COM?

For example, we learned that lower-abdominal wounds result in significantly more fatalities than do penetrating chest wounds! The "zipper" technique that we are currently teaching fits in with what Dr Williams has seen. Lower-abdominal wounds are debilitating and disorienting in the short term and fatal in the long term.
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I would really like to see his evidence for this. In no way, shape, or form am I an expert but from my researching I've found overall handgun wound survival rate to be between 75%-80% while abdominal gunshot wound survival rates to be between 88%-97%.

I also question the fact that abdominal wounds are debilitating and disorienting, anymore so then shots to the chest cavity. I cant think of any scientific reason for abdominal wounds to be any more disabling then shots to the chest cavity. The only reliable way to disable a threat is through physiological means. The only physiological means of disabling a threat are damaging the central nervous system or spinal cord, destroy the bodies hydraulic system or damage multiple organ systems. All three of which can be achieved with chest shots and only two of which can occur with shots to the abdomin.
 
troy mclure said:
we were taught to aim com x2 then 1 thru the mouth. the mouth area is lower on the head, and thus there is less movement.
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+1

That makes alot more sense than shooting someone in the pelvis. Shooting for the head seems like it would be alot easier for me since you would know right away whether or not you got a positive hit. Shooting for the pelvis seems like it would be alot harder to judge. Hit too high and youve done nothing but hit intestines; hit too low and you hit them in the legs. Where as with a head shot you either miss high and shoot again; or you miss low and hit them in the neck or upper chest.
 
I personally wouldn't be speaking of how I "plan" to shoot someone in a self-defense situation. That comes awfully close to premeditation, and...well...this is a public message board accessible to activist prosecutors, plaintiff attorneys, their investigators, etc. etc.
 
The mythical dodging BG

In every incident that I have seen on camera, or read in after action reports, once a weapon is fired at the robber/attacker, they turn and run, hit or not!

If struck in the high chest region (upper thoracic zone?) especially with more than one round, they collapse in a matter of yards.

Think about it, a criminal is not normally a war hero, so he says to himself "Self there is possibly 6 or 7 armed Police in that bar, not for me"

Gas station, new resident of the US of A, our bad guy had checked prior to this robbery attempt, unfortunately he had picked a trained ex Police Officer/Soldier, what ever, from abroad, lived in the United States for twenty years, who promptly draws and fires his 9mm into his chest, or even if he misses, big bang, muzzle flash not from the side or back, aimed right at him, complete with the high pressure ball of gas that accompanies a discharged modern 9mm round when fired at a target in close proximity, turns and runs, very smart move on his part.
 
In Massad Ayoob's excellent book,"The AyoobFiles:The Book",he describes a gun battle where the LEO shooting the back guy just riddled him with bullets and the guy just would not stop.

That is until the bad guy took a bullet to his pelvic bone and it shattered.

The bad guy immediately went down.

The idea behind this is that a human being needs that bone structure to stand up.

The hope is that even a person super high on drugs will go down if that basic needed hip bone is shattered.

And then the bad guy can be disarmed without killing him.

At least,that is the theory.
 
Anything can happen

There is always a story of this fall down dead, with one BB hit, and ten .45 ACP hits, and the shot person jumped back on his horse, galloping off in to the sunset, or nearly so!

Your training must be able to be duplicated in public, when it counts, in looking at this simple statement, the first shot is the most important shot of your life. To protect your life. Better that shot be in the eye socket, than in the pelvic bone!

So what crap can be used to argue that?
 
I'm sorry, but there is nothing fast about the "zipper" technique. First, you have to draw your weapon up to get it out of the holster. By the time the barrel clears the holster you are almost in position to rotate the gun 90 degrees and push it forward to shoot, so why complicate things? Once the barrel rotates 90 degrees it can be fired at any time (ie the BG is too close to fully push out the gun). The same can not be said about the zipper technique and firing from low ready. Drawing, making a conscience effort to push the gun to low ready and shoot up from low ready up to COM would take more time and effort then drawing the weapon correctly and putting meaningful shots on COM.
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1. Then you don't know how to do it if it's not fast.

