Center Mass: Why Police and Soldiers Shoot to Stop instead of Shooting to Wound

The question has come up many times. "Why didn't he shoot to wound?" or declarations like "I would have aimed for the weapon instead of the chest."

Such questions and declarations are the product of ignorance of how gun fighting works. Gun fights are stressful. Anytime you have to pull a firearm to defend yourself there are physiological considerations that go immediately into effect.

1. While adrenaline can be a huge helper in a fist fight, it is awful in a gun fight where fine motor and cognitive skills are more useful. Aiming and manipulating pistol controls becomes far more difficult, if you have been injured first the effects are heavily compounded.

2. Targets, in real life, tend to move in a firefight. This makes aiming(which is already extremely difficult due to #1), a lot more difficult and compounds the problem.

3. The point of employing a firearm in a fight isn't necessarily to kill. It is to stop a threat from continuing. Sometimes that takes more than one shot. Sometimes it takes more than 10. Bullets don't mean instant death, or even instant incapacitation. You must put only as many rounds into the target as is necessary to make them stop. Sometimes that means that person is going to die. In such cases, you better make damned sure that you are justified in your actions.

4. This isn't the freakin' movies. I'm tired of repeating this. There are so many ignorant people out there who believe what they see in television shows and movies as though firefights are fluid sets of circumstances that follow a certain set of rules. the notion that everyone is trained to be a sniper in police and military forces, or that the capabilities of a hand gun or rifle are far more accurate and potent than they really are.

In real life, the good guys don't always win. In real life, innocent people who can't fight back are killed brutally. In real life, a firefight is a chaotic mess of fear, adrenaline, and milliseconds of traumatic, emotionally, and physically exhausting combinations of actions that cannot be neatly placed into a box of "this is how things are" or "this is how things should be". Everyone has a "plan" until they get popped in the mouth or the shooting starts. As the saying goes, the best made plans fail first contact with the enemy.

5. Training is not what people think it is. There are many fine aspects of training that can make one a good shooter at a range. But when the real SHTF much of that training is boiled down to disengaging the safety and aiming center mass on target. No one is thinking about proper trigger squeeze, breathing rhythm, sight picture dynamics, optical parallax or anything else like that. This is combat. It is stop the threat from killing you time, and you often don't have time to think about "I should just shoot 'em in the leg".

6. Mortal wounds are often created by shooting extremities. Legs and arms contain huge arteries that, if pierced by a bullet, will cause a non-stop gush of blood to pour out until the person bleeds out...In that amount of time that person can still fight you and kill you. Aim for the spot on the body that will make them stop. That is usually the upper torso. In the event that fails, THEN you need to move in for finer shots to the head and pelvis(it is deadly and incapacitating).

7. Lastly, but most importantly, just because the object isn't to kill, does not mean that the use of deadly force is any less deadly. The same notions of "shoot to wound" are found on the other side of the coin, i.e. "shoot to kill". If you are shooting to kill someone you may wind up in jail REGARDLESS of who was the original aggressor. If you draw a weapon on someone and the mere sight of it makes the perpetrator run away, your legitimacy in using deadly force is GONE. Always shoot to stop. If the mere presence of your weapon is enough to stop the threat and force a retreat by the aggressor then the weapon has done its job.

Never rely on the mercy of criminals or the Hollywood notions of how firefights are "supposed" to happen. Train, practice, and study deadly force incidents. Find out for yourself.

Stay safe.

A gun "fight" implies more than one person is armed.

a reply to: projectvxn

regarding point 5 - then what is the point of any training at all?

a reply to: projectvxn

Well cops don't end up in jail, but do somewhat agree with everything else.
I would agree the shoot to wound is kinda unrealistic, but I still take issue with 10+ rounds being used to 'stop' someone.
Good thread still

a reply to: RoScoLaz4

To develop muscle memory.

a reply to: projectvxn

fair enough. thanks for replying

a reply to: Sremmos80

There have been many cases where it has taken more than ten rounds to bring a person down.

originally posted by: JG1993
A gun "fight" implies more than one person is armed.

But not necessarily with a gun.

A gun fight is simply a fight with one or more guns involved.

a reply to: projectvxn

I can't count the number of times I have had this conversation with my brothers. They both seem to think that real life comes equipped with an automatic targeting system like in a video game.

originally posted by: RoScoLaz4
a reply to: projectvxn

regarding point 5 - then what is the point of any training at all?

Because it still helps in the long run. Who is more likely to be routed during combat, the soldier with hours of training and range time or the untrained civilian?

Because they are trying to kill the person. Dead men tell no tales.

As a military veteran and long-time competitive shooter and firearm instructor, I agree wholeheartedly with your thread and understand your frustration with the often-ignorant posters on the internet who criticize and "Monday-morning quarterback" the actions of people in self-defense scenarios.

a reply to: projectvxn

And in those cases is it 10 rounds in less than 5 seconds?
Doesn't really give the target a chance to stop at that point.
Shock and adrenaline are a hell of a drug as you even stated, don't think its fair to use the bodies natural reaction to justify shooting the target more.

a reply to: Answer

I'm an active duty soldier and combat veteran myself.

Been on the receiving end of a lot of fire.

I get tired of people who don't know a damned thing about fire fights and weapons trying to preach about how a situation should have been handled.

originally posted by: roadgravel
Because they are trying to kill the person. Dead men tell no tales.

This is also the glaring truth, seen it said 100 times on this site buy people that carry.
Always shoot to kill to avoid a law suite.

originally posted by: projectvxn
a reply to: Answer
I get tired of people who don't know a damned thing about fire fights and weapons trying to preach about how a situation should have been handled.

This might be the main reason the police act the way they do now. It's a war against the citizens.

a reply to: Sremmos80

It depends on whether they are still in the fight.

loadoutroom.com...

Shot Placement Repeat
Although the assailant was hit in his chest, “center mass”, he was still able to move around, shoot, and drive a few miles away before dying. According to a medical doctor specializing in gun shot wounds, you have an 85 percent chance of surviving! Just ask Kenny Vaughan from North Carolina, who was shot about 20 times with a rifle that was only 5 feet away and lived! I always preach that it’s not going to take a magical one or two shots to center mass to put an attacker down. It may take three, four, or five. Shoot “repeatedly” until the target is down, using the same reference point of aim.

originally posted by: Sremmos80
a reply to: projectvxn

And in those cases is it 10 rounds in less than 5 seconds?
Doesn't really give the target a chance to stop at that point.
Shock and adrenaline are a hell of a drug as you even stated, don't think its fair to use the bodies natural reaction to justify shooting the target more.

The simple fact is: there is no law that justifies shooting to wound.

Deadly force is justified or it's not. Once shots are fired, the shooter is either justified to kill the attacker or the shooter is guilty of a crime. There's no gray area.

By shooting to wound, the shooter has made it clear that they weren't justified in shooting the attacker. Firing one shot or firing 10 is really irrelevant and modern training dictates that you shoot until the attacker stops the aggressive action. Period.

a reply to: projectvxn
i have never understood the mind set of the american police ,

they seem to think that if you run away from a cop , it is an automatic death sentence no matter of what offence .
being for jaywalking or anything else .

land of the free i don't think so

a reply to: tom.farnhill

This thread isn't about the police.