Divemedic

Shotguns

This began as a single post, but quickly became too long for one post. So let’s make it a series.

Yesterday’s post talked about stopping power and how it is a myth. Today I want to tackle the topic of what you should be using for self defense. Remember that a bullet is simply a means of transferring energy from gunpowder to target.

Lets start with shotguns.

Shotguns are a great self defense weapon for short to medium range, say 10 to 50 feet. They aren’t the cone of doom that many people think they are-the rule for shotgun patterning is that you usually get about 1 inch of spread for every yard from the target. So at 50 feet, you get a 16 inch pattern. In the distances involved inside of an average house, say 21 feet, you are looking at a pattern that is only about 7 inches.

In shotguns, the most effective self defense loads are not birdshot, as many people claim. The problem with lighter shot is that it frequently doesn’t penetrate. To me, the lightest shot that is suitable for self defense work is number four shot. So let’s take a look:

  • Number 4 buck has 20 grain pellets that are 0.24″ in diameter travelling at ~1300 feet per second.
  • #0 shot has 49 grain pellets that are 0.32″ in diameter and travelling at ~1200 feet per second.
  • #00 shot has 70 grain pellets that are 0.36″ in diameter and travelling at ~1100 feet per second.

My opinion, #0 buck is the best for home defense, especially when being fired from a 12ga with a 3″ chamber. Why?

Remember that our goal is to cause one of three things: a hit to the CNS, massive and rapid blood loss, or disabling shots. #0 buck offers enough penetration to reach vital organs, and 15 of them means having a high enough pellet count to punch lots of holes in the vascular system.

If you are going to consider slugs, I think that a rifle or a pistol caliber carbine is a better choice. We will talk about this in a later post.

The main disadvantages to shotguns are that they are long and difficult to work in tight spaces, and are not precise in the event that you need to shoot at targets that are located in close proximity to non-threats unless you are using slugs.

I prefer pump actions, but I can easily imagine the pure shock and awe of firing a semi-auto magazine fed 12 gauge. I will admit that I don’t own a mag fed semi-auto shotgun, but I have thought about it from time to time. Still, for home defense, a shotgun is a great choice for home defense, but I would not use a break open in that role. I would go with either a pump action or a semi-auto.

By Divemedic, ago

Caliber wars? Not here.

The point of my post on stopping power isn’t to engage in caliber wars. Nope. I think that the suitability of a handgun caliber for self defense (against human sized opponents) is, like many things, a bell curve. On the left side of the curve, a caliber is unsuitable because it is underpowered, and on the right side of the curve handgun cartridges are so powerful that they are unsuitable because the handguns that fire it are just too large for practical carry.

In the center of the bell curve, the differences between one cartridge and the other are small and not really significant from a self defense standpoint. At that point, the features of the handgun itself overshadow the effectiveness of the cartridge to everyone except the writers of shooting magazines (the publications, not the feeding devices).

For the reasons above, I don’t get into caliber wars. My criteria is this: the left side of the curve for a self defense begins at the .380 level and progresses through .38 Special, 9mm, .40S&W, .357Sig, .44Special, .45ACP, and on to the right side of the curve with .357Magnum, .44Magnum, and 10mm. Mixed in there are the less popular calibers of similar capabilities. Outside of the ends of the curve are calibers like .22lr, .32ACP, and the .500 S&W.

The trick is to locate your handgun on that curve. Do you need a smaller caliber handgun like a .380 for concealability or control reasons? Or can you make a large from handgun like a 10mm work for you? I have a large selection of handguns, in most of the above calibers. (I don’t have a .44 or a 10mm- yet) I have guns by Beretta, CZ, Glock, Sig, Smith & Wesson, Taurus, and others. I have owned pistols by Colt and Kimber. I have revolvers and Semi Autos. I have each for a reason. Some I carry, others are only range guns.

Don’t become too much of a fanboi of one gun, brand, or caliber. Guns are tools. Buy quality. Learn to use them. I’m a gun guy. I, like many gun guys, have heard from my wife about how many guns I own. She thinks that it’s overkill. I just like guns.

By Divemedic, ago

Orlando Area Voters Approve Rent Control

Voters in Orange County, Florida, the county where Orlando is located, approved a rent control ordinance during the November 8 election. The full text of the ordinance can be found here, but the relevant part of it reads:

(a) No landlord shall demand, charge, or accept from a tenant a rent increase for a residential rental unit more than once in a 12month period.

