David Armstrong said:
...If you need evidence to support a statement of common knowledge in DGU incidents, I'd suggest your understanding is lacking something pretty big. ..
Interesting approach to disputation from someone who claims to be a Ph. D. and a teacher. I guess you'd accept that sort of a response from one of your students when you've asked him for evidence. And if my understanding is lacking, kindly educate me with evidence, as befits a teacher, rather than simple bombast.
I base my opinions that bad hits probably won't necessarily stop an attack on my readings of, among others, Jim Carrillo, Dave Grossman, David Klinger and Massad Ayoob, classes at Gunsite and elsewhere with various instructor including Louis Awerbuck, Massad Ayoob and Jeff Cooper, and other reports of DGU published in books such as
The Best Defense and
Guns Save Lives and the "Armed Citizen" column in
American Rifleman. Information from these sources lead me to the inference that while sometimes mere display of a gun or mere discharge of a gun or weak hits with a gun may sometimes break off a fight, one can't count on it. There are certainly enough credible reports of criminal assailants pressing an attack even after suffering serious wounds, and ultimately requiring multiple, solid hits to be put down, that I am motivated to train and practice to make multiple, good hits quickly.
David Armstrong said:
...Do you really think that most gunfights are stopped because of CNS hits?...
Of course not, and I don't necessarily discount the psychological effects of being shot. But am I willing to count on the effectiveness of the psychological effect? No, I'm not. Do I think others should? Well that's up to them, but I'd recommend against it. The fact that in a certain number of DGUs, the effect of simply being shot is enough is no guarantee that it will work out that way in your encounter. There are too many other variables. Among other things, we know that physiologically the adrenalin dump that accompanies high stress can significantly dull the sensation of pain and give one great strength.
So I would not to want to rely upon, nor train for, delivering quick, peripheral hits and thus counting on the psychological effect. I'd want to train having the greatest physiological effect as quickly as possible. The CNS offers too small and mobile a target, so I'm left with attempting to cause as much disruption as quickly as possible to blood flow.