Are You A Sitting Duck For A Shooting Lawsuit - Part 3

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okjoe

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Because the second thread is getting sort of long, I am taking another preemptive move of starting another. The original posting is immediately below with the link code to the original thread. So you can continue here or go their first. Whatever.

If you are a trainer, you may be a sitting duck for a wrongful death or injury lawsuit brought against you on behalf of one of your students who is injured or killed in a close quarters (CQ), armed encounter, or on behalf of a person they injure or kill.

If you are a student, you should be concerned as you may be on the same hook.

Here is why.

Almost all students are trained in and tested on traditional CQ shooting methods of applying deadly force, and almost all of those shooting methods employ the use of one or both sights when shooting. There may be exceptions, but they are rare.

On the surface, there appears to be nothing amiss. However, those methods of shooting ARE NOT used in real gunfights. PlusP has said in prior threads, that based on a review of 900+ videos of real shootouts, sighted shooting does not occur in then. He also has said that he himself has been in one or more gunfights as a LEO, so he qualifies as having been there and done that. And he has a company that specializes in the training and application of lethal force.

I believe him. I have reviewed many gunfight videos myself, all of which support his statement. I came to that conclusion about three years ago and have been beating the drum about it since then. I even filed a patent for a device that grew out that conclusion. It can assist one in shooting accurately in shootouts, and it has recently been granted.

Further, in real gunfights, four out of every five bullets shot by police, who are trained and tested on those same shooting methods, miss and may injure or kill others. The accuracy number comes from a statment made by a former training supervisor of the FBI Academy. I think he said it was less than 18 percent. Suffice it to say that real gunfight accuracy sucks.

Further yet, police casualty rates are atrocious, one dead every seven days for the last ten years, and thousands and thousands injured during that time using current shooting methods. All the dead were feloniously shot with handguns, and with handguns other than their own. That info comes from FBI UCR stats.

Lastly, DOJ stats show that the police casualties cost us taxpayers millions and millions and millions of dollars in terms of replacement costs, medical costs, disability and widows and childrens pensions, legal costs, etc.. And guess what, unless something changes, you can expect the same for the next ten years.

The statements made about the use of sighted shooting in gunfights have been disputed with honest recollections, but no one to date has presented any real evidence that refutes them.

So what does it all mean Dean? (ala The Choirboys)

Simply said, it means that current training programs do not teach methods of applying deadly force that occur in real time CQ encounters.

So in light of the above, if you are a trainer, ask your attorney and insurer if they have any injury or wrongful death liability concerns about you training people to use methods of applying deadly force that really are not used in CQ encounters in which your trainees will stand a real chance of being shot and killed.

What they should respond with is, "Say what?" And they should also look at you as if you have a screw or bolt loose somewhere. What they will probably do, is look directly at you and calmly and say in a friendly voice, "Good question. Let me check that out and get back to you. OK?"

Then ask them if they have any injury or wrongful death liability concerns about the fact that since you give your trainees the same type of training as police professionals get, and in shootouts police accuracy is less than 20 percent, if push ever comes to shove with your trainees, four out of every five of the bullets they shoot will most likely miss and may hit or kill someone other than their target.

They will probably squint a bit, and say with a smile: "You are just full of good questions today aren't you.... Let me look into that too."

Now if you are the trainee/shooter, you also should be concerned, because if you are involved in a CQ shooting and survive by some quirk of fate, it is YOU who will be sliced up and put under the microscope of a shooting investigation, or a civil trial, or criminal trail, or all three depending on whether you are lucky or unlucky enough to have shot someone.

I understand that FOP's (Fraternal Order of Police), supply their members with insurance that covers shooting defense costs for free or for a nominal fee.

How about bullseye or sight shooting schools?
How about the NRA?
And if not, why not?

Also, since this thread is about gun use, any suggestions on an alternate shooting method to employ in real CQ encounters since traditional site shooting methods are seen in real time to come up empty when the chips are down.

Let me know if my trolley is off its track on this. I am sure you will.

Here is the click-on to the second part of the thread: [Link to invalid post]

Edited 16:45 PST


[This message has been edited by okjoe at aol.com (edited March 22, 2000).]
 
