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17 Most Important Gunfight Stats: Backed By Data and Real World Experience - Tier Three Tactical

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Skip to contentJake,Gunfights are awesome to watch on TV. &nbsp;The good guy wins, and bad guys go flying through the air in a spray of blood. &nbsp;Unfortunately, these types of images we see on the silver screen rarely have much in common with reality. &nbsp;This can lead us as armed professionals, and concerned citizens, to make some critical errors if we ever find ourselves on a two way range. &nbsp;Keep reading to discover the 17 most important gunfight statistics backed by data and real world experience. &nbsp;This article will break down a wide variety of statistics by topic, in the hopes that we can clarify some persistent errors in our thinking. &nbsp;The first area we are going to cover is the likelihood an armed person will even be&nbsp;in a gunfight.1. Each year there are roughly 900-1000 persons shot by police officers (source).2. In an Officer’s career, there is a 12% chance that they&nbsp;will fire their weapon (source)3. In 2012 the Violence Policy Center counted 259 justifiable homicides, where citizens defended themselves and killed their attacker. (source)4.&nbsp;National Crime Victimization Survey estimates that about 67,740 times a year a crime is stopped by the presence of a firearm. (source)5. In&nbsp;2012, there were 1.2 million violent crimes, defined as murder, forcible rape, robbery and aggravated assault which would justify the use of a firearm (source)6. When you divide stat 4 by stat 5 you see that about 5.6% of violent crimes are stopped by the presence of a weapon.I like to first point out the numbers of police officers that are involved in shootings annually, which is incredibly low, considering the amount of police contact with the public. &nbsp;This is also important to note because a police officer’s sworn duties put them in dangerous volatile situations, where use of force is more common than would be the norm for your average citizen. &nbsp;From these stats, we can infer that a police officer is roughly twice as likely to use their firearms as the average citizen.Next, it’s important to understand that firearms realistically stop a low amount of crimes, and are present in the commission of many more. &nbsp;For example, in statistic 3 we see that there were 259 cases of a civilians defending themselves, and killing their attacker. In that same year there were over 8300 cases of homicide, where a firearm was used.Now, I know some people might think that I’m anti gun because of these stats. &nbsp;Nothing could be further from the truth. &nbsp;Facts are facts. &nbsp;A non criminal&nbsp;is much more likely to be killed by a firearm than they are to kill with one. &nbsp;That does not mean that we should not be ready and well trained to use them, because as we saw in stat 4 they were key in stopping over 67,000 criminal acts.This section will cover some key data&nbsp;on deciding to pull a gun, including&nbsp;just how long that might take.7. The average time for a police officer to mentally justify using their weapons was .21 sec for a simple scenario, .87sec for a complex one.&nbsp;(source)8. The average time it takes for someone to draw from a level 1, friction retention holster, is 1.71 sec9. &nbsp;World Class shooters can draw and fire from a level 1 holster in .76 sec in this case Jerry MiculekWe can see that there is huge room for improvement in our ability to draw our weapon from a holster. &nbsp;Obviously level 1 holsters are the quickest, and more secure holsters i.e level 3 holsters, will take longer, as will drawing from concealment. &nbsp;From the stats above it looks like we can expect that a proficient shooter can draw and fire a weapon in about 1.5 seconds, including the decision to use deadly force.This means that we need to create at least this much time and distance to employ our weapons once we are in a situations that warrants it. &nbsp;Check out this video for an excellent demonstration of the utility in creating time and space.These stats will cover what we need to know about common distances, and times of occurrence &nbsp;in gunfights.10. &nbsp;The deadliest distances for police gunfights is 3-6 feet. (Source)11. &nbsp;Experts were only 10% more accurate than novices between 3 and 15 ft. (Source)12. &nbsp;About 60% of police shootings occur during hours of darkness (Source)Often times we assume that skill will make all the difference in deadly force encounters. &nbsp;This is true, but only at extended distances, where it is truly difficult to hit your target. &nbsp;If you read the source for stat 11, you will see that even shooters that have never touched a gun before can accurately point shoot a&nbsp;weapon at distances of less than 15 feet. &nbsp;Alarmingly, they are more likely to hit the head because that is where their vision natural goes; where as trained personnel