As a civilian [/sarcasm], I was trained to take pelvic shots in a multi-day academy-type defensive handgun class. Some people are convinced pelvic shots are effective. Shawn Ryan (Vigilance Elite) has demonstrated pelvic shots on his Youtube channel and claimed that hitting the pelvic bone is "like a frag going off" in there and advised it as a great place to make hits, specifically in reference to handgun use. Whatever your opinion of this guy, he has been trained intensively by people expected to have expertise.
I think pelvic girdle shots are a poor choice. To back that up, I have the opinion of Dr. Martin Fackler:
" I welcome the chance to refute the belief that the pelvic area is a reasonable target during a gunfight. I can find no evidence or valid rationale for intentionally targeting the pelvic area in a gunfight. The reasons against, however, are many. They include:
• From the belt line to the top of the head, the areas most likely to rapidly incapacitate the person hit are concentrated in or near the midline. In the pelvis, however, the blood vessels are located to each side, having diverged from the midline.....
• The pelvic branches of the aorta and inferior venacava are more difficult to hit than their parent vessels -- they are smaller targets, and they diverge....
• Other than soft tissue structures not essential to continuing the gunfight (loops of bowel, bladder) the most likely thing to be struck by shots to the pelvis would be bone. ....The problem is that handgun bullets that hit it would not break the bone but only make a small hole in passing through it: this would do nothing to destroy bony support of the pelvic girdle. The pelvic girdle is essentially a circle: to disrupt its structure significantly would require breaking it in two places......
...
Unfortunately, the pelvis shot fallacy is common. This fallacy, along with other misinformation, is promoted constantly by at least one gun writer who is widely published in the popular gun press. Because of this, I regularly debunk this fallacy by including some of the above rationale in my presentations to law enforcement firearm instructor groups."
I have edited his commentary (as shown by ellipsis) for brevity. If anyone wants to read the comments in complete form, they are in Wound Ballistics Review Volume 4, Number 1.
I reiterate his comments, "I can find no evidence or valid rationale for intentionally targeting the pelvic area in a gunfight." The obvious exception would be if there is no other possible hit.