ISIS terrorist attack at Minnesota mall

freyasman said:

See the way he was advancing on Falconer with his back turned? Rumor is, that's a technique used to exploit a good guy's (security, LEO, etc.) aversion to shooting someone in the back. Any hesitation to shoot allows them to get closer than they would if they were facing them. Supposedly Hamas teaches this technique.

Click to expand...

Interesting, something I had not heard or thought about before. I will take that tactic into consideration. Thanks,


.

I carry all the time. No metal detector? I carry.

But did you notice, even with this Officers skill, his shots were directed to the torso? Most Police Academy's do not teach head shots. When I ran my own LE School, Security, and Police. I tought head shots from my first class, in 1980. My local Police Force, Toronto. Started teaching head shots, in 2004.

Military teach head shots. Police teach shoot to STOP! Hence upper torso hits.

Old Guy said:

I carry all the time. No metal detector? I carry.

But did you notice, even with this Officers skill, his shots were directed to the torso? Most Police Academy's do not teach head shots. When I ran my own LE School, Security, and Police. I tought head shots from my first class, in 1980. My local Police Force, Toronto. Started teaching head shots, in 2004.

Military teach head shots. Police teach shoot to STOP! Hence upper torso hits.

Click to expand...

That varies by department. Theres no universal method used in various states and localities.

Acera said:

Interesting, something I had not heard or thought about before. I will take that tactic into consideration. Thanks,


.

Click to expand...

I first heard of it when I saw this video and went "WTH???" Greg Ellifritz mentioned it on his blog as well, as he had never seen or heard of it either, and was enlightened by Marcus Wynne.
Truthfully, if I hadn't seen this, I could see a technique like this working against me..... while I was trying to figure out what he was doing, he would be getting very close to me, and with a knife-wielding threat, distance is your friend.

Old Guy said:

I carry all the time. No metal detector? I carry.

But did you notice, even with this Officers skill, his shots were directed to the torso? Most Police Academy's do not teach head shots. When I ran my own LE School, Security, and Police. I tought head shots from my first class, in 1980. My local Police Force, Toronto. Started teaching head shots, in 2004.

Military teach head shots. Police teach shoot to STOP! Hence upper torso hits.

Click to expand...

I bought a used Remington .30-06 740 Woodsmaster in the mid-1980s. When I went to test fire it at my local indoor range (which only had two lanes for rifle; about 12 for handgun), a Boca Raton, Fl. police sergeant was instructing two rookies on how to handle a 12-gauge pump in the event of a hostage situation. He had his silhouette posted out about 20 yds. and asked the two how they would respond should the bad guy put a gun to his captive's head and shout, "Drop your weapons, or I'm gonna blow this b**** to kingdom come!" The rookies shuffled from foot to foot, hemmed and hawed a bit, and then, without any warning at all, KABLOOEY!, in a split second Ol' Sarge had turned, shouldered his weapon, and nailed the target dead center of the forehead. Needless to say it gave me and the rookies quite a jolt, but I was deeply impressed at the same time by the marksmanship of this dude.

Jeff White said:

I was taught head shots in the academy way back in 1985. We were also taught skip shooting. The firearms portion of the training was only 24 hours back then but they put both of those skills in the POI. I'm sure this must vary by state and maybe even by agency in some states.

Click to expand...

What is skip shooting?

The difference in the thought patterns of Canadian Police training, and US training, back in the 80s, quite different.

Jeff White said:

Yes that's skip shooting. If you shoot into a hard surface approximately 12 feet in front of your target the round (pistol, rifle or shot) will deflect up a few inches and continue to travel towards the target.

This is useful for shooting a subject who is hiding behind a vehicle and is the reason you shouldn't hug a wall while moving.

Click to expand...

I'm trying to visualize this. If the subject is behind a vehicle, wouldn't the round still hit the vehicle? Also not clear how this applies to hugging a wall while moving?

old lady new shooter said:

I'm trying to visualize this. If the subject is behind a vehicle, wouldn't the round still hit the vehicle? Also not clear how this applies to hugging a wall while moving?

Click to expand...

Makes no sense to me either.