fire center of mass most of time.Even if you look as badass as these dudes, you’re still in a shit sandwhich if you are in a 3 ft gunfight because it requires very little skill to be very deadly. So we need some method to create time and distance to enhance our survivability.This section will cover the stats relating to the rounds fired, movements, and other important factors.13. If you stand still in a gunfight you have an 85% chance of being shot, and 51% chance of being shot in the torso. (Source)14. If you move and shoot you have a 47% chance of being hit, with 11% chance of a torso shot. (Source)15. Seeking cover and returning fire reduces your chance of being shot to 26% with a 6% torso hit rate. (Source)16. The most common caliber to be shot with is 9mm (Source)17. Most gunfights average 3.59 rounds per incident (Source)The vast majority of our firearms practice is flat footed on the range. &nbsp;While this is a necessary part of practicing fundamentals, it will surely get us killed if we fight this way. &nbsp;If at all possible you need to seek cover in a gunfight, or at the very least you need to move and shoot.These skills are very advanced, and the vast majority of folks will need to master the simpler tasks of shooting first. &nbsp;I highly recommend seeking out force on force training with qualified instructors to practice these advanced concepts.If you like Tier Three and want all of your friends and family to know it immediately then check out our gear store!There are many good resources you can use to help you become a more proficient gunfighter. &nbsp;If you are trying to learn the fundamentals, I recommend checking out some of Rob Leatham’s videos on Youtube, &nbsp;as he very quickly breaks down what you need to focus on an what you don’t.I also think there is a lot of value in books, imagine that, a Marine reading. &nbsp;My favorite book on the subject of pistol fighting is, Stay in the Fight!!! A Warriors Guide to Combat Pistol. (affiliate link to Amazon). &nbsp;The author Kyle Lamb was a former Sgt Maj in the Army’s Delta Force, and he has a rocking beard, which is all the credibility I need.The book breaks down what exactly you need to look for in a pistol, accessories, and how to employ it from the basics, to the most advanced principles. &nbsp;If you are more into long gun shooting&nbsp;(Amazon affiliate link), he has an excellent version for that as well.These stats are interesting in and of themselves, but that’s not really what you should take away from this article. &nbsp;You should keep in mind how these facts might affect your future safety. &nbsp;Likewise, you need to be honest with yourself and ask if the type of training you are currently doing actually mirrors the conditions you are likely to encounter in the real world. If you are a 25yd bullseye master, but you’ve never shot on the move, you are in for a rude awakening. &nbsp;If self defense is your goal, then you need to train realistically, and you need to work on things you suck at.PreviousNextThis paragraph is accurate but VERY misleading.“Next, it’s important to understand that firearms realistically stop a very low amount of crimes, and are present in the commission of many more. For example, in statistic 3 we see that there were 259 cases of a civilians defending themselves, and killing their attacker. In that same year there were over 8300 cases of homicide, where a firearm was used.”The data you cite only shows that armed civilians realistically KILL a small number of attackers. It provides no basis whatsoever for GUESSING at how many crimes are “realistically stop[ped]”.Why? Because the police need to subdue and capture the bad guy while the civilian only needs to make the bad guy stop the attack. This is why survey data (the only way of asking this question) demonstrates that 98% of civilian defensive gun uses are successful merely by displaying the gun and determination to use it. Bad guy SEES gun, bad guy RUNS away. No shots fired, no police report, no official statistics.Award-winning Criminologist Gary Kleck at Florida State found that “display and run” incidents occurred about 1.5 Million times in the late 1990s. The number will be greater now.Civilians need guns, civilians use guns in self-defense, untold lives are saved by that defensive use.The Violence Policy Center numbers are artificially low. NRA armed citizen anecdotes provide greater numbers of successful armed defense. VPC considers a successful defense only to be the private citizen killing an attacker, which ignores “subdue and capture” , “display and flee”, or wounding incidents.John Lott and the Crime Prevention Research Center have much better and more broad based data- available to the VPC as well but ignored by them.As a trainer whininstruct cops and teaches remedial handgun to peace officers, I am continually struck by a couple of things-1) most cops do not have much skill with weapons 2) in most places in the civilian world, committed citizens are better shots than most civilian cops.In the civilian world, the police use of weapons and police defensive engagements are significantly different from those involving private citizens.