Q about survivability of weapon during firefight

[MTMilitiaman]

Some friends and I do a little paintballing now and then. It isn't formal at all--the velocity on all our markers would never be legal in competition Of course we use masks and have some rules, but mostly it is just some friends running around the woods.

All of us are fairly intelligent and most of us have infantry training in the military. So we all know how to use cover, and common sense dictates exposing as little as possible to fire.

On thing I have noticed is a large amounts of hits to the head/facemask and marker, due to the fact that this is often all that is exposed. And it got me thinking, is there any studies done to determine how often primary weapons are struck in combat? It seems like even the most durable firearm would have a hard time remaining operable after taking a round and having one's primary weapon go down in such a manner would definitely have a derogatory effect on combat effectiveness. As an 0311, I was never even issued a secondary. With the weapon being much of all that is exposed when firing from cover, it would make sense that they would take a hits, but I rarely hear of it occurring. Why?

 

[JImbothefiveth]

Maybe because 1:In paintball, you can probably make more precise shots compared to an actual firefight, due to less adrenaline.
2:Real rifle rounds can sometimes penetrate cover. and 3:most civilian firefights probably involve handguns. 4:In a real firefight, you probably won't be aiming for he weapon.
5:A real weapon may be able to withstand being shot a few times.

 

[Albatross]

I recall reading once that handguns (and hands) are often shot during civilian firefights. Something about people focusing on the gun.

Can't really comment about rifles in war.

I can agree though that paintball markers definitely get shot to pieces when playing.

 

[BlacklabelOP]

Paintball is like video games, the same people who are play Halo like GODS and are good at paintball will be ducking when real rounds are coming.

Watch Massad Ayoob's Shoot to Live - Gunfight Survival

he covers first hand accounts of cops getting shot in weapons and gun hands because people are focusing on the weapon.

 

[Treo]

will be ducking when real rounds are coming.

Wouldn't you kinda have to be an idiot not to?

 

[BlacklabelOP]

TEE HEE

As opposed to running straight into paintballs.

 

[MTMilitiaman]

As opposed to running straight into paintballs.

Okay, just to be straight, I am not saying getting shot by a paintball is anything like getting shot in real life or that the game of paintball applies directly to actual combat in terms of tactics applied.

This topic was not intended to be a paintball bashing session nor was it supposed to become a discussion on the validity of paintball as training for real-life.

I will say that if paintballing was so un-realistic and inapplicable to combat, the military wouldn't be using it as a training method. That is, after all, what Simulitions are.

And while it is indisputably far better than being tagged by an actual 5.56 round, anyone who has ever taken a rapid succession of paintballs is familiar with the pain response they inflict. Esp with us shooting well above normal tournament level velocities, the pain becomes enough to very much encourage someone to not experience it again if at all possible. At 330 to 350 fps, the balls blow bark off trees and inside 15 to 20 feet cause instant bruising and ugly, bloody welts to develop. Not many people run directly into them, and if they do once, chances are, they never do it again.

We've killed cats, squirrels, and birds with them, if that is any indication of the energy they are capable of delivering without penetrating tissue.

Remember, paintball markers are even being used in conjunction with special .68 caliber balls as a method of riot control. It isn't a pleasant experience to be at the receiving end of 12 to 18 balls per second, which many markers are capable of easily achieving. It just isn't.

So now, if we could please lay the paintballing discussion to rest and get to the intended topic here, which is the probability of having one's primary weapon hit in combat, and the chances of it surviving a hit and allowing its operator to remain combat effective.

 

[Mr Crowley]

about midway down the page this guy shoots his pistol with another gun to see if it will survive.

http://www.theprepared.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=90


He really tortures the hell out of that gun.

 

[Jim Watson]

A dealer here showed a S&W 5906 with a bullet hole in the trigger guard. The LEO owner of course had a badly mangled trigger finger, lucky to keep the digit. So it does happen.

 

[Racegunner]

Two LEO friends of mine commented that they did indeed shoot at and hit weapons in simulation exercises. One officer took multiple hits to the hands and pistol with simmunition (it was painful). It was not intentional, just where they were focused. I've read other accounts of soldiers loosing fingers.
In one of Don Burgett's books, I believe he had an M1 shot out from under him a time or maybe two.

