Shoot at the pelvis to stop an attack?

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Anyone ever heard of the "zipper"? Starting low, maybe pelvic region, and shooting your way up the torso? There are a lot of instructors out there teaching a lot of techniques/methods, but as mentioned when it hits the best laid plans usually go in the crapper.
 
IMHO pelvic girdle shots should be used only for....

-attackers armed with a knife or impact weapon. If you put them on the ground they are no longer a threat.

or

-in cases where you cannot take a center mass shot. In which case you would put them to the ground, reassess and if needed then you may be able to take a center mass or CNS shot.
 
I just finished reading Combat Shooting with Massad Ayoob (free read on Kindle if you have Amazon Prime BTW). It's a great read and I highly recommend it, along with Deadly Force - Understanding Your Right to Self Defense, another free Prime Reader book.
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Amazon has two separate programs, 'Amazon Prime' and another called 'Kindle Unlimited'. As far as I can tell the above books are free for 'Kindle Unlimited' but not free if all you have is 'Amazon Prime'.
 
I'm sure all of us have been hit in the stomach at one time or other.

Think back what was your reaction.

We've all been hunting and/or have seen hunting shows. Hit a deer or similar animal in the heart/lung area, you will note most times they run a distance before.

I have been to several autopsy's from gun shot wounds. One of the worst I've seen is a victim was shot in the pelvis by a 38 cal bullet. It rattled around and made a heck of a mess.

But in self defense situations, the chances are its gonna be close and fast. Bad breath distance. I kind of think I would point at the biggest part of the target.
 
Amazon has two separate programs, 'Amazon Prime' and another called 'Kindle Unlimited'. As far as I can tell the above books are free for 'Kindle Unlimited' but not free if all you have is 'Amazon Prime'.
Click to expand...
They also have a program called "Prime Reading" where a select group of books are free for anyone with Amazon Prime (you can 'borrow' up to 10 books at a time). When you finish reading one, you can trade it for another book. How long they stay in the Prime Reading selection, I have not been able to determine.

I added both of these books to my Kindle library for free with Prime Reading and they appear to still be available. I do not have Kindle Unlimited.

Here's how you can tell the difference:

Prime Reading books will have "Prime members read for free" next to a yellow "Read for Free" button. (You would have to log in to Amazon with your Prime account to see this)

Kindle Unlimited (which is an additional subscription over Amazon Prime) will have "$0.00 Kindle Unlimited" next to an orange "Buy now with One Click" button.

Some books may say both.
 
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Being a MAG 40 graduate remembering from class, is shoot center of mass and if or when the threat does not stop and keeps coming then go to the pelvic in the attempt to stop any further movement
 
Thanks for the comments and links everyone. It does seem like something worth thinking about.

It's interesting that a lot of you say shoot to COM first (and I assume you mean upper center chest when you say COM right?), then a head shot then to the Pelvic Girdle.

With a Tueller drill, wouldn't it make sense to try the headshot or Pelvic Girdle first? You won't have time for plan B or C in that situation. It's unclear to me, but it sounds like this is what Ayoob recommends in the book since he's discussing this and the Tueller drill in the same section along with failures to stop with headshots and upper chest shots.
 
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Amazon.

I stand corrected. DMK is right and I am wrong.

Just as DMK says, if you have an Amazon account and sign into it you can see that the book is free to Amazon Prime subscribers.

Thank you for correcting me, this is good information to have out there.
 
The problem with pistol hits to the pelvis, they tend to just punch a hole, not smash anything.

The nice thing about carrying a 16 shot capacity pistol, you can send out a bust of say 4? Rounds, at bad breath distances, aiming high chest?
Were movement is happening, from both shooter and shot, lots of good stuff to be hit in there.
 
I might suggest folks who discuss the Tueller Drill, run through it a few times with Sims, Code Eagle or Airsoft.

As the techniques to avoid getting skewered involve significant movement on the shooter's part while drawing and shooting - hitting the pelvic girdle or head is not that easy when both of you are moving.

In a regular competition match, try hitting a steel target while you are moving at some real speed.

Then say how easy the head would be. Thus, COM - the biggest area is looking like the best target to get any hit.
 
In a regular competition match, try hitting a steel target while you are moving at some real speed.
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That sounds like a good drill to practice. Move laterally between two boxes 6 feet apart in 1.5 seconds while putting all your shots on a 6" gong at say 15 yards.

As the techniques to avoid getting skewered... Thus, COM - the biggest area is looking like the best target to get any hit.
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Again, by COM I assume we're talking about high center chest since gut shots would not be helpful at all for a physiological stop.

The thing is, you could shred your attackers heart with perfectly placed shots and they would still have enough blood in their brain to kill you for another 15 seconds or so.

IF (and that is a big if) you can shatter enough bone, a Pelvic Girdle shot would prevent them from taking another step towards you.

