tactics: primary target

TRX
11-25-2010

Tactical behavior in the movies drives me nuts.

Scenario 1: a bad guy is holding your wife hostage, with one arm around her throat and a gun to her head. You're fifteen feet away, pumped with adrenaline, and have about a 2" wide target window to the BG's head. He tells you to put down your gun. Of course, he'll then kill you both. In the movies, they *always* put down the gun, and wait for a plot complication to rescue them.

TAKE THE SHOT! You might miss and kill your wife. Or the BG's trigger finger might spasm when he dies and kill her. The point is, she's going to die anyway. You're trading certain death for both for maybe-death for one. My wife understands this; every time she sees the situation in a movie, she's bouncing in her seat and shouting "SHOOT! SHOOT! YOU STUPID #*@&*@$!"

Scenario 2: you have the BG covered. The situation is very tense. Then, from behind you, one of the BG's cohorts tells you to drop the gun. Or you hear a sudden noise. Or something else happens.

If the situation turns to shit, don't turn around to look. TAKE OUT THE PRIMARY TARGET! It only takes a fraction of a second to pull the trigger. *THEN* turn around and find out what's going on. Your number might be up, but at least you accomplished the main job. You should hear my wife shouting "TAKE OUT THE PRIMARY TARGET!" I think she got that from me...

I think I read way too many Donald Hamilton books when I was a kid, and some of the preaching stuck...

TRX
11-26-2010

Originally Posted by Bigdog
put five of six rounds into the poor victim...
Probably the most likely scenario, but since the victim is already dead meat, at least there's a chance. You do the best you can.

Part of the problem is that most training still stresses "shoot to center of mass", by which they mean the middle of the chest. (the real center of mass is about a foot lower) The problem is that in a hostage situation that target area is probably not going to be available.

The whole idea of training is to make your response automatic, since stress reduces your IQ to somewhere between "root vegetable" and "Democrat." But the aims of police or security training aren't necessarily best for an individual. Current big-city police thinking is for the beat officer to stand back, maintain the situation, and wait for SWAT backup if possible. There's only so much training time and funding to be had, and the department and the city don't want any "police incidents", so they train one group of officers one way, one another. The SWAT guys stand off, set up at (relative) leisure, and take an unhurried shot; their chance of an accurate shot to a partially- exposed head is much better than some poor badge staring down the barrel of a gun and stoked on adrenaline, who might not have pulled his gun since he re- qualified with it a year ago.

Anyway, just because the target has the bullseye over the heart doesn't mean you have to restrict your practice to that spot.

TRX
12-07-2010

That, or ignores the perfectly functional gun laying beside the bad guy, leaving it for him to pick it back up when he resumes pursuit.

I knew a girl who went to one of those "self defense" courses. The instructor told her to hose down an attacker with pepper spray and then run.

ASSUMING the thing works at all, and ASSUMING you get them in the face before they get a hand up, and ASSUMING they're actually somewhat incapacitated instead of thrown into a flaming rage, I figured it would be an opportune time to work the guy over with the proverbial blunt instrument, or tapdance on his crotch with spike heels, or at least kick him really hard a few times. But no, they're supposed to run. Screeching and waving their arms, I assume.

I guess it's a guy thing. If you take down your attacker it's not time to flee, it's time for revenge...