“Violence Policy Center”??? ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha…. Tell us another funny one.“The true measure of the protective benefits of guns are the lives saved, the injuries prevented, the medical costs saved, and the property protected – not the burglar or rapist body count. Since only 0.1% to 0.2% of defensive gun usage involves the death of the criminal,10 any study, such as this, that counts criminal deaths as the only measure of the protective benefits of guns will expectedly underestimate the benefits of firearms by a factor of 500 to 1,000….” Suter EA.Guns in the medical literature–a failure of peer review.J Med Assoc Ga. 1994 Mar;83(3):133-48. Review.“As ten studies have shown, in any year, about 1 to 2.5 million Americans use guns to protect themselves and their families. and about 400,000 of those defenders believe that they would almost certainly have lost their lives if they had not had a gun for defense.[annotated in Kleck G. Point blank: guns and violence in america. New York: Aldine de Gruyter. 1991.; Kleck G and Gertz M. Armed resistance to crime: the prevalence and nature of self-defense with a gun. Journal of Criminal Law &amp; Criminology. Summer 1995: 86., see also Lott, J] Even if only one-tenth of those defenders are correct, the lives saved by guns would still be more numerous than the lives lost to guns. The flaws in the only study to suggest otherwise, the outlier data of the National Crime Victimization Survey (NCVS), have been discussed elsewhere. [Kleck G and Gertz M. Armed resistance to crime: the prevalence and nature of self-defense with a gun. Journal of Criminal Law &amp; Criminology. Summer 1995: 86.] Briefly, the NCVS is a study of victimization, not defense, and, by its design, undercounts the most numerous types of defensive gun use (e.g. women protecting against domestic attacks). As additional sources of undercount error, the NCVS is the only such survey conducted by law enforcement and the only study in which the respondents are denied anonymity. When any statistic, such as the NCVS count of defensive gun use, is at odds with every other measurement, it is discarded.Nonetheless, even those US Bureau of Justice Statistics samples show that defense with a gun results in fewer injuries to the defender (17.4%) than resisting with less powerful means (knives, 40.3%; other weapon, 22%; physical force, 50.8%; evasion, 34.9%; etc.) and in fewer injuries than not resisting at all (24.7%).11 Guns are the safest and most effective means of self defense. This is particularly important to women, the elderly, the physically challenged, those who are most vulnerable to vicious and bigger male predators….” Suter EA, Waters WC 4th, Murray GB, Hopkins CB, Asiaf J, Moore JB, Fackler M, Cowan DN, Eckenhoff RG, Singer TR, et al.Violence in America. Effective solutions.J Med Assoc Ga. 1995 Jun;84(6):253-63. Review.Add the multivariate analyses conducted by Lott et al. to what we knew even in the 1990’s and your underestimate of defensive gun uses withers even further.Re: Gunfight Statistic #6Were they using Obama’s Common Core math here or what?1,200,000/67,740=17.7That said, even though 17.7% is 3x higher than the 5% the article claims, I’m still far more inclined to buy Dr. Suter’s April 19, 2017 argument.In most states “defensive display” in which the firearm is not discharged (not USE of deadly force) but merely drawn to low ready with a statement that it will be fired IF necessary is classified as “reasonable force”. The LESS restrictive rules for reasonable force then apply. Public policy favors scaring the assailant away over waiting until shooting is unavoidable and thus “necessary”.I have been studying this for years, Dr. Ed Suter is correct. Anything from Professor Gary Kleck is gold.Please get your numbers right.67,740 out of 1,200,000 is NOT 18%. It is just under 6%.RE: Gunfight statistic # 12.The time period in which 36% of the felonious deaths and of assaults with injury occur is between 20:01 and 02:00 hours with the period between 04:01 and 06:00 having the least with only 4% of the felonious deaths or the assaults with injury.Lighting conditions during in which 20.6% of the felonious deaths and 45.3% of assaults with injury occur is good. This means that 65.9% of all incidents occur during favorable lighting conditions with only 34.1% of the situations occurring under reduced lighting. While this may seem counter-intuitive, with a large number of incidences occurring between 20:01 and 02:00 hours, 27.3% of all incidences occur under artificial light. LEOKA data analysis by Dr. Terry N. WollertThe statement that “experts are only 10% more accurate than novice shooters” is extremely misleading. If you look at the study that concludes that statement you can read their definition of what