Civilian Combat Stats

M

matthew temkin

Moderator
Interesting article on this by Ed Lovette in the February issue of Combat Handguns.
(The data is from Mr. Lovette's own research and I would love to see the from where it came.)


!) Location--vast majority happen in the victims home or place of business.

2) Lighting Conditions--Victim usually has the chance to get the lights on.

3) Distance--0-10 feet. Most between 6-10 feet.

4) Duration---actual shooting was over in seconds or a fraction of seconds.

5) Physical contact rarely involved but when it did was exceptionally violent.

6) Number of shots fired was often one but an avjerage of three.

7) Movement--movement was usually to retrieve the pistol and then to confirm the problem.
There was no "pieing" or searching, no moving while shooting or lateral movement to avoid gunfire.

8) Use of security equipment ( OC spray, knife, flashlight etc)..NONE!!!

9) Use of Cover--Almost non existant.

10) Firing positions---Shots fired by the Armed Citizen (AC) were most frequently from the standing position, several were on their back in bed, only one fired using the bed as cover.

11) Type of Weapon Used.. AC overwelmingly used a .38 revolver.

12) Response of Bad Guy When Shot---He most often stopped fighting and ran off, closely followed by stopping fighting and falling down. When the AC fired a contact shot into the bad guys torso/neck the fight was usually over very quickly.

13) Verbal Exchange Between AC and Bad Guy---Almost always.

14) Training by AC---Overwhelmingly none, followed by a small number who had taken a CCW course and a very small amount who had fired a handgun while in the military.
 
Some of the elements are very similar to an Executive Summary of the Armed Citizen page that looked at about 5 years of stories. Some other pieces seem to be very close to a study done of justified homicides in HOuston in the early 1990s.

A few things to note:
The fight builds up, with time to talk, turn on lights, go get guns, etc. Once it starts it is over quickly without multiple shots, reloads, etc.

The lowly .38 is still the weapon of choice.

Little or no training is the norm.
 
Interesting.

There are some gaps that should be filled in though.

  • elapsed time of the whole encounter (not just shooting)
  • The percentage of the attackers known to the victim
  • Types of crimes involved (burglary, robbery, sexual assaults)
  • Frequency of the attacker armed with a firearm.
  • Frequency of the attacker armed with "other" weapon (bat, knife, tool, etc)
  • Distance in outdoor vs. indoor conflicts

This does tend to confirm what most of us know. The bad guys are not idiots and when shot at will often flee, wounded or not.

That encounters with seriously "high" (drugged) individuals are infrequent.

Also, the "street tactic" I've most often heard of is that once a physical attack begins, the attacker throws rapid-fire punches to keep the defender disoriented until they aren't able to function. If someone moves in to grab and attack you should presume they will not stop until you are out cold (which presents a life-threatening situation).

There is nothing "inadequate" or "marginal" about the .38 Special cartridge. (This article makes me want to go buy a Model 10! :D)
 
Tom Givens of Targetmaster in Atlanta wrote on another board about the author of that study being in his range and discussing the study with him. He said that the figures were compiled from areas where where very few private citizens carry outside their homes, so of course most of the shootings listed occurred inside their homes.

Tom wrote that in his area, Nashville, a fair number of people routinely carry a pistol, and the results are different.

At the NTI this year he did a lecture and power point on seven shooting incidents that his students had been involved in during recent years. The summary of results of those shootings was quite different from what Ed Lovette listed.

4 of 7 incidents involved an armed robbery by 1 or 2 suspects
3 occurred in Mall parking lots
Students- 1 female, 3 male whites, 3 male blacks
Shootees- 7 male black, 1 male white, 2 male Hispanics
3 of 7 incidents involved 2 suspects
29 shots fired by students in the 7 incidents listed. That averages to about 4 shots per incident.
3 incidents involved 4 or more shots fired
Students’ guns- 9mm- 2 incidents .40 S&W- 5 incidents
 
Givens' insight into the Combat Handguns study sounds good. Obviously, there were some significant biases in the study that should stand out in a glaring manner so as to indicate something isn't right.

There are too many incidents of folks using other weapons such as knives and pepper spray to believe his findings of NONE would be representative of what really happens. So too with the use of .38 revolvers. Too many folks use semi-autos and long guns.
 
How are they different?
From what I am reading is that both Tom Givens's students (He is in Memphis, BTW) and those in Lovette's study won their encounters.
The only difference is that Tom's students were on the street.
The fact is that very few people choose to lawfully carry a gun.
Many stop doing so once the novelty wears off.
Lovette's stats are in line with what is reported by the NRA evey month via their magazines.
 
