Finally, some SD stats

[Pro2a]

Since becoming very involved in firearms when moving to Arizona 7 years ago, I shot paper for 5 years, and made some mild improvements. It took me that long and more research to figure out that shooting bullseyes (I’m not saying I was knocking those out) absolutely does not translate to self defense. I then started shifting to a self defense focus in the past two years, by taking some basic pistol and rifle courses.
I searched high and low on the internet for the self defense statistics that we want to hear about. Those stats are less than few and far in between, to make an understatement. Almost nobody keeps those stats. Then magically, while striving to improve, I stumbled across the best compilation of them by accident. I bought Mike Seeklander’s book “Defensive Handgun Training Drills,” which seems to be Chapter 9 in a much larger book. In it he has a 5 page excerpt from Tom Givens’ writings which tell some astounding facts and observations. I say writings, because I can’t find it anywhere else on the internet.
Tom is my new self defense guru, and some of you might already know him. Over the thousands of people he’s trained over the years, at the time of this writing, 64 students have reported back of involved gunplay with criminals. The combined record of those students is 61 wins, zero losses, and 3 forfeits. The three forfeits were encounters with no gun. I guess he’s saying please bring a gun to a gunfight. Needless to say, Tom givens is doing something right. I would copy and make it a pdf or something, but its in a book, and it would look like hell, and I’m a little OCD about that. What I will attempt is to break it down and shorten it even more.
So here’s my synopsis of his findings, and a conclusion of priorities---
What skills are primary and what skills are secondary? A lot of trainers are guided by the wrong information. The FBI has gathered statistics for law enforcement shooting incidents. Every year a report comes out called LEOKA (Law Enforcement Officers Killed in Action.) Trainers setting up a program with this information, are training you for situations that don’t apply to a private citizen.
Police open carry, and are given (in most cases) a partial picture of what kind of situation that pertains to what they are facing. The private citizen is given no information, and has to be the reactor. Bad guy chooses the time and place of the attack.
Generally, police shooting fall into three categories- Traffic stops, bar enforcement, and domestic violence. None of these crossover to the private citizen.
What does? Experiences of the FBI and DEA. FBI agents are required to keep their weapons concealed while in business clothing and out of the office. So when out in public, the FBI dresses like private citizens and conceal carry. They don’t do traffic stops, don’t do bar enforcement, and don’t take domestic violence calls. Surprisingly, half of FBI shootings are done by thugs who don’t realize they are law enforcement, and are just trying to rob or carjack them. These incidents closely resemble the conditions of a private armed citizen. They are involved in about 20-30 shootings per year, and 92% occurred at a distance of 6-10 feet, and the average number of rounds fired was 3.2. This is a close resemblance to Tom’s students that were involved in their own shootings. The similarities speak to the condition that we should be training to the experiences that the FBI sees in their own encounters. The DEA gets into a lot of plain clothes shootings because of their undercover narcotics work. Similarly, the DEA had 44 defensive shootings. The average distance was 14.6 feet and number of shots fired was five.
Some other statistics from his students encounters: Distances and shots
93.1% of shootings occurred between 3 and 7 yards, 80% occurred between 3 and 5 yards. Among all the students, incidents required a fairly small number of shots, typically 3 to 4 rounds. There were three incidents in which 8, 11, and 12 rounds were fired. None of the students had to reload; I find this as a statistic that stands out the most, when you get some of the die-hards that swear by carrying two spare mags, but yes, I’ve heard the old line, ”I’ve never gone into a gunfight wishing I had less bullets.” True enough, but I never gone into a gunfight, so I’m going to train the greatest likelihood of what’s going to happen to me. But to conclude these shooting stats, the majority of student shootings have involved two handed eye level shooting that resulted in a hit ratio of 95%.
One last thing about darkness. There’s an unproven line floating around the internet that 80% of pistol fights occur in the dark. A more accurate statement would that 80% pistol fights occur during the hours of darkness, and for statistical purposes the hours of darkness are between 6PM and 6AM. On the side topic of situational awareness, most robberies occur in a parking lot; back to Mr Givens’ opinion, modern commercial lighting really leaves us in well lit areas where criminals are most likely to attack. Some people have reported that modern commercial lighting allowed their sights to be brighter than on an overcast day.

Keeping all this mumbo jumbo in mind, Tom Givens recommends that the private citizen should be developing skills in this order, listed from most important to least.

1. Fast, efficient, reliable presentation of the handgun from concealment. The majority of gunfights are won based on presentation alone.
2. The ability to accurately place several quick shots into an anatomically important area of the target at 3 to 5 yards.
3. The ability to place an anatomically important hit in a reasonable amount of time beyond 7 yards out to at least 25 yards.
4. The ability to reload the handgun quickly and efficiently, especially if it holds less than 10 rounds.
5. The ability to rapidly move off line without hindering the presentation from concealment.

As far as #5 goes, I know that Tom is the undeniable expert here, but I think that “getting off the X” should be incorporated as muscle memory when making the presentation. It never hurts to move and avoid nothing, for someday you may move out of muscle memory and avoid something really bad.

[xerts1191]

Good read, thank you.

[Azbuilder]

Thank you excellent ! Just ordered the book.

[devildogandboy]

very interesting facts and good read!

[Pro2a]

Thanks guys, happy to spread some factual knowledge, I loved how this is some real world data finally summed up.
I see I didn't include the title of where all this came from, Training Priorities, by Tom Givens.
I don't know if that's a writing or an actual book.
His website is rangemaster.com, and this is his actual bio page, to which you can find the rest of the site.....http://rangemaster.com/about/tom-givens/

[zonie77]

Thanks for the excellent post.

I've been interested in the stats since I moved out here (1977) and have researched a lot of crime stats, both here and worldwide. One major thing I learned is that there is little consistency in reporting between countries, leading to a lot of false comparisons. Even within the US it's hard to get accurate information as the reporting often gets confusing when a perpetrator gets killed it may go down as another homicide instead of a justifiable homicide. My interest was along the line of "do legal guns reduce crime" than a breakdown on self defense events.

I want to add some info on a class at Glendale Comm College, AJS153. It's drawing from open carry but it covers a lot of the skills that Pro2a lists in his post. It's a 2 day class and it's a bargain as it's 1 credit hour so about $150.

[SUPER BUBBA]

They taught us this stuff in the police academy. We dealt with national statistics and was more centered on police involved shootings but IIRC most armed encounters happen within five to seven yards and are done in three to five shots.