 

[JoeSlomo]

...that they would take a hits, but I rarely hear of it occurring. Why?

Weapons have a very small profile, and while weapons DO get hit, the chances are slim. In Panama back in 89' our C co. had a TL that took an AK round THROUGH the front sight post of his weapon while clearing a latrine. In Somalia 93' we had 203's get shot, and gas tubes on 16's get hit rendering them useless.

It happens.

Considering that statistically speaking it takes quite a few rounds per actual hit on a body, the chances of hitting a weapon are even greater.

 

[Fred Fuller]

One often mentioned firefight is the FBI's Miami Shootout. Three of the FBI agents involved, out of a total of eight, were struck in the hands/arms. Combat focus shooting is what happens in firefights mainly involving handguns, and people tend to focus unconsciously on their opponents' firearms. And hit them, often enough. Details of the Miami firefight are at at http://www.firearmstactical.com/briefs7.htm and elsewhere on the web, if you're interested.

A good friend of mine is in small arms repair 'somewhere in the war zones'. They get a certain number of small arms struck by bullets and shrapnel. As a percentage of weapons in theater it isn't nearly as high as the Miami firefight, but it happens sometimes. Some can be fixed, some can't- depends on what happens.

Military combat is often much more of a 'to whom it may concern' business, conducted at longer ranges with long arms/crew served weapons, than is an encounter on the street stateside. Up close and personal means there's more focus on the individual opponent, shorter ranges, and thus more likelihood of a handgun being struck by a bullet than is the case in military combat.

I haven't made a scientific study of this, those are just conclusions based on observations for a good while now...

FWIW,

lpl

 

[BullfrogKen]

It happens often. Weapons get hit. Hands and arms get hit.

Most of our role players wear gloves during simunitions and force on force exercises.


My opinion is its often dismissed too easily as weapon focus. Go stand in the mirror, and point a red gun at your reflection. Now, if you wanted to shoot your reflection in the cardiac triangle, what's in the way? Your arms, your hands, and the red gun.


If I charge into the scenario as a role player with my gun over my head, announce a bank robbery, and discharge a round into the ceiling, my hands and arms don't get hit. My chest and abdomen do.

If I'm aimed in when the gunfight happens, I know if I don't have gloves on my hands are gonna get torn up. We've even had to push sim rounds out the front of the cylinder on our revolvers before. It happens a lot, so much that I've made sure I have some sort of plan in place for it in my daily activities.

 

[MikeKeyW]

Check out http://www.rap4.com/paintball/os/paintball-gunmarker-c-21.html for realistic force on force training "Markers". I wanted to build a "fun house" using these for CQB and urban training but with everything, it takes $$$. A large enough building and enough containers to represent several buildings, etc. These are a realistic as you can get, http://www.defensereview.com/modules.php?name=News&file=article&sid=246 and in the case of the .43 paintballs even eject brass "casings". Paintball to a new level.

 

[Speedo66]

Detective I talked to once during a trial many years ago in NYC was in a bar up in Harlem when a robbery occured.

He pulled his S&W 2" .38Spl. and immediately got shot in the hand. The bullet pierced the grip and broke the mainspring, putting his revolver out of action.

He ducked behind the bar and continued to point the gun at them and luckily they left.

 

[MTMilitiaman]

Considering that statistically speaking it takes quite a few rounds per actual hit on a body, the chances of hitting a weapon are even greater.

That makes sense. Has it gone up or down from the 500,000 rounds to inflict a single casualty I remember hearing was the case in Vietnam?

My opinion is its often dismissed too easily as weapon focus. Go stand in the mirror, and point a red gun at your reflection. Now, if you wanted to shoot your reflection in the cardiac triangle, what's in the way? Your arms, your hands, and the red gun.

This is why I don't understand idiots who suggest using birdshot, frangibles, or varmint rounds for personal defense. While I don't agree with everything the FBI has ever done, I believe their focus on adequate penetration, and their adamant persistence in achieving it with duty loads makes sense. Disregarding clothing or any barriers, in order to make it to the vitals where it will do some good, a bullet/pellet is likely to have to make it through a forearm/hand, both of which contain numerous bones, through fat and pectoral muscles, the rib cage, and several inches into the chest cavity. Birdshot and varmint bullets just don't have the mass and the construction to pull this off. People these days have too much of a tendency to focus on over penetration, even at the loss of terminal effectiveness, which I think is a mistake.

