U.S.SFC_RET, I don't know whether to be impressed or scared. I am not even sure of the point of your post other than to establish yourself as having a military history and what sort of person you are. From the last statement, I get the impression that you are setting up some sort of training program and you want to distinguish yourself from other instructors by denoting you are not like range instructors. Is that right? If not, what is your point by telling us your background and that you are not an inexperienced range instructor?
You note your long service to our country and I am grateful to you for serving, but some of the statements you made seem awfully dubiuos for a person claiming a long military history, combat dynamics, shooting prowess, and an understanding of weapons.
I thought your choice of a thread title was interesting. My learning of area target versus a point target is that area targets are typically beyond the range or capability for a firearm to hit individual point targets or to be able to hit them effectively. Some expand this to include being beyond the shooter's and/or gun's abilities to hit point targets. With that said, while the shooter and platform may be capable of point shooting of targets at a given range, that does not mean the shooter will be shooting specific points or necessarily dealing with aimed fire. Suppression fire works on that concept because suppression fire isn't geared to hitting specific targets, but to simply create enough danger and confusion that the opposition won't be shooting back.
I can't recall having ever seen area targets and point targets being distinguished on an individual human target. The concept seems to work, the difference being area shooting consituting just hitting anywhere on the target versus hitting a specific location on the target.
I understand that they never taught you head shots in the Army. The military makes a lot of decisions based on lowest common denominator understanding. That means that they don't teach a lot of things, but they are fairly sure that everything they teach is fully understood. Just because the army does something does not mean it is something done right, even if they do it for a long period of time. A classic example is boot camp. Boot camp has a history of inadequately preparing soldiers for war and when arriving in theatre, new soldiers have to be retrained.
You said the head is always the first thing to move. That simply is not true.
I am surprised by your extensive work with JHP ammo in the Army. Interesting. Or is that something you did outside of the military and you mentioned the history of your service to give credibility to your statements? There is nothing wrong with presenting credentials so as to let people know that you are familiar with the topic, but the JHP insight doesn't fit with the Army.
You seem a bit confused about the concept of center mass, also noted as center mass above the diaphragm. Center mass is located along the midline of the body right at about the diaphram and depending on the person's build, slightly higher or lower. In the front, the diaphragm is located at the xiphoid process and then follows the 6th ribs back around to the spine. It separates the thorax from the abdomen.
If you shoot and hit center mass in the front, you will likely be hitting the diaphragm. I am not sure what you mean by center mass above the diaphram. Are you talking about center mass of the body, but just immediately above the diaphragm or do you mean center mass of the chest?
The difference is shooting center mass versus center chest is that shooting center mass gives the shooter the greatest amount of area to compensate for a shot not well aimed. In shooting center mass, much of what is below the diaphramg are non-critical organs or less critical organs. Shooting center of chest is a smaller target area, but inpacts on the chest are more likely to hit critical organs or blood vessels.
You note that pistols do not have the knockdown power of a rifle. What knockdown power? Given the laws of physics, if a round strikes a person with enough power to knock down that person, then the shooter too will be knocked down in the opposite direction. People who are shot often do fall to the ground, but that is not a result of the power of the ammo striking the person and knocking them to the ground. They may fall as a result of some instinctual behavior, a learned behavior, or because the incoming round has incapacited them.
Do you hunt? If so, have you ever seen a deer knocked down when it was struck, say from a 12 ga. 1 oz slug at 50 yards? The deer may collapse, but isn't knocked down.
More than likely when you shoot the BG with a fast round he probably won't go down this is why the M1911 45 ACP was adopted.
Just what
fast round was the 1911 .45 adopted to replace?
Whether you shoot a bad guy with a fast round or with a .45acp round from a 1911, there is a good chance the person won't go down. It isn't as if the .45acp is an amazingly superior round over other pistol calibers.
Your M1911 and .45 acp history is wrong. The M1911 in .45 acp was not adopted because
fast rounds probably won't drop the opposition. Keep in mind that the reasons for the caliber are not the same reasons for the platform.
The military had found that in fighting in the Philippines, their trusty .38 revolvers had trouble stopping the attacking Moros. So the military wanted a larger and more powerful round. Did the .45 acp replace a fast velocity round? Not hardly. At about 763 fps, the .38 was NOT fast. In fact, it is slower than the .45 acp.
What about the 1911? The 1911 was not adopted for its caliber and the 1911 had nothing to do with stopping attackers. The military accepted several brands and models of gun for testing and in the end, the 1911 was the most reliable. Had the 1911 not won, it could have been that US troops would be carrying Lugers chambered in what we call .45 acp (and maybe it would have then been called the .45 ALP.
you must train your mind to fire center mass at the Bad Guy. If you condition your mind to fire a head shot when the SHFT you may indeed lock up during that split second and life saving critical moment. If you think you can pull a pistol and bear it on a BG with a ton of adrenalin flowing through you and shoot him in the head you will get yourself killed.
Really? What is your justification that you may lock up if you are conditioned to make head shots versus not locking up if conditioned to make COM shots? How do the differences in target locations predispose you to lock up or not?
I would be a lot more inclined to believe that if you do not or cannot condition your mind to fire a head shot when the SHTF, if you try a head shot under those circumstance then you may lock up. Properly conditioned/trained folks tend to revert to their training when under stress. A person conditioned to making head shots will likely attempt head shots under stress as that was his training.
If you think you can pull a pistol and bear it on a BG with a ton of adrenalin flowing through you and shoot him in the head you will get yourself killed.
Okay, this statement is just too amazing to believe it was stated. How is shooting the bad guy in the head with my pistol going to get me killed? You say this in such a definitive manner that you have got to have some reason for stating it, by whatever that reasoning is was not conveyed in your text. I have a lot more confidence that if I shoot my attacker in the head with a handgun that he is more likely to be stopped than if I shoot him center mass.
Accuracy isn't about shooting targets on the range although that's great stuff targets don't shoot back.
Accuracy exists outside of the shooting context and does not care if you are on the range, on the battlefield, defending yourself against an attacker or committing murder.
In following with the comment about accuracy, most targets on most gun ranges don't shoot back. That is true. However, it seems to be illegal to use armed live human targets to shoot with real ammo.
Many people fancy them selves as firearms instructors who don't have the experience needed "other than the range" I am not one of those people
Here I believe you have confused the differences between a firearms instructor and a combat/fight/defense/tactics instructor. While a combat/fight/defense/tactics instructor may also be a firearms instructor, not all firearms instructors are combat/fight/defense/tactics instructors.