2. IMO, It's not the breath smelling close technique to use. You need arm length distance IMHO. A few shots from close retention low in the abdomen/pelvis may create the distance, it may not. Nothing is guaranteed with any technique.


I'm not trying to be argumentative, but I've done it and seen Roger(Sweatnbullits) put 17 rounds(15 from his G19) between the waistline/pelvic girdle and throat/head on center line from draw to full extension. It's not complicating anything, unless you don't practice it, but then a simple draw from concealment can be complicated if you don't practice it. Just sayin;)
Is it my favorite tool in the box, no, but there is no arguing that it will create a lot of trauma in a short amount of time.



BTW: How did Roger get quoted in the thread? He hasn't posted in it:confused:
 
Drawing, making a conscience effort to push the gun to low ready and shoot up from low ready up to COM would take more time and effort then drawing the weapon correctly and putting meaningful shots on COM.
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That is the "low ready zipper" that you would use while "clearing" with the gun already in your hand. There is also the draw stroke zipper that zippers them up through your draw stroke.

As DonR suggests you may not know what it is that is taught during the draw stroke zipper.
 
I suppose a solid bone strike (preferably at an angle) provides better terminal balistics with a highly stabalized 5.56mm round than the ice pick effect you can get with soft tissue hits. But for civilian self-defense I'll continue to shoot center of mass and let my JHP's work their magic... :)

Milspec
 
last 2 issues

The last 2 issues of COP Magazine had a good presentation on shot placement - by a MD I believe. It changed my thinking about com.
The pelvis is the bone, the pelvic girdle includes the soft tissue around it.
 
1. Then you don't know how to do it if it's not fast.

2. IMO, It's not the breath smelling close technique to use. You need arm length distance IMHO. A few shots from close retention low in the abdomen/pelvis may create the distance, it may not. Nothing is guaranteed with any technique.


I'm not trying to be argumentative, but I've done it and seen Roger(Sweatnbullits) put 17 rounds(15 from his G19) between the waistline/pelvic girdle and throat/head on center line from draw to full extension. It's not complicating anything, unless you don't practice it, but then a simple draw from concealment can be complicated if you don't practice it. Just sayin
Is it my favorite tool in the box, no, but there is no arguing that it will create a lot of trauma in a short amount of time.
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I just see it as a solution to a problem that does not exist. In all the police video I've seen I've never seen a threat stand face to face with an LEO and try to "juke" or head fake them like a running back when being shot at.
 
The Zipper is simply a concept of getting hits on board as quickly as possible out of the irrefutable law of economy of motion. Then putting fast and accurate hits on board targeting the centerline (CNS) up through the torso, to the thoracic cavity, up through the neck, and into the head.

The concept has been used by many gunfighters, for many decades.

It may not fit into the competition based training of the last 60 years but it has a solid combat proven history.
 
When ever I hear about aiming at the pelvis, I have my doubts about its effectiveness. If the acetabulum or the proximal part of the femur is hit, it will drop the person. What happens is that lower extremity does not work anymore. However, at work, I have seen too many handgun hits in the pelvic wings that just left a nice round hole. I have yet to see a shattered pelvis by handgun. Those do not cause incapacitation. Painful,yes, potentialy deadly, yes.

In any situation at least one if not both of you will be moving. Therefore, I will used COM which will allow for the best chance of hitting my target and will continue to shoot until the threat is over.
 
last time I checked the 75th Counterstrike Rangers didn't count as a military unit.
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:D

The Zipper is simply a concept of getting hits on board as quickly as possible out of the irrefutable law of economy of motion. Then putting fast and accurate hits on board targeting the centerline (CNS) up through the torso, to the thoracic cavity, up through the neck, and into the head.
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Forgive me if I come off as facetious but do you ask Mr. Bad guy to stay still and get zippered before, or after you start shooting? While you are busy shooting him in the bladder and intestines, he may be busy shooting you in the face. :o
 
Forgive me if I come off as facetious but do you ask Mr. Bad guy to stay still and get zippered before, or after you start shooting? While you are busy shooting him in the bladder and intestines, he may be busy shooting you in the face.
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Without very rapid emergency surgery for lower body hits, especially the added complication of clothing and dirt from said clothing carried into the innards so to speak, death can be the result of this kind of wound, peritonitis comes to mind.

