Ex-husband with body armors kills 2 women in shoot-out

Sig Bill said:

Hip shots can be very painful and distracting. So are shoulder shots where you hit the joints.

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Given that the shoulder joint isn't really a bigger target than the instant kill zone on the face, I assume the underlying idea is that the head can move further faster?

Given that he broke into the house and even if shot continued to be a lethal threat, what is the takeaway?

First, home defense was completely inadequate. If the women felt it was necessary to obtain firearms then it was also good money spent to armor the home. As Old Lady stated, window film works - it's quite popular worldwide. Here in the US most home owners give it short shrift as if they can prevent glass being broken by simply exercising their mental force of will. Never has worked, tho, and it's fantasy thinking you could make goats fall in a dead faint, too.

ARMOR YOUR HOME FIRST.

Secondly, handguns were inadequate. The women didn't have the skill or training to make stopping shots, and he was hit by a poor percentage of them. The amount of force delivered didn't do the job. We may well celebrate someone knocking down an attacking bear with a 9mm but frankly, if it's not rifle caliber with ammo designed to have SOME penetration it's basically useless against a shotgun wielding perp.

Disagree? Who "won" the battle? Even the shooter picked enough gun which he apparently intended to use on himself.

I suppose they could have used pepper spray on him . . . but that is too little too late.

Handguns are nice to have - initially - because they can be portable and largely don't interfere with activities around the house, like mowing the lawn or barbecuing. Not so much fun trying to do chores with a battle rifle slung across your back, much less the neighbors peeking at you from their windows while dialing 911. But once a threat is presented? You want the home to be sufficiently resistant to penetration, and most American home construction techniques are designed for the cheapest possible costs. They are not sufficient for protection - and a look across the border into Mexico shows that, no, the most popular home isn't a cute ranchette or McMansion styled bungalow, it's formed concrete with a wall around it. Wonder why.

If anyone wants to protect someone the FIRST thing to do is improve home security, not hand them a defense based weapon to use as a last ditch resort because nothing was done to keep the intruder out.

danez71 said:

That's why CA, and maybe other states, are wanting to disarm people that have restraining orders against them. At least thats the logic they give


And not that it would have likely made a difference either way,,,,, but the article said the restraining order wasn't current.

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As usual, PDSR California seeks a reasonably worthy goal using idiotic means. When danez71 says PDSR Ca want to 'disarm ...' the state intends to remove firearms from said person. Not knives, clubs, ropes, gasoline, toxic cleaning materials or other means of homicide.

Sorry. Got me started on PDSR Ca again.

The 3M Security Film is pretty nifty!

Pelvic shots, rarely exit due to the bone mass there, good chance of hitting the femoral artery which will end things quickly, and the shock of 100% of the energy being dumped into the target is devastating. You also have the plus that on follow up rounds you work the way up the torso for COM shots and a head shot but you are starting with the larger target areas.

Guess it's not PC though. Would address body armor and other issues with a little training.

There is a reason that the military special forces members are trained for head shots. Train in the manner you wish to fight, it isn't that hard to understand.

This scenario, like the incident several years back of a man dressing as Santa Claus and attacking his family with a flamethrower, strikes me as a 'sum of all fears' situation that simply cannot (and should not) be planned for since to do so makes for a less effective response to more mundane/common events. Infinitely more common events than these freakshow nightmares.

I suppose I could personally take some solace in my preference for 5.7x28 as a defensive round, which I made for other reasons than body armor, but I wouldn't pretend it was the deciding factor. If those ladies had been armed with rifles or even shotguns, it seems like they would likely have prevailed, since they did land numerous hits on the attacker, even wounding him, but not badly enough to bring him down in time. Rifle would have perforated him assertively, shotgun would likely have landed pellets on enough exposed areas to end him with similar hits as were made with the pistol rounds.

That's why CA, and maybe other states, are wanting to disarm people that have restraining orders against them. At least thats the logic they give

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Is there a documented instance of someone being literally beaten to death with a restraining order wrapped around a fist, or suffocated with one stuffed down their throat? Because both are completely plausible.

TCB

Ohen Cepel said:

Pelvic shots, rarely exit due to the bone mass there, good chance of hitting the femoral artery which will end things quickly, and the shock of 100% of the energy being dumped into the target is devastating.

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The problem is, this just is the absolute you claim it is. "Quickly" is relative. People with femoral artery damage may live up to an hour or more, depending on the damage. People with multiple shots to the pelvic area have been known to continue fighting.

Interesting you say that dumping 100% energy into the pelvic area is devastating when the same event isn't even necessarily devastating when it is into the vitals.

Pelvic area if you break down the structure will at least put them on the ground. They may be able to continue to fight but they will be severely limited in their ability to pursue.
Same is true with humans as with large dangerous game.