I'm assuming that people who sought instruction from Tom Givens are more likely to be fulltime gun carriers and general "gun people". That probably accounts for the differences between sampled groups, as Rangemaster's classes are probably geared towards the semi-auto and the type of person that would pay to attend them is the type who is more likely to actually be carrying out on the street.
 
I took a look at Lovettes article. It dealt exclusively with people who kept guns in the home not carried them. My takeaway from it is that if you have good locks and alarms and dont open your door for strangers buys you arre less likely to have to shoot intruders and it buys you more time to get to your gun .

Givens figures come from former students so it is safe to say that they probably had more training and practiced more than a lot of people who carry guns.

Matthew Temkin wrote "The fact is that very few people choose to lawfully carry a gun."

Over the last few years a lot of states have made it possible for regular people to carry concealled handguns. There is a reason for that. There are more stats now that allow cocealled carry than there are that dont
 
"11) Type of Weapon Used.. AC overwelmingly used a .38 revolver"

Lovette explained in the article that it was for a snubnose revolver class. It looks like he chose certain civilian shootings that fit a criteria to include in his study: shootings that took place in the home with .38 revolvers.
 
Interesting. Well then, those are .38 revolver civilian shooting stats and not generalized shooting stats of civilians. Temkin's summary seemed to have missed that little critical facet. But that would explain why folks didn't use other guns or weapons because it was a biased sample of revolver incidents.
 
Interesting. Well then, those are .38 revolver civilian shooting stats and not generalized shooting stats of civilians. Temkin's summary seemed to have missed that little critical facet. But that would explain why folks didn't use other guns or weapons because it was a biased sample of revolver incidents.
Click to expand...

What evidence do you have that Lovette's data is biased in some way towards revolvers?
 
only one fired using the bed as cover.
Click to expand...

Nitpicking I know, but a mattress is not cover, it's concealment. I wonder if anyone's ever been killed in a home invasion because they thought they could duck behind the sofa like in the movies...
 
At the NTI this year he did a lecture and power point on seven shooting incidents that his students had been involved in during recent years.
Click to expand...
I'm going to suggest that almost by definition Tom's info is outside of the norm, as it is restricted to a small number of shooting by his students. Most shooters will not have been students of any formal training, much less as quality as the stuff Tom does.

So too with the use of .38 revolvers. Too many folks use semi-autos and long guns.
Click to expand...
I don't know. I've been teaching CCW classes for over a decade, and the .38 has been the dominant gun in class by a huge margin. In the NRA Executive Summary, even with long guns available, the .38 was still picked over 60% of the time.
 
Anyone else think it would be highly interesting to see a sort of "Uniform Report" system (like the FBI's Uniform Crime Report) for reporting defensive gun uses?

It'd have to gather information without disclosing personally-identifiable data, however. A whole bunch of interesting information could be obtained and analyzed.

Just a thought. :cool:
 
In all the accounts of Armed Citizens foiling bad guys in the National Rifleman, and of the accounts I see in the Florida papers, and TV stations, I have yet to see mentioned that the Citizen used a high dollar, high tech handgun or rifle, or was a graduate of Front Sight or Thunder Ranch.
The accounts that I see show Joe Sixpack or his Aunt using a regular gun to do what is necessary.
 
Let's keep in mind that the Armed Citizen columns are generated from newspaper articles and we all know how perfectly accurate and thorough reporters are when covering gun-related issues. :barf:

My view is that unless the citizen himself provides that information to the reporter or police, it probably won't get included.

That said, I think a vast majority of cases are a result of surprising the attacker. People are so routinely defenseless that they don't expect Grandma to be packin' a hogleg, much less use it.
 
I think Kleck had a breakdown of gun type and DGU. This may be out of my butt - but, it was something like 2:1 handgun vs. long gun.

Given about 1-4% of the population of a state gets a shall issue DGU - what percent of them actually train like those in Given's sample? Very few.

I heard Tom's talk also - very interesting.

BTW - about high end handgun usage - in San Antonio, a famous but infamous boxer with a long criminal history broke into a house to do ill to the woman inside and was taken down with a Glock 21. That's a 'real' gun.

On the other hand, a restaurant owner was attacked at his front door and won the day with a 25 ACP cheapie.

In both cases, the BG took rounds, survived but stopped the crime.
 
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