You can be sued for damn near anything nowadays. I think I would be more likely to be sued if I welded a shelf onto the side of my Sig, used my middle finger to manipulate the trigger, ignored the sights in favor of the "the bullet will go where you point your finger" theory (use the Force, Luke), etc.

The issue of "Reasonableness" will be an issue in any civil suit.
 
Re: the Part 2 comment that it would be ridiculous for a trainee to sue their trainer:

If someone gives you bogus advice, and it costs you dearly, are they at fault? If they give you advice that is known to work, no problem. But what if that is not the case?

I have been told that in the olden days when the patient died, they killed the witch doctor. Sounds OK to me. Today, the witch doctor would probably hire a lawyer and things would drag on and on and on...

When I think of Sight Shooting training for use in close quarters combat, the story about The Emporer's New Clothes comes readily to mind.

If there is validity to the 900+ videos that show that Sight Shooting is nowhere to be found in close quarters shootouts, then Sight Shooting training for close quarters combat is all smoke and mirrors. There is nothing their, and that is clearly apparent to any of us lesser subjects who can see when the videos are played.

It is a bunko operation, and it is also one of the most dangerous order. The emperor may have sufferred embarrass ment, it could cost a trainee their life.

Edited 18:40 PST


[This message has been edited by okjoe at aol.com (edited March 23, 2000).]
 
schmit, you got me, i forgot about the states that allow protection of ones home. i agree with you on your point of some states let people protect their humble abode.
many people exercise this legal option. unfortunately many states don't allow this. it is easy to explain to a jury protection of life, protection of propery is harder. again some states allow this option, so this is an easy standard to prove. most jurors would probably side on the homeowner protecting themselves. unfortunately i live in the mostly liberal state of minnesota. i teach on the premis of levels of use of force.
presence, verbal, escort-hands on, pain compliance, mechanical, impact tools, and lethal force. us leo's are taught in these force options, and we use whatever force option to make an arrest is necessary, but no more force than is necessary. we can enter the use of force scale at the bottom and work our way up, or enter the scale at whatever level needs to be used to get the job done.
self defense is acceptable to jurors as long as it is based on what a resonable person would do under the same circumstances, if one goes beyond what is reasonable then it could be considered assault or worse.

a current trend that i have seen in law suits
when it comes to use of force is "was there any other options available?", or "why did you push the issue?", if you hadn't my client would be dead or paralyzed. attorneys are always looking for a new nitch. attorneys ask people all the time that had to use force "could you have left?". if the answer is yes, then this would show jurors that you had another option. as an leo we can't always leave, we have to stay and protect or take some type of action. citizens on the other hand should not go looking for circumstances or put themselves into a position when possible where they would have to use force. if they are confronted on the street, use whatever they need to protect themselves, and this includes fleeing.

again attorneys are always looking for a new loophole. use of force cases are tried all the time, there are legal accepted standards.
trainers can (applies to ability) be sued. this doesn't mean that they are liable, the user of the force is ultimately responsible for their actions. but if trainers were negligent, yes they could be held liable.
keep in mind that in criminal court it has to be proved beyond a reasonalbe doubt, in civil
it is the scales of justice (which side is heavier).
 
I have to admit that I am not prepared to wade through 900 videos of anything. But. Seeing 900 folks fail to follow training (I'll give you the point that they failed) is not a reason to abandon a system that works.

I tried your system last night (and it is an old system - recall the Brits tried it) and it fails miserably.

A decrease in speed, much increase in shot dispersion, poor trigger control and you lose almost half of your hand strength due to your inability to grasp the gun with all of your fingers.

Lack of grip on the gun simply makes it eaiser for badguys to get it away from you.

Furthur, if your shooting a revolver, you stand an excellent chance of mangling the tip of your index finger if it gets ahead of the cylinder face.

Talk about lawsuits - want to tell someone to avulse their index finger tip?

This system is for automatics on static target ranges with no pressure. It is an unsafe method of operating a handgun in the real world.

Giz

[This message has been edited by Gizmo99 (edited March 23, 2000).]

[This message has been edited by Gizmo99 (edited March 23, 2000).]
 
I thought about trying the "social digit as trigger finger" technique with my SP-101. Then I realized that the tip of my index finger would extend past the end of the cylinder to a position less than an inch away from the barrel-cylinder gap. I reconsidered. ;)

I did try the technique with my Glock 19 and managed to hit the target without mangling any of my body parts. Even so, there didn't seem to be any advantages in speed or accuracy, and my grasp of the pistol did feel distinctly less secure.

