If all else fails and you have to fire, does the size of the BG matter?

The question isn't "Does it matter?", the question is: "Does it matter enough to worry about?"
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There you have it







But until he makes a threatening remark or demonstrates obviously threatening behavior....

You don't have any LEGAL right to prevent him from walking right up to you.
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Of course you do. You have no LEGAL obligation to converse with anyone. You can move away from anyone, say "Stay away from me," etc. Someone with a baseball bat, following a person who has made known their wish not to be followed, probably isn't shootable, but he's headed in that direction
 
Oh My God I have never read about the Miami 86 shoot out! I just read about it on wiki. Sorry I am young and am just blown away at the moment. The O.K. Corral? What is that. Somebody start a thread on this or direct me were to read about it on TFL.

again sorry continue with the big BG thing.
 
It depends heavily on the circumstances. For example, there are a couple of places in my house
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Castle Doctrine. I don't have to prove crap if someone has forced their way into my home. It's a totally different ballgame. Inside a home is a totally different animal than out on the street.


that offer an unobstructed view to other portions of the house that are up to 10 yards (well over 21 feet) away
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I guess it is a matter of perception, but a mere 9feet does not constitute "well over" 21feet. That's just me. Again, it is in your home. I was referring to SD in general. I should have specified that I was not referring to HD scenarios.


Although, in general, it's going to be harder to justify a self-defense shooting the farther away the attacker is, that's completely different than saying it's illegal to shoot someone who's more than 20 some odd feet away regardless of the circumstances.
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I don't know if it's legality or practicality that brings this on. It was taught in my commission course. Part of it is all about intent. Like somebody said with the baseball bat analogy, I can't guess your intent until you close on me.


I'm not aware of any self-defense law anywhere in the U.S. that puts a limit on the allowable distance for a justifiable shooting.
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Nor am I. Then again, Texas is the only one that makes any difference to me. I need to see if I can find my instructor's phone number and see where he got that information.
 
Of course you do. You have no LEGAL obligation to converse with anyone. You can move away from anyone, say "Stay away from me," etc. Someone with a baseball bat, following a person who has made known their wish not to be followed, probably isn't shootable, but he's headed in that direction.
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Correct, you have no legal obligation to converse with anyone.
But just because you say "stay away from me" on a PUBLIC STREET, that does not mean that anyone must obey you request.
Yeah, I could legally follow you down every public street in the USA, begging you for a dollar, while carrying a baseball bat all the while, and you could shout "stay away" and "stop following me" until you were blue in the face, but it wouldn't matter.
It's perfectly legal.
And you can't legally shoot someone for following you down a public street.

Private property is a horse of a different color! ;)
 
Kudos to Mello2u for giving a good answer to the original post. I think that's a fair assessment.

I'll add that a 6'5" 300-some pound assailant will have more body mass to penetrate just due to his sheer size. But it is also the content of that body mass that can make a big difference in performance.

If that big man is Fat Albert with rolls of jell-o like fat around his middle and torso, it will react differently than if the guy is training to be a 320-lb tackle in the NFL. Muscle tissue is denser with less liquid per cm³.

A coroner tells me that he sees the damage JHP ammo does and that on fat/obese people, they tend to open earlier because the hydrostatic forces from the soft liquid-like fat tissue - like shooting into water. That and the fat layer is usually over their smaller muscle tissues. He says abdominal shots on fat people are generally recovered at or in front of the midline of the body's depth. Bullets in thinner people tend to stop towards the rear parts of the body.

One should keep in mind that the sternum (breastbone) rarely has much to cover it -- muscle or fat -- in your average person. So those COM shots on even a big guy should work just as well as on a skinny one.

Study a little anatomy and you should see that the top 2-3 inches of the sternum is almost an ideal spot to hit as there are half a dozen critical structures just behind it.
 
I think Jeff Cooper had it right when he said that when you are faced with defending yourself - you have two potential problems

1. Saving your life

2. Possible legal reprecussions

If you don't solve #1, you won't have to worry about #2 -

Sound reasonable to me -

:rolleyes:
 
Castle Doctrine. I don't have to prove crap if someone has forced their way into my home.
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That's exactly my point. If they're in the house in TX it doesn't matter how far they are away, justification is not going to be a problem. That's just one example of a situation where distance almost certainly will not be a factor in determining whether the shooting was justified.
I was referring to SD in general. I should have specified that I was not referring to HD scenarios.
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Even for SD in general, there is no legal distance limit. There isn't even a distance at which it will suddenly become harder to justify an SD shooting unless the attacker is armed only with a contact weapon.

The circumstances of the situation will determine whether the shooting is justified. Distance may or may not be a factor. The Arroyo shooting at the Tyler courthouse, is one example of a situation where distance wouldn't even be considered as a factor at all.
Like somebody said with the baseball bat analogy, I can't guess your intent until you close on me.
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It's not always necessary to guess intent. Sometimes it's very obvious. The Colorado church shooting that took place a few years back is a good example of a situation in which "guessing" was totally unnecessary. The Killeen Luby's shooting is another.
I need to see if I can find my instructor's phone number and see where he got that information.
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It's not "information", it's just made up nonsense. He may not have made it up himself, but someone did.
 
21 feet and closing

The two COM and one to the head would be easyer as the agressor is advancing wouldn't it? Agressor keeps advaceing target gets bigger.
 
This is why advanced Pistol courses teach you to size up a threat if you have to shoot. You may only have a split second to size up an attacker, but that split second can save your life. As it is known you always shoot to kill, but in someone who closely resembles Andre the Giant, where is critical kill zone? Obviously there is alot more muscle, fat, and bone in between the vitals and the end of your barrel. In most articles I have read, the general consensus is that it is true that after 2 rounds to the chest, any subsequent shots to the same zone will have little immediate effect. I don't trust headshots, to much chance to miss or for the attacker to move, I like the system my training instructor told me and that was 2 to the chest and then stitch them up. First 2 shots go to the chest then you drop to pelvic height and the remaining 8 shots stitch the attacker right up centerline of the body. Gives the best chance to hit another critical organ and drop the attacker. The key in any defencive shooting is to shoot to kill. That is why it is so important to be as fast and accurate as possible regardless of the size of the attacker. Head shots also to me give off the perception that you couldn't have been in so much trouble if you had time to get sights on a center head shot. Think what a prosecutor could twist that into. Full magazine into the torso before the perp hits the floor. Once they hit the floor, I take cover and check to see whether they are still a threat. If they are wounded but no longer attempting to control their weapon, I use cover and wait for police. They go after the gun again, size up situation and respond.
 
It's not the size of the dog in the fight....

To an extent, all factors in a bullet's striking a person, has to do with mind set.

A person defending their 3 year old child, would need to be cut into small pieces before they quit fighting.

One of a group shouting threats, is creased by a bullet, 99 times out of 100 are legging it.

Your 300 lb-6'4" thug is basically meat/bones/and nerve endings.

The following not in any order of importance, they all are.

Tools, my own concept, lots of rounds, good ones, with a track record, mine for instance, Glock 19, 16 rounds of 127g ranger.

Skill, the ability to draw from concealment, and put multiple rounds out, in not much more than one second, small group at 10 feet, reasonable hits at 10 yards. Say 10" center chest. You moving them moving? Then things change in a hurry.

Human body, chest is a vacuum chamber, more or less, in it lives the lungs, heart, and at the back, the spine.

You do not count rounds (shoot twice and access! NO!) fire, fire, fire, thug goes down, shift aim, move. Three hundred or one hundred pounds? What do you think?
 
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