X-Rap said:

Pelvic area if you break down the structure will at least put them on the ground. They may be able to continue to fight but they will be severely limited in their ability to pursue.
Same is true with humans as with large dangerous game.

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Will it though? According to a presentation I saw from an ER Doc, a slow pistol bullet through the flat, living tissue, pelvic girdle just makes a hole. A rifle bullet at double to triple the velocity is another matter.

Personally, I don't see how a pelvis shot is much easier than a head shot anyway. My plan A is to dump rounds center-chest while moving and transition to the head if they are still in the fight after the chest burst.

old lady new shooter said:

Say they were well trained and their marksmanship and mindset was good enough for a headshot, I can imagine they didn't realize he was wearing body armor so they still aimed for COM because that's what we are trained to do.

Which raises the question, if G-d forbid a person is in a situation where it CAN be seen that the assailant is wearing body armor should the tactic switch to attempting a headshot?

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Wouldnt initial shots to COM at least knock the shooter back, slow them down, force them off target? Giving the defending shooter a chance to either escape or close distance for a head shot?

9MMare said:

Wouldnt initial shots to COM at least knock the shooter back, slow them down, force them off target? Giving the defending shooter a chance to either escape or close distance for a head shot?

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It won't physically knock them back, but it can break ribs, knock the wind out of them, cause internal damage. However, if you shoot them once or twice and then just stand there (the way I see 99% of people shoot on the range and the way 99% of first-time students do in Force on Force training) then they can quickly recover.

Dump a burst in 'em, while moving, transition to head if they are still in front of you.

These women obviously recognized the threat and bought handguns to defend themselves. I wonder if they trained with them and to what extent. I'm afraid that many women, in particular buy a gun for self defense and then train very little. Sound like they hit him at least a couple times, but it seems they stopped firing before the threat was stopped. Of course I am assuming a lot here too.

9MMare said:

Wouldnt initial shots to COM at least knock the shooter back, slow them down, force them off target? Giving the defending shooter a chance to either escape or close distance for a head shot?

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I think in a case where someone is intent on killing you you don't have time for all that, it takes x amount of time between shots and meanwhile he/she/it is still firing at YOU. And inside your home the distance will already be close.

The gunfight you don't have.... is a lot better than the one you end up with... if your assailant knows where you live and can choose the time and manner of the assault..

This is said in hindsight from a guy who's seen more than a few very bad domestic outcomes in a police career.... Most folks simply cannot imagine just how bad things can get (and how quickly...). I infer that the women in this case knew they had a problem since they purchased sidearms and trained to defend themselves. I know that most will decide to stand their ground even with a threat coming but a better course of action might have been to simply re-locate... That's not an easy solution either but might have kept them among the living... On more than one occasion this is the exact advice I gave a vulnerable spouse - who was certain her ex was going to kill her. Some heeded the advice others didn't and I can't recall any horror stories about their outcomes. Still the bad ones I had to go to over the years were enough to keep you up at night....

Choosing to avoid an armed confrontation is a valid form of self defense (my opinion) if you can make it happen. I know that many times a threatened spouse moves her home - but still can be found where she works each day - so you have to consider the total picture if you do choose to re-locate to avoid a life threatening situation....

something to consider....

If you can't find someone with a simple search a small fee gets past a few fire walls but I doubt there are many that haven't found an old friend or classmate using Google.
I have no stats but there are thousands of divorces each year and many more simple separations that are undocumented but a relatively few have the psycho component of that person who can't let the other go. I bet there aren't many of those individuals whose obsession isn't know to others.

It is very hard to stop someone intent on killing you if they don't care to survive the ordeal. If you are like most people you have a predictable schedule someone like an ex knows.
They can show up places they know you will be.
Really a lot of people think they have more control of their safety than they do. If someone doesn't care about living and is targeting you and knows where you live, work, and typically go, then unless you have bodyguards that escort you from secure site to secure site or the ability to stop going to work or living at the same address or going to places they know you frequent, then you are facing an uphill battle and your ability to even react to them depends on them letting you even see it coming.
But it is not limited to guns, I see plenty of stories of women going where they know a husband or ex is and running them over with a vehicle usually with fatal results. And I think you see more common instruments with men, because a grown man with decent strength can use a huge variety of common tools to kill any single person and you can't legislate away common items.
To emphasize that: More people die most years of blunt instruments than all long guns combined, rifles and shotguns.
And you can't really protect yourself that well from an intimate partner intent on harm unless you move someplace unknown to them and which may not even be legally possible if you have a child together and must interact.

X-Rap said:

Pelvic area if you break down the structure will at least put them on the ground.