I suppose using the middle finger on the trigger would work better if a pistol were designed to accomodate the technique.
 
<BLOCKQUOTE><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial">quote:</font><HR>unfortunately i live in the mostly liberal state of minnesota. [/quote]

"138 S.C. 147, 135 S.E. 800

In addition to no duty to retreat in ones home, no duty to retreat within the home's curtilage. [State v. Jackson, supra] or beyond the curtilage. [State v.Quick] "

Hehehe... my curtilage is approx 2 acres. Beyond which is 40. Some States are better to live in then others. :cool: EVERYONE SING "In Dixieland I'll make my stand to live or die in Dixie. Look Away.. Look Away... " :D

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Schmit
GySgt, USMC(Ret)
NRA Life, Lodge 1201-UOSSS
"Si vis Pacem Para Bellum"
 
If P&S doesn't work for you, good. Doesn't make any difference to me. If I were to be in a shootout, I would hope that the other party was a Sight Shooter aka sitting duck.

I am not here to defend P&S. If you are interested in it, just visit my web page and see what others have said about it. There are lots of comments there: pro and con, plus an explanation of just what P&S does, its benefits, etc, etc. etc... If you have a specific question, send it to me via e-mail okjoe@aol.com. But why not first go to the web page. No sense rehashing and nit picking it over, and over, and over again. Not trying to be impolite, just don't want to to keeping chasing my tail for your fun. It ain't perfect and it ain't being presented to you as a silver bullet, or on a silver platter tied up all pretty and nice with a satin bow, but it works. Improving it should be an easy matter for you nit pickers. Here is the URL: http://members.aol.com/okjoe/ps.htm

I also am not against training. I hope that any person who has a gun has had all kinds of training on how it works, when to use it, legal issue, etc... And those goes double or tripple for LEO's. They should be very gun smart.

But that is not the issue here. The issue is very narrow and specific.

The issue is are you setting yourself up for a shooting lawsuit by: 1. teaching students to use close quarters shooting methods that just do not occur in those life and death situations, 2. testing them on their ability to exercise those bogus shooting methods, and 3. then sending them out knowing full well that if they get into a gunfight, those bogus methods will not be used, and they may be shot or shoot an innocent party.

If you have no alternate plan or can come up with no alternate shooting method, so be it. I'll look for you on court TV.

For a rehash of past comments, click on the link to part 2, and from there back to part 1.

The only NEW thought that has been presented to protect shooters so far, is that low cost insurance like that which police get via their FOP organizations should be made available to shooters. That makes sense.

So any new ideas on shooting???
 
Simunitions? Hard to spell. I don't know much about rubber bullets. Thought that you could get them is standard sizes. If they only work in rifles, maybe they should be adapted for pistols.

In the simi-shoots, how many seconds were allowed, for how many rounds, at what distance, what were the players allowed to wear, and did they have on foot tied to a stake???

I have seen two shootings in person, and several on TV. One or two seconds covers most of them, so 4 seconds max should do.

I don't think paintballs will work. No recoil, no "real" damage, no contest. Like shooting blanks in the army. I also understand that painballers use their middle finger to shoot fast and quick. Some paintball guns (Spyder) have optional enlarged trigger guards so that the middle finger can be used to shoot.

Fixed training events, like fixed scores (scoring on the basis of 150 rather than 100), does no one any good, and may end up killing you or some other gullible party.

Edited 20:35

[This message has been edited by okjoe at aol.com (edited March 23, 2000).]
 
Paintball is a great training exercise - while not live fire, it lets you train in tactical movement.
It has its place and must be administered correctly for the training not to be of discounted value.
Simunitions basically turns your gun into a paintball "marker" (Marker being to pc name for the gun in that sport). It allows force on force training with your own guns and holsters etc... thus better training value than paintball - but at a higher cost.

Ive done both and I believe them both to be necessary for a complete all round training program for LE and MIL groups. Citizens benifit from it as well... but I dont know where a Joe Regular could go to play with the Simunition stuff. Necessary because without this trainging pro-gunslingers are stuck with Range Movement and such limitations... this will help break them out of that mold and get those feet moving.