an expert, intermediate, and novice shooters are. Paraphrasing, an expert shooter has had police academy or military training. For the majority both the police academy and military don’t produce expert shooters. This is not to say that anyone who goes to the police academy or trains in the military is getting sub-par training. Typically speaking most police officers and military personnel who are “qualified” on their service pistol are still not at a S.W.A.T or special forces performance level of shooting. They are simply qualified to meet basic standards set forth by a police agency or the branch of service they are in. Next, this study says that an intermediate level shooting is quantified by anyone who hunts every year or has recreational shooting experience. Coming from a person who works at a shooting range in a state where many of the population enjoys the sport of shooting, most people who are recreational shooters don’t have any sort of knowledge on proper technique when it comes to pistol shooting. Let alone any weapon system. Finally, a novice shooter is classified as someone who has fired 0-2 times in their life. These novice shooters, obviously, without prior research or classroom experience will have no knowledge on proper shooting technique. I would lump probably most of what this study’s author would consider expert and intermediate shooters into the novice category. This study is flawed and made to believe that “expert” shooters are somehow indifferent in shooting ability from a “novice” shooter.Late to the discussion, but first wanted to point out the irony of the fact that the individual making the ‘crack’ about common core math is the one who incorrectly calculated the percentage (innocent enough mistake, I’m sure)… So, to reiterate, the (approximately) 5% number IS correct as far a percentage of violent crimes prevented by use/presence of a gun according to the article. Secondly, and more importantly, I’m an intermediate level (or novice according to Tyson) gun user who was robbed a few months ago. My family and I were home, and the perpetrator stole an item out of my garage. He was caught thanks to my wife’s good ears at 2 a.m. and especially thanks to extremely fast response by local police, including a german shepherd (good boy!). The burglar has a long rap sheet, and will be serving (another) 3 years. That said, I’m interested in learning more about gun use in self defense, and I found the article and following commentary to be engaging and informative. Thanks!You can’t divide X crimes by Y crimes stopped with guns and arrive at those numbers. You have to factor in what percentage of people actually carry, and that shows that MANY more crimes could be stopped with responsible carry.Yep, no worries! like i said, innocent enough mistake. And, Jake, thanks for the additional info“7. The average time for a police officer to mentally justify using their weapons was .21 sec for a simple scenario, .87sec for a complex one.”That should scare just about everyone. What does this mean? Stay far away from policemen!Regarding stat 1; police *kill* roughly a thousand per year; they *shoot* many more than that.pretty late to the discussion just my 2 cents. the left wingers say 67k uses. the FBI in the past have stated 250k uses and the NRA says about 2 million uses. i’m gonna hazard a guess and say defensive uses is most likely in the range of 100’s of thousands per year. this far out weights any concerns to about 8-10k murders per year.and what ever happened to life, limb or PROPERTY as a justifiable reason to use ones firearm?defensive firearms training is EXTREMELY important. train train train….wallyThese statistics are worthless without standard deviation or variance.Loading…“We are a participant in the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program, an affiliate advertising program designed to provide a means for us to earn fees by linking to Amazon.com and affiliated sites.”Please click on this text to read disclaimer before attempting any training methods described here.&nbsp;&nbsp;Tier Three Tactical is your number one site to learn about scientifically backed fitness, real tactical gear, and the latest equipment.Contact us: jjackson@tierthreetactical.com

Skip to contentJake,Gunfights are awesome to watch on TV. &nbsp;The good guy wins, and bad guys go flying through the air in a spray of blood. &nbsp;Unfortunately, these types of images we see on the silver screen rarely have much in common with reality. &nbsp;This can lead us as armed professionals, and concerned citizens, to make some critical errors if we ever find ourselves on a two way range. &nbsp;Keep reading to discover the 17 most important gunfight statistics backed by data and real world experience. &nbsp;This article will break down a wide variety of statistics by topic, in the...

17 Most Important Gunfight Stats: Backed By Data and Real World Experience - Tier Three Tactical

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