But not quickly.

When faced with a life threating situation most of the action is in deciding weather to do, or not do anything! Common thought factor appears to be "Is this really happening?"

If you have been targeted for death, a very rare situation, the first clue could be inbound projectiles, striking you, or near you.

The most common interaction with a criminal, or more than one, out of your home, is normally a robbery. To accomplish the transfer of watch/wallet/ and or cash, from you to them as it were, is in threat talking.

This is a logistic consideration really, transferring the above objects is difficult if the individual is bleeding, on the ground and rolling all over the place.

Your window of opportunity is right at the point of "Give me your... because here the mugger is expecting movement, he asked you to! did he not?

As we all know what area to shoot with a 127g 9mm bullet, for instant incapacitation, and knowing the first round is the most important round you have ever fired in your life! Why would you put it around 25" from those small target areas? As apposed to the nose, or close to said nose/eye ball?
 
As we all know what area to shoot with a 127g 9mm bullet, for instant incapacitation, and knowing the first round is the most important round you have ever fired in your life! Why would you put it around 25" from those small target areas? As apposed to the nose, or close to said nose/eye ball?
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Borrowing some of Vlad's words, how do you get Mr. Badguy to stand there so you can shoot him in the eyes and nose?:rolleyes:
 
Borrowing some of Vlad's words, how do you get Mr. Badguy to stand there so you can shoot him in the eyes and nose?
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True, depending on the range and dynamic variables, hitting the face and nose, one may argue, might be harder to achieve than even getting a chance (before getting shot oneself) to get to the vital parts while doing a zipper :o

That's why, I would think, COM in the high chest, where the heart and great vessels reside, is most commonly taught as the best target to aim for as it is sufficiently large, and has the potential to produce quick stops if hit.

Since I don't believe that rounds hitting the Pelvis would do anything other than make holes without significantly undermining the weight bearing capacity of the Pelvis, unless one was aiming laterally enough to hit an iliac artery, or moved superior enough to eventually get to the abdominal aorta, I don't see how hitting the lower abdomen/hypogastric abdominal quadrant would help one's cause of quick incapacitation of a criminal in any significant way.

Oh, and peritonitis doesn't count as a quick incapacitating medical condition until you go into serious septic shock, and that will take a while ;)
 
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I'm not in total disagreement with you Vlad. Given the the choice of CNS, COM or the zipper. I'll take them in that order, however we don't always get to choose our fights. I'm not sure how familiar you are with the zipper, but 6, 8, 10, 15 rounds running up the centerline is gonna cause a lot of trauma if it can be executed. We're (Roger and myself) aren't talking about throwing 1-2 shots out and wait to see what happens. We're talking about running to slide lock between the waistline and COM or head, using the initial shots to help create distance. Nothing is guaranteed.



Take Care,
Don
 
Don ,

I understand that people sometimes have to take the shot that is most practicable to take at that given moment, within the context of lots of different extenuating circumstances.

I was just raising the problem that while effort is being made to shoot the pelvis/abdomen/lower body, the criminal might be making effort to hit more vital structures instead, COM or CNS for example.

Therefore I don't know that it makes sense for someone to train to automatically go for a low shot, just because it offers a higher chance for a first hit, instead of spending a few more miliseconds to obtain a slightly slower but more potentially decisive shot since in the midst of the fight or flight sympathetic nervous response the combatants will often not react to hits that are not significantly incapacitating (and sometimes not even then, but that's a different story, right!?).

Therefore you might hit first, low in the Pelvis or Abdomen, but these hits might not temporarily inconvenience the criminal, but instead buy him the crucial miliseconds to get a slower, but more decisive, hit on you, while you are still in the midst of running the zipper northbound.

In the grand scheme of things I'm probably pretty high drag and low speed when it comes to gunfighting, but these were just some thoughts. :)
 
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Vlad,
We agree way more than disagree:) I don't believe in training to automatically default to one particular pet tactic or shot. Situations are all different and a person needs to apply the most correct response to the situation and not try to force the situation to apply to their "pet" response.
IMHO, this is why these discussions are good. They get all involved to think about what their actions might be.
 
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