The only instant off switch is shot through the nose and sinus cavity to the lower brain. There are at least a few people walking around with bullets in their upper brain and surviving.
 
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Glenn, we run Tueller live. Shooter facing target at 2 yards, hands up or down, pistol holstered. Knife wielder back to back with Shooter. Knife wielder has knife target at 20 feet uprange, decides when to move and tries to stick knife target before shooter can fire a COM hit. Once you can beat knifer, then learn to move off at an angle fast and also hit.
 
Its an interesting idea for sure but as with most things in the gun cultures theres many different schools of thought. While I have a deep deep respect for mr Ayoob I'm going to stay with the Mozambique drill because i think that under stress I'm much more likely to be able to hit center mass than attempting to shoot a pelvis.
 
You shoot the largest target presented to you, because you're less likely to miss. If he's behind cover and his foot (or ass) is sticking out, you shoot that.

I'm not so sure that a good hit to the pelvis will shatter it; I think it'll just punch a little hole right thru without doing much structural damage. But it might hit the femoral artery or sciatic nerve (etc) and incapacitate the badguy that way.
 
I've run the Tueller live with airsoft and Code Eagle and the appropriate movement.

That's why I'm shooting COM. Since accuracy usually decreases under stress - I'm betting that hits are better than ones sailing by the head.

Another reason for a higher capacity gun?
 
I don't think I or anyone else is suggesting only going for the pelvis. I think most can agree the center mass shots are advisable.

All I was simply stating is if you place 2 shots to the chest and 1 to the head and the bg doesn't go down, you reassess and then follow up with more shots, in this case if you put 2 more to the chest and 1 to the head and they still dont go down, 2 shots to the pelvis probably can't hurt. This is obviously if you recognize that those shots are in fact hits and are not putting them down. Let's say the bg is wearing a vest and the bullets graze the head. It might be advisable to try something else. There are many different schools of thought and none of them are bad. I am unsure if this is the best but logically it's not like it doesn't make sense to me. But if I see that bullets are penetrating the chest, that is where I will keep my shots.
 
There is much more to the pelvis shot than breaking bones. The nerves that control the legs and the aorta artery branches to both sides of the pelvis. A hit the the right spot will cause damage to the bones, arteries and the nerve bundle. That part of the body moves slower than the head so the target is more stable. If you can hit the right spot you can also hit an instant death head shot because the sizes are close to the same.

Center of mass is actually a bit lower than most people think. The heart is above and right about two inches from the center of mass. An "X" from each shoulder to the opposite hip is CoM and that shot will miss both lungs and the heart. It will take out the aorta artery, and if properly centered, take out the spine too.
I have trained for years past to shoot instinctively to the CoM. I am now training to shoot eye shots from the front, temple shots from the side and the base of the skull from the rear. It is hard retraining but I will keep doing it instinctively. Right now I would most likely shoot to CoM because of past training but that will change as I train more the new way.

The groin shot would have to be a shot of opportunity and I would have to be in control of my thought processes to accomplish the shot. Having the ability to process thoughts in the heat of an engagement will never be easy. That is why we commit our reactions to muscle memory.
 
Being armed with considerable knowledge of mammalian anatomy and a little bit of knowledge about ballistics (much of the latter gleaned from this site) I, like many, think it unwise to count on any pistol shot being an immediate stop. Therefore, it seems wise to have a variety of targets in mind.

Mid- to upper-chest is a fine target, with a potential for causing a lot of damage to the heart, great vessels, and lungs. A hit there is likely to scare an assailant enough to stop the fight, but blood loss even from those organs is going to take a variable amount of time to end a fight for physiologic reasons. And there is always the possibility of it being protected by body armor.

A head shot probably has the greatest possibility of ending a fight quickly, but it is a small mobile target, plus there may even be head shots that don't end the fight immediately because of some quirk of the bullet's path or the body's reaction.

The pelvis is a reasonable target to have in mind. I wouldn't put much stock in hitting the perfect shot at the perfect angle to break a weight-bearing structure myself, but there is a significant amount of blood supply going through there to the large muscles of the legs, and to the internal organs of the area. Damage to the bladder and/or colon is going to cause some considerable pain, not just from the puncture wound itself, but also from leakage of contents.

If a fight is prolonged enough - even a few seconds - to lead a defender to a conclusion that chest shots are not ending the fight quickly enough, piling on the damage of shots to the pelvis would certainly have a chance at ending the fight through either psychological or physiologic factors.

We should never assume that the good guy is going to win every fight, though, and fight with everything we have. That might well include pelvic shots, even if the pelvis isn't the initial target.
 
Massad Ayoob

For DaleA and DMK,
Thanks for the information. I did not know of this book and have just downloaded it the Kindle app on my really old iPad. Different browsers commonly display pages in a different format.

Oh and another topic, I feel that one should use as many rounds as are available at the time to be distributed in the target as needed at the time for the best effect. Hopefully one has, through practice, attained the skill to do that.
 
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