------------------
"I like the word 'indolence.' It makes my laziness seem classy." -Bern Williams
 
Paitball guns aren't very accurate. We fire with our middle finger occasionally because it is the best finger to stick in the trigger guard and slam back and forth between the trigger guard and trigger violently to increase the rate of fire. Basically spraying everything you have in the general direction of the opponent(s). I don't think that is a good idea with a firearm.
 
My firearms training must be sorely lacking; I wanna know more about being tied to a stake while participating in a Sim exercise. That's one I hadn't thought of :)
 
Today we boast of playing SPLATBALL and costly video games in the name of training.
What next? Pacman guns? If someone has a study showing it works let me know. So far four major manufacturers of high tech video games can't do it. One said I was the first to ask. Snake oil doesn't come in bottles anymore. Our dumbing down continues.
 
i have posted this before. simunitions, fx,
and other variations are good training tools, it is all in how you incorporate them into training. be creative. when teaching defensive tactics classes, we give them to the students and put them into live player scenarios where they will be put into a situation to use force on some leverl.
so they have to decide to react, they have to decide what force option to use and against a living moving target.

as far as fats, fats2, gamma, and other computer or video simulators. these are also great tools. we film our own scenarios, usually are situations that are officers have been put into on the street, we recreate these, especially ones where high levels of force were used. when we put students through these scenarios, again they have to decide which force option to apply, if they decide to react. then they have to hit their intended target. after each scenario we stop, and make the student verbally justify what they saw, what their reactions were, and why they reacted the way they did. this makes for judgement learning,
target acquisition, observations skills (including looking at backdrops), and justification of any force option that is used. i guess for pluspinc that these are not important issues or good things to cover in training, but i believe it is. if one is ever put into a situation to use a deadly force option, you will not only have to survive the situation, but the legal system, and media aftermath. these are also important issues.

schmit, what is the difference in a northern fairy tale and a southern fairy tale.
northern starts with "one upon a time".
southern starts with "bubba you aint gonna believe this". i heard that when i was in charleston a couple of weeks ago. nice state you have there. although there seems to be lots of transplanted yankees.
 
+P You live to counter everything I say dont you? Well - thats easy to do if you JUST DONT GET IT.
Read my post again... Slowly.
It teaches MOVEMENT... I know Several Police Academy programs, SWAT programs and even a couple military units that add both Simunition and Paint Ball to enhance training. Many have said that Paint Ball is better than MILES gear. I think so too.
Say - do you cover Movement in your 10 minutes with the little girl when you made her a better shot than the Police Officer?

Put your money where your mouth is Mr P...
Tell me - right here - right now. A BETTER METHOD of teaching Movement and Tactics. I said BETTER - not just an Alternate Method.
I'd be satisfied with an alternate suggestion - but your scoff had a lot of resolve behind it... so I wanna hear YOUR BETTER METHOD. You must have one... You claimed to teach "Survive" as your shooting method.

These so called Video Games such as FATS and Gamma... What do they Teach? SHOOT NO SHOOT thinking? Yup. Fast shooting? Yup. Has it value if added to training in a structured format. Do you have a better Shoot no shoot teaching method? Do you even know what Shoot/No-Shoot training is?
Let me hear your BETTER METHOD for that too.

Put up or Shut up.

"Better a Dinosaur than a Cockroach" Jeff Cooper

[This message has been edited by George Hill (edited March 24, 2000).]
 
<BLOCKQUOTE><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial">quote:</font><HR>But that is not the issue here. The issue is very narrow and specific.

The issue is are you setting yourself up for a shooting lawsuit by: 1. teaching students to use close quarters shooting methods that just do not occur in those life and death situations, 2. testing them on their ability to exercise those bogus shooting methods, and 3. then sending them out knowing full well that if they get into a gunfight, those bogus methods will not be used, and they may be shot or shoot an innocent party.
[/quote]

Okjoe, if you're interested in having a serious discussion of lawsuits against shooting instructors, please give us a few examples. Then we can look at what happened on the range, what happened on the street, and what happened in court and how they're all connected.
 
Knowing what I know now that I didn't know before via news videos of shootouts, cop shows, and FBI stats and statements on the shooting prowess of cops, if one of mine got shot by a stray gunfight bullet fired by anyone, I would sue the SOB that did it and any SOB "instructor" who had a hand in their training. I would also think considerably about fixing the problem myself with any convenient tool, and at a time convenient, and with the same amount of concern as they showed - none. We squash bugs don't we.

