iCarryUtah – Firearms and Utah Concealed Carry

While it’s not pleasant, part of truly understanding this is knowing how firearms stop an attacker.  It is important to understand WHY and HOW guns work in a defensive role.

When you shoot someone, they don’t fly back across the room.  They don’t explode in a shower of sparks.  They don’t crash through tables.  They don’t fall away in slow motion.  They don’t stand there with a giant hole in them that you can see through.

The truth is that very often, at first, they won’t even react.  They may not “feel” it.  They may keep doing what they were doing that made you have to shoot them.

You see, when dealing with handguns, there really isn’t anything such as “stopping power”.  Stopping power comes from things like a .50 BMG.  You can’t conceal a .50 BMG, and you can’t easily wield one in self defense.

Handgun bullets stop by making holes – ideally holes in things that bleed a lot (heart, aorta, other organs).  This blood loss causes a loss of consciousness.  That results in the person stopping what they were doing that made you have to shoot them.  That’s why you often hear of individuals being shot so many times.

Shot placement is critical.  Using as large of a round as you can, as long as you can manage the recoil and reliably, repeatedly place aimed follow-up shots is important.  Using good expanding ammunition is important.

In real life, you won’t see the police immediately run up to a subjecct that they have shot to take their gun.  They remain at a safe distance.  Why?

When someone passes out from blood loss, it’s like fainting.  What happens when someone that has fainted goes horizontal (hits the ground in other words)?  They begin to regain consciousness because their blood pressure begins to rise again.  If the gun is still in their hand – on inside their reach – they can once again become a threat.

You shoot to stop the threat.  On the street, this may mean shooting until you can safely run away.  In your home, it generally means shooting until the threat is permanently de-animated, to use an industry term.

Knowing this, watch this video.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=7F1nPSNnaBo

This clearly illustrates, from a realistic, functional perspective WHY limiting the capacity of magazines owned by law-abiding citizens is a bad idea.

On the season finale of season 3 of “The Walking Dead” Carl, Hershel, and Beth were hiding out away from the prison when the Governor and his army attacked.  As the Governor’s crew ran away, an older teen came across them.  Carl had him at gunpoint, and told him to drop his gun.

He made like he was putting it down, but kept moving toward Carl with the firearm in his hand.

Carl shot him.

Later, Hershel told Rick that Carl was wrong.  Rick seems worried about his son now.  But as a firearms instructor, I can say that Carl did the right thing.

In a defensive situation, you have a SPHERE OF INFLUENCE, and a REACTIONARY GAP.

The teen had a long gun.  Even through it was not in an IMMEDIATE firing position, it could still make a pretty good club.

You maintain a REACTIONARY GAP to give you time to REACT to the ACTIONS of another.  Keep in mind that ACTION is faster than REACTION.

The teen kept closing on Carl with the gun still in his hand.  He was reducing Carl’s reactionary gap.

Carl had already told him to put it down, and the teen did not immediately comply.  He instead chose to keep approaching Carl.  His eyes were darting around, and it really looked like he was going to try something.

Carl did the right thing.  He did what he had to do before the teen could eliminate his reactionary gap.  It was a good shoot, and in the same situation I would have done the same thing with no regrets.

It’s just television, but sometimes even TV can provide good examples for training situations.