Brian:
Having served on both military and civilian police forces, I can assure you
that under extreme stress (i.e. facing deadly force) fine motor skills (i.e.
eye-hand coordination) are temporarily lost to most people. Tunnel vision
occurs with the focus primarily on the target, not on the sights of the weapon.
Precise aim becomes nearly impossible. Aiming for an extremity and hitting it
while under extreme stress is generally wishful thinking. Therefore you have to
rely on your training and muscle memory. You are taught to shoot for center
mass, the largest target in front of you. The idea is to stop the deadly
aggression as soon as possible.
The loss of fine motor skills accounts for the number of misses compared to the
number of shot fired. The number of shots fired is a result of repeated
attempts to incapacitate the aggressor and having been trained not to stop
firing until the person is incapacitated. Warning shots are strongly
discouraged. If you have to draw a weapon when confronting deadly force--if the
sight of the drawn weapon doesn't stop the aggression a warning shot isn't
going to make much difference, other than to increase the chances that the
officer is going to get hurt or killed as a result of the extra time allowed
for the aggressor to react. You are trained never to take that chance.
Being able to control precisely aimed shots under highly stressful conditions
requires more training and experience than most policemen or military personnel
ever receive. That kind of control is usually the result of highly advanced
training (swat team members, special forces, snipers, etc.) or extensive combat
experience. That's one of the reasons why combat troops use automatic weapons
extensively--to make up for the missed shots.
Those precisely aimed shots on pictured on TV and in movies are created by
people who have no idea of what is involved in an armed conflict. On the other
hand, the spraying of bullets all over the place with no one getting hit is
more realistic than one might think. (Of course getting 20 shots from a
six-shot revolver or 40 shots from an automatic pistol is stretching it a bit.)
;o)
Robert
----- Original Message -----
From: Brian Swale <bj@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Date: Thursday, December 23, 2010 9:59
Subject: [OM] Gasp! (OT)
To: olympus@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
> I usually wonder why, in situations such as this, they don't
> routinely deploy something such as tear-gas, pepper spray,
> and tazers (now available freely here), to remotely calm and
> control such young guys without killing them.
>
> And when they fire a rifle/pistol, they seem to aim for the
> chest rather than a leg etc which could give a disabling
> non-lethal wound..
>
> Brian Swale.
>
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