And money isn't everything you know.

I do not have any particulars or cases to site, but I have learned as I have gone along during the last 64 years, that whatever I have come up with or done, has most likely already been done before. That's just the way it is.

So any one got any cases that come to mind???

More to the point of this thread, anyone out there got any alternate shooting methods to employ in real gunfights?

Paintball is training, simunitions is training, videos games are training.

Let's talk alternate methods of shooting and killing real people with real guns in real time that also work?

Current shooting methods are not getting the job done. Sight Shooting is all smoke and mirrors (now you see it, then you don't), and Point Shooting equals Point and Blast. So there you have it.

What cards are you holding???
 
Joe, with your last post, you've shown the kind of person you really are, and this will be my last retort to anything you have to say.

I don't think current training methods are failing us. It's the failure of the shooter to maintain an adequate level of training. You can't go to the range once a year and hope to maintain any sort of adequate skill level, regardless of the nature of the training. You want to sue me due to the actions of one of my students? GO FOR IT! You'll lose unless you can show the training wa so grossly negligent, so indifferent, so contrary to accepted methods, etc. I'll offer Mr. Suarez as an example of one who trains more than once a year, one who advocates the use of the front sight, and one who has demonstrated the effectiveness of following this type of training.

Apparently no others on this list are as concerned with being sued as you are; quit baiting us. You've been answered by many, and much more eloquently than I.

Good day to you sir.
 
okjoe,
I don't have any ideas to offer you.

I can say this. Last night I went to the range after my shift. I tried Plusp's method. Please correct me if I did it wrong. I sent the target out to the 5 yard line.
I extended both arms, I already shoot isoceles so this wasn't a stretch, I kept the gun below chin level and looked at the target instead of the sights.
At first I could still see the sights in my field of vision. Remember the only difference in this and how I normally shoot is now I am not moving my head down to pick up the front sight.

Having said that.., My first magazine was low and to the left, outside of COM.

My shooting partner said the obvious, trigger control. I was trying to shoot as fast as I normally shoot. When I slowed down things looked alot better. Of the remaining 50 rounds, all went into COM.

What does this mean to a dedicated proponent of sighted fire?

There could be several explanations.


1) After thousands of repetitions, my arms, hands and consequently the gun will automatically "punch" into the target. A direct result of several years of dedicated training in sighted fire.

2) "Point" shooting will work, but you must still focus on controlling the trigger.

3) "Point" shooting works at close ranges, and if you can still "see" the gun as part of the total picture. I could still see the gun in my field of vision, but I wasn't as hard focused on the front sight. I tried to look only at the target, but I still could see the gun super-imposed on the target. (I hope that makes sense).

What does this mean to me?

If I train this, I think I will have another tool in the toolbox.

Coincidently, my shooting partner has all of Jerry Barnhart's shooting video's. He made an interesting observation based on something Jerry says in one of his video's. Shooting this way closely resembled shooting with a "soft" sight focus and a "hard" target focus. He explained it as such. You see the sights, but don't focus on them totally. You are looking through or over them at the target. He uses this style to shoot combat courses where you have lots of targets and they are pretty close, 15 feet or less.

Like anything..., research and design. Try it for yourself and see what you think. At this point I will continue to use "sighted" fire. At close ranges I will continue to train the method my friend showed me as explained above, simply because of thousands of reps the gun/sights always come into my field of vision. Call it a "Muscle Memory" or a "Trained Response" or whatever you want to call it.

Either way, I know that whether I looked at the sights or not, I still hit the COM.

I should note my friends qualifying statement. "Maybe after thousands of repetitions, presenting the gun on target, verifying sight alignment and working on a smooth trigger press, you could say that at close ranges you don't need to see the sights."

What do you guys think?

sorry ofjoe, I'm not willing to try and shoot a 40 S&W while only holding on with my ring finger, pinky and thumb. Plus, I don't want to shave half of my index finger off.

research and design? Yes. research and bleed profusely from whats left of my index finger? Hell No!!

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"There is a common thread between competition and combat shooting - only hits count" Keith Cunningham

[This message has been edited by FVK (edited March 24, 2000).]
 
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