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If you break down the structure? Do you know where to shoot to "break down the structure"? This is a rhetorical question as few people understand what that could actually mean. Strambo touched on this (pistol bullets being poor for this task), but "breaking down the structure happens exceptionally rarely. First of all, few people have any sort of clue as to where to shoot on a naked human being so as to be able to "break down the structure" and even fewer people know where to shoot on a clothed person. This is largely because few people are actually familiar with the structure of a pelvis and its location and orientation in the body. If you asked, most people could not tell you where their ischium is even located.

The largest portion of the pelvis is the iliac blade and punching a whole through is or breaking of an edge will not structurally cause a collapse. Ideally, you to break the suture of the pubic bones or put a shot through the acetabulum to get the desired result from a pistol shot. These are exceptionally small targets. Or, you might get luck and manage to break put a pubis and ischium on one side and that would do it, but breaking on or the other will not necessarily cause a structural breakdown.

Off pelvis, but often considered is a shot that breaks the ball off the femur or breaks the top end of the femur. These get lumped in with "hip breaks."

People get shot in the pelvic area with some frequency and still manage to run away.

Breaking down the pelvis with a handgun sounds good in theory, but in application, it is much more difficult. In part, this is because the pelvis is built with some redundancy that allow it to handle the stresses put on it. Each half of the pelvis is comprised of 3 bones and you can break the pubis or ischium and not collapse the girdle and you can punch holes through the ilium and not collapse the girdle.

This isn't to say that you should not aim for that area if you don't have a better target available. It is just that the notion that breaking down the pelvis such that a person will be put on the ground (structural collapse) is just not as easy as it sounds with a handgun.

OK, you sound like you have a medical background and I do not so I'll keep this in layman's terms.
Over the years I've known some who have had hip/pelvic injuries from broken pelvises to dislocated hips and injuries there are extremely painful.
The spine also anchors there at a point below coverage from most body armour that would be concealable. There are also vital arteries.
In any thread regarding dangerous game the recommendation is to break down the structural frame work that allows the attack to proceed or be very fortunate and make a CNS hit. This advice is for hand gun or long gun if the animal is charging.
I don't feel like I'm passing bad or unacceptable information in the event one feels they are up against someone with body armour.
I'd add that a miss with a headshot posses a greater risk to a bystander than a downward angling shot directed at the midsection.
In the end, I know enough to understand that COM in a dynamic encounter is probably the smartest bet but if the bad guy wears body armour shoot for the exposed edges and have the capacity to keep shooting.

Getting shot hurts, whether anything is broken or not. Pain sucks, but pain isn't the issue here.

Check out this guy with 3 .40 cal pistol slugs in the pelvic area , none of which produced apparent bone damage. Check out the 11 or so GSWs in his pelvic region. The iliac blade was clipped by a .223 round, but the structure of the girdle was not broken down. With that many GSWs to that area, he had a surprising lack of structural damage.

WARNING: LINK CONTAINS GRAPHIC IMAGES
http://www.defensivecarry.com/documents/officer.pdf

I would contend that if you can make a pelvic girdle breaking, locomotion stopping shot, then you can make a head shot.

With that said, a shot to the pelvic area may produce a stop, even if it doesn't break the pelvis or break off the ball from the femur. You never know. More shots on target are better than less, but don't believe for a moment that just because you are shooting in the pelvic area that you are going to break the pelvis and stop the attack. You might, and that is great, but it is NOT a given. Crippling a person, which is what you are talking about, is more of a Golden BB shot than something to just to expect to happen. The pelvis encompasses a very large area, but the key structural localities are really quite small by comparison.

You might hit a blood vessel, but the stop isn't apt to be immediate.

Strategically, fighting against body armor is a tough business. The Ex-husband came armed for bear with a shotgun and armor. Even against someone trained, a handgun is a poor defensive option against those odds. Headshots are effective but a small body area. Likewise the pelvis is about the same size but typically takes more shots to debilitate a target. And unless you hit the femoral or other major artery, rarely a fatal injury.

IMO, if you get a chance to get a shot off and hit COM, the idea is to KEEP shooting while they are off balance and their muzzle likely off you. Rush in and keep shooting. Would take cojones no doubt. I have thought it through many times and I hope I will follow through if it ever happens to me.

9MMare said:

IMO, if you get a chance to get a shot off and hit COM, the idea is to KEEP shooting while they are off balance and their muzzle likely off you. Rush in and keep shooting. Would take cojones no doubt. I have thought it through many times and I hope I will follow through if it ever happens to me.

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This is the second time you've mentioned being knocked off balance after being shot. As mentioned already, the shot(s) themselves are unlikely to have a dramatic effect on the assailant (they may not even notice). Adrenaline does some strange things for sure, but Newton's Laws are absolute.

I certainly wouldn't assume their gun would somehow fail to stay on target. The two guys in the Miami shootout took 18 rounds between them and they stayed on target long enough to do some serious damage to the FBI team opposing them.