been 12 I witnesses are very unreliable there's also the factor that when someone is in a citizen involved shooting they don't want to appear overly aggressive they don't want to appear that they were the attacker and a lot of times they want to downplay the number of shots they fired while at the same time sometimes overzealous police officers or prosecutors will inflate that number the list of extraneous variables goes on ad astra so what can I really tell you as a bottom line to the things of how many shots you'll fire or how far you might shoot them in a citizen involved shooting what I'd tell you is when you select a firearm for concealed carry there's going to be a bunch of criteria that you use does it fit your hand can you hit what you're shooting at does it fit your budget the list goes on magazine capacity and how many rounds you elect to carry with you are going to be part of that decision process and nobody can decide for you how many rounds to carry except you and hopefully you'll make that decision after doing some research and getting some good information and when you're looking for that information and you're getting those statistics I would tell you first evaluate the source if you're looking at a study that was done by the violence Policy Center a gun control advocacy group with it with an agenda you have to take that into consideration I'd also tell you secondly look at the fine print and I tell you peak behind that metaphoric bikini when you can now what about the range at which you're going to shoot well when you go to the range and you set up targets and you practice and you train again nobody can decide what distance you're going to shoot except you and I can't really tell you anything but I'd ask you a question who would you rather be the guy that trained at 20 yards and ended up only having to shoot two or the guy that read some studies so you trained at two yards and then found out your case was a rare exception when you had to shoot ten who would you rather be so if you've spent this entire time sitting there listening to me I appreciate your patience and thanks for watching the citizen involved shooting statistics video [Music]

Channel: Paul Harrell

Views: 384,504

Rating: 4.9674931 out of 5

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Id: 9HXCMjZJRRw

Length: 13min 24sec (804 seconds)

Published: Thu Jan 19 2017