If the target is unobstructed then it would indeed make sense; a well-calculated bounce and hit would be possible. But I can't visualize a round making contact if the target is standing behind the vehicle. Shoot however many feet in front of the obstruction and it's still going to hit the vehicle; either that or fly over head.

I remember hearing of skip shooting in the 70's. My grandfathers cousin was a retired FBI Chief and he talked about hitting balloons with buckshot while shooting under cars.

old lady new shooter said:

I'm trying to visualize this. If the subject is behind a vehicle, wouldn't the round still hit the vehicle? Also not clear how this applies to hugging a wall while moving?

Click to expand...

Bullets will ricochet off a hard surface and stay at a relatively low angle to what they ricocheted off of. Staying close toa wall invites disaster from a bullet striking the wall and hitting you. In an old LE training vid they showed hitting a concrete wall and skipping bullets into someone barely peeking around the corner.

Malamute said:

Staying close toa wall invites disaster from a bullet striking the wall and hitting you.

Click to expand...

Not too sure about that...

Years back I saw a TCM documentary on James Cagney. There was a scene from one of his gangster movies where he was running alongside a wall and being shot at with live ammo from a machinegun (Thompson .45 if I'm not mistaken). The man doing the shooting was obviously an expert and aimed just a foot or so above Cagney's noggin. Of course Jimmy survived what must've been one helluva hair-raising ordeal intact, but I have no idea how many takes were made to complete the scene to the director's satisfaction.

Slightly nerdy explanation: Resolve the bullet velocity into one parallel to the wall and one perpendicular into the wall.

The bullet deforms on hitting the wall, absorbing the velocity component perpendicular into the wall. This leaves the bullet with a velocity more toward moving along the wall.

Jeff White said:

It works! I've done it. Officers trained in skip shooting have shot suspects hiding behind vehicles by skip shooting and having the rounds go under the vehicle and hit the suspect in the ankles.

Click to expand...

OK, maybe now I'm getting the picture...

If you're that good to shoot at just the right angle/degree, the round will deflect just enough -- under...what? six inches or so of car or truck? -- to hit the bad guy in the ankle or foot? Feasible enough; but you must be one helluva marksman, I would think, to pull off such an Annie Oakley of a shot.

I think you are all thinking to much in the line of billiards.
The problem is finding the maximum angle, anything past that will pretty much achieve the desired effect.

shoot at just the right angle/degree

Click to expand...

Not all that angle dependent. It's about inelastic collisions with energy conversion. The energy lost to deformation, or surface displacement causes the only remaining velocity component to be close to parallel to the surface the bullet hit.

This is not like billiards where the hard balls have nearly elastic collisions.

harrygunner said:

Not all that angle dependent. It's about inelastic collisions with energy conversion. The energy lost to deformation, or surface displacement causes the only remaining velocity component to be close to parallel to the surface the bullet hit.

This is not like billiards where the hard balls have nearly elastic collisions.

Click to expand...

OK, I give up; and I'll take the word of people more inclined to the physics aspect of the situation. (Sheesh!...feel like a dope who sweated through basic math and just enrolled in a course on quantum mechanics.)

Ive skipped probably many hundreds if not thousands of bullets off water, ice and frozen ground as a kid. We had a place out in the woods with a river alongside. Shooting at any half shallow angle would skip bullets off water. Sometimes the angle wasn't even that shallow and the bullets would skip. You could either see the skips hit the hills behind or hear them hit the trees. Have skipped bullets on hard dry ground in the west also. Watching the bullet bounce off into the dusty distance was interesting.

This is just fascinating. I would never have imagined such a thing. Thanks for all the explanations.

Malamute said:

Ive skipped probably many hundreds if not thousands of bullets off water, ice and frozen ground as a kid. We had a place out in the woods with a river alongside. Shooting at any half shallow angle would skip bullets off water. Sometimes the angle wasn't even that shallow and the bullets would skip. You could either see the skips hit the hills behind or hear them hit the trees. Have skipped bullets on hard dry ground in the west also. Watching the bullet bounce off into the dusty distance was interesting.

Click to expand...

I see... kinda like skipping shale or other flattened stones off the surface of a pond and watching them bounce, bounce, bounce. Even though the water/asphalt is "softer", for lack of a better term, the projectile will glance upwards and hopefully hit the intended target. Am I right?