(b) No landlord shall demand, charge, or accept from a tenant a rent increase that is in excess of the existing rent multiplied by the Consumer Price Index for any residential rental unit except as otherwise allowed under section 25-388 of this ordinance.

This ordinance’s limitations on rent increases shall apply regardless of change of occupancy in a residential rental unit except as otherwise allowed under section 25-388 of this ordinance.

For now, the law can’t go into effect because there is pending litigation. If the court allows this law to go forward, there are some real issues here.

By Divemedic, ago

Let This Sink In

In the time it has taken California, Arizona and Nevada to count 70-80% of the votes from this election, Florida counted 100% of 9 million votes. After doing that, the state was hit by a hurricane and then rebuilt a road that was damaged by that hurricane. The left (and Trump) can bitch about Ron DeSantis all they want, but the man gets results.

Florida was the laughing stock of the country in 2000, and all we heard about was how Floridians can’t count. We fixed that, even though the lefties counting votes in Broward did their best to cheat the vote.

Florida has the rep of being “Florida Man” and the rest of the country talks about us like we are incompetent morons. We know how to fix hurricane damage, though.

By Divemedic, ago

Washington to Ban Hunting

The state of Washington is about to get rid of hunting, with groups claiming that hunting is not needed to manage wildlife.

Ultimately, hunters aren’t really necessary to manage wildlife, says Kevin Bixby. Executive director of Wildlife For All, Bixby says predators should be considered the primary wildlife management tool by agencies, which should adopt values consistent with the animal-rights movement.

“If we want to save our own species, then we have to adopt an attitude of coexistence with all the other species,” says Bixby. “And we can’t do that if human needs are placed above other lifeforms. That is the bottom line. Some people will never agree to that.”

So if a few kids get eaten by wolves, that is part of coexisting with all lifeforms.

By Divemedic, ago

I Don’t Think So

A man had taken some pictures while onboard an American Airlines flight. The flight was over, and he had departed the plane. The flight attendant had one of the officers prevent him from going further and made him return to the plane, so they could inspect the photos on his cell phone.

I had stepped into the jetbridge and the FA (flight attendant) had what I think was the pilot or FO (First Officer) block me from going further. Then they brought me back on the plane and the FA demanded I open my phone and show them the last several photos and then took the phone out of my hands to inspect them.

I don’t think so.

The flight attendants and the flight deck officers have authority on the plane. They do not have shit for authority off of the plane. You want to stop me from going somewhere? I don’t think so. I am not getting back on that plane without a fight, and I damned sure aren’t showing you shit on my phone. Go ahead, call the cops. I am not showing them shit, either.

Dwyer-Lindgren says that the staff cited policies about not taking photos of staff without consent, which later turned out to be untrue.

Taking pictures is not a crime, it is not reasonable to assume that someone who took a picture is committing a crime, even if that picture is of you, a flight attendant. I don’t give a shit what policies you think your company has. True or not, company policy cannot and does not grant you the authority to use force on anyone.

Try and force me to get on your plane, and we are about to have a fight, and if that means some people wind up with broken bones and some missing teeth, that is on them. I won’t be holding back. The airline will be paying my medical bills and anything else my my lawyer can come up with.

There was a case years ago where a loss prevention officer at a K-Mart tried to ‘arrest’ a woman who had just left the store, but that he believed had been shoplifting. She ran. He tackled her. It turns out that he was mistaken, but in the process of tackling her, she sustained a broken arm. K-Mart wound up paying her $12 million. Even in cases of false imprisonment, K-Mart once lost a case where loss prevention detained a woman who hadn’t stolen anything and wound up paying her $175,000 in damages when she sued.

By Divemedic, ago

Where I tackle a sacred cow

Stopping power is a myth. There, I said it. Every time there is a shooting, some yahoo comes forward to talk about how this gun or that one would be better because stopping power…

It’s bullshit. There are only four ways to stop a determined attacker:

  • A catastrophic hit to the brain or spinal cord (CNS)
  • Lower his blood pressure to the point where his brain is incapable of operating
  • A ‘mission kill’ where his body is so damaged that it can’t continue the attack (for example: damage his pelvic girdle so an attacker armed with a melee weapon can’t close the distance)
  • Convince him that he is out of the fight

Hitting the brain or spinal cord will usually end an attack. A hit to the head that misses the brain will not work. I can think of seeing at least three shootings from my years as a street medic where a bullet hit a person in the head, but didn’t penetrate into the brain. One of them was a suicide attempt. A good example of a head hit NOT taking someone out of the fight is Navy SEAL Matt Axelson. He took a bullet to the head that left his brain matter exposed, yet continued the fight.

