OldMarksman
Staff
Unless "whatever you feel like carrying" turns out to be insufficient."Enough" becomes whatever you feel like carrying.
Has that been said before? Yes, in Post #3: "A single stack is enough. Except when it's not.". John said that.
Yep!You can pick any set of assumptions you want to, and then see how the numbers play out.
And congratulations for taking the initiative, JC.
...this is good solid analysis. ...I had never really applied it to this question before. Somewhat eye-opening.
Yes indeed! I first saw John's post on this some years ago, and to me, it was very eye-opening.
But as I posted then, and on a number of occasions since, it probably presents, for a particular set of hit rate and effectiveness assumptions, the best case.
Why? It is based upon the defender firing no more shots at an attacker after a particular bullet finds the critical hidden internal anatomical part. That could happen with the first shot--theoretically.
Is that realistic? Do you train that way? Can you train that way? Does anyone really train that way?
No, no, no, and no. It is most unlikely to happen that way.
Rather, when that man in the lot asking for jumper cables or whatever has made his way as close to you as you can safely permit, and he, or the one from whom your attention has been distracted, rushes and forces you to shoot to save your life, you, it you have availed yourself of any good training, will likely start by shooting several times--say three, maybe--in about a second. You just cannot afford to stop and evaluate the effects of each one as might be done by watching repeated slow reruns of the video after that fact.
A good convenient way to reflect upon that is to watch some scenarios on The Best Defense, and watch how Mike Seeklander shows us to do it.
Is this a criticism of JohnKSa's work?
NO! He has shown us some things that many of us had not considered at all.
Why did he make that little simplification? Well, what he did do was time consuming enough, and complicated enough when it came to explaining the results in an understandable manner.
I cannot imagine introducing the variable of how many shots beyond what might have been seen as potentially sufficient to the forensic scientist watching videos might be fired under the unavoidable pressures of the life-threatening moment.
One could try it, but to show the results in an understandably manner would, I think, require the use of moving colored graphics portraying 3D space--with sound.
But the fact that it would be very hard is not the only reason to not try it. We just don't need to introduce more unknowns. John has made the point. I think that most people here have a pretty good understanding of what he has done and why.
Why bring it up at all, then? Well, it should illustrate two things: (1) that John has probably presented the best case, and (2) that trying to figure out means, modes, and standard deviations is just not something that we figure out when we choose a gun.