Thread: How often does the BG wear armor?

Statistically, use of body armor by criminals is so rare it's not worth worrying about.

Some of the ones that actually happened, though, were very high profile.

I've used the North Hollywood Shootout as an example. Police fired over 600 rounds at the two perps, many at point blank range, while they were either standing still or walking casually around. The cops were doing as they were trained, shooting for "center of mass."

I can't fault those officers, even though what they did looks foolish in retrospect. They were doing as they had been trained. Why were they trained? So they would do the correct thing automatically when they were under stress. Facing armed robbers with fully-automatic weapons will classify as "stress." So, under stress, they did exactly what they had been trained to do - and, after all the empty brass was counted and hits and shot placement were added up, their performance was by-the-book outstanding.

The problem wasn't with the officers, it was with the training they had received. Body armor simply wasn't on the radar back then, and they hadn't been trained to deal with it. I can't even fault the trainers; you can only cover so much in a finite amount of time before your students' eyes glaze over.

Training is a two-edged sword. There are always "unknown unknowns" out there, ready to hose your day.

Jeff Cooper advocated the "Mozambique double-tap" after one of his students described its use in combat. Two to the torso, one to the head. When I first heard about it, I thought "cowboy braggart overkill", but after looking at the FBI stats of how many people shrug off torso hits with minor calibers like 9mm and .38, I've moved over to the Colonel's point of view.