From a frontal shot, it would seem to me like damaging the front part of the gas system would be the only real way to put a weapon out of commission. Bullets through magazines could more than likely be replaced, and bullets through the forearm or optics might affect combat effectiveness, but it seems like the weapon should still stay operable. A hit to the hand and grip could feasibly do it, esp with handguns that often have operational parts in the grip, but unless the trigger is destroyed, most determined warriors are going to swap hands and stay in the fight.

 

[BullfrogKen]

Agreed, adequate penetration includes more than just measuring the distance from the outer chest wall to the vitals. There are often other body parts that just find a way to get in between our muzzle and the upper chest in fights.


I've seen, in person, sims rounds tie up a revolver cylinder from the front. I've seen pictures of ones where bullets were driven into the front of the cylinder, sometimes whole and sometimes in pieces, and bound it up.

Any round that hits the grip of an autoloader has the potential of crush-fitting the magazine in place. Hitting the front of an autoloader can damage the recoil spring guide just enough to stop up the gun, or otherwise just plain send those parts flying.

There are myriad and numerous ways that guns get put out of action in fights. In the referenced Miami shootout, one agent's revolver was put out of action because, when he went to reload, he got pieces of flesh and bone from his own injured hand lodged under the extractor star. I'm relying on memory here, but as I recall he was ineffective and took no action that made a difference afterwards for the duration of the fight.


Murphy's Law can just plain hit ya sometimes. Some guys were able to realize what happened quickly enough and just decided to find another way to stay in the fight. Sometimes they won, sometimes they lost.

That's just the way it goes. But arms, hands and even the guns themselves get hit pretty often during close quarter fights.

 

[Eyesac]

Interesting!

 

[Claude Clay]

Mr Crowley

your link to ' theprepared' is most interesting.

i would not however trust that dude with a child.........

 

[JoeSlomo]

That makes sense. Has it gone up or down from the 500,000 rounds to inflict a single casualty I remember hearing was the case in Vietnam?

IMO we may have lowered that number just a smidgen, but not by much.


I think the individual skill of the "average" rifleman has gotten a little worse over the years. HOWEVER, I believe the "good" shooters are doing a little better due to the adoption of some pretty decent optics.

 

[mbt2001]

It is a widely documented phenomenon. Luke Short in his gun fight with Jim Courtright did just that, for all intents and purposes, hitting Courtright in the thumb and taking it off. In the 1985 fight, at least one agent's weapon was struck, rendering it useless.

Eyewitness testimony can be used to verify the fact that once a "weapon" is in play, that is what you focus on. In a fire fight, it would make sense that you point at what you are looking at, the weapon, fire and hit the weapon.

 

[auschip]

Not a dig on paintball, but they tend to provide a larger then normal target (the hopper peeking out from the side or above cover). That coupled with the highround count leads you to see more gun/goggle hits.

 

[Elmer]

That makes sense. Has it gone up or down from the 500,000 rounds to inflict a single casualty I remember hearing was the case in Vietnam?

I thought it was 50,000, but no matter. Whatever the number, I think it included ammunition lost, dropped, destroyed, stolen, along with a lot of full auto "fire for effect" shooting at possible targets.

The average infantryman serving in Vietnam may not have been the marksman his father was in WW2, but they weren't that much worse.

 

[RP88]

I can understand guns getting shot out of hands. It's probably instinctual to aim for the face/head, which is usually where the gun of your opponent is going to be if he is aiming at you back.

 

[Sackett]

Please forgive me; I can't find a reference- maybe someone will have it:

I recall hearing about an 'investigation' after a key battle in Iraq, where there seemed to be an inordinate amount of face and head wounds on the enemy dead. The premise being that face and head wounds may indicate assassinations instead of kia.

It turned out that the battle went down in a giant cemetery, and our US Marines (God love 'em) were hitting anything that stuck out over the headstones.

Not a direct answer to the 'survivability' question, but I thought it fit.

S.