Punch enough holes in someone’s vasculature, and they will lose blood pressure to the point where the brain is no longer being supplied with oxygen, and the person is rendered unconscious. Even a lucky shot with a small caliber like a .32 is capable of doing this- say if it hits the aortic arch and causes a transection. Sometimes it takes several hits. I have seen people take multiple hits to the torso from a .223 and stay in the fight.

A mission kill is where you damage a person’s body severely enough that they physically can’t continue the fight. Say, a hit to the pelvic girdle preventing someone from chasing you down. An excellent example of this was Kyle Rittenhouse shooting Gaige Grosskreutz in the arm. The hit not only rendered that arm as incapable of firing shots, but also made it impossible for that arm to release the handgun it was holding.

Then there is simply convincing someone that they are done. This is a well documented phenomenon where a person will be shot, and the wound is far from incapacitating, but the person simply lies down and is out of the fight.

There are people out there, however that still insist in the magical properties of this caliber or that bullet. Bullets are simple tools. They are a tool that delivers the chemical energy stored in the gunpowder to the target in the form of kinetic energy. The force with which a bullet hits the target is equal to the force that’s directed back into the shooter. It’s one of Newton’s laws- every action has an equal and opposite reaction. Any bullet that has enough power to “knock down” the target will do the same to the shooter. It is at this point that many will point to Marshall and Sanow’s work, and I will admit that I was a follower and believer in this study when it first came out.

The Marshall and Sanow “study” was fatally and egregiously flawed. The most basic flaw was “selection bias” in that the study excluded any shooting where it took more than one shot to halt the attack. So if I have a situation where I shoot someone and he doesn’t go down, so I shoot him three more times before he does, that shooting would be excluded from the study, even though that shooting demonstrated a complete failure to stop the attack.

What a bullet does is simple: the chemical energy in the gunpowder is converted to kinetic energy that is transferred to the bullet. That energy is then transferred to whatever that bullet strikes. If the object struck is a person, then physiology takes over from physics there. The damage done is dictated by how much energy was transferred to the targeted person, and what body parts of that person where targeted.

So there are a couple of things that are important in stopping an attack: the amount of energy transferred, and what part of the body that it is transferred to. Suffice it to say, you want a bullet to have enough energy to damage the body system that it strikes, and that means you want it to penetrate far enough to transfer that energy into something physiologically important. You don’t want a bullet bouncing off of the grizzly’s skull or getting stuck in a denim jacket. It does not do any good if that happens. You also don’t want that bullet to over penetrate. What ever energy that bullet has left after passing through the target is useless in stopping the target from doing things that you don’t want them doing.

You also want to work on shot placement. Hitting a right handed shooter in the left arm isn’t going to do you a bit of good.

Buy yourself a gun that you can shoot well, then spend time practicing. Load it with some high quality defensive ammunition, make sure the firearm functions well with that ammo, then practice.

Why? Because you want to keep shooting until the attack is over. That means if you have to shoot him to slide lock to stop the attack, then shoot him to slide lock. Make sure that you can hit a person-sized target 100% of the time at 10 yards, rapid fire WHILE UNDER STRESS. Make sure that you can hit a person sized target 80 percent of the time at 20 yards while under stress. Sounds easy, but studies show that shooting to this level is rare while experiencing the stress of an actual gunfight.

If you do carry a handgun, use a .38/9mm or larger if you can. If you can’t carry something that large, carrying any firearm is better than not carrying one at all.

Put good quality defensive ammo in it. Don’t worry about finding the perfect latest and greatest ammo, but do get something that is modern as well as being accurate and reliable with your chosen firearm.

Practice. A lot. At least 100 rounds per quarter at a minimum. Shooting is a perishable skill. The more you do it, the better you get at it.

To all of you 10mm or .45ACP fans: If you really believe in stopping power, then provide the physics or physiological basis for stopping power. How does it work, what causes it, why do you think your caliber is different from all of the others?

By Divemedic, ago