What Could Possibly Go Wrong: Back in the Day Edition

1. As militarized as Law Enforcement is today, I think digressing a couple decades would not be too bad; that said therre are a lot of outstanding cops who don’t get the credit they deserve.

   • Sure are. All those cops that quit the force deserve plenty of credit, and they dont get nearly enough of it.

2. What I want to know is how the heck that Cop new the desription of the perp. “Young kid with a gun” is not the same as, “White male wearing a red Plaid Jaket”.

   • that’s profiling.

   • I noticed that too.

3. Were it not for Jeff Cooper and Friends’ founding of competitive pistol shooting,this video would be considered current tactical training material.

4. Nowadays, they shoot the dog first.

5. Hip shooting shotgun? ‘Point shoulder’ single hand pistol from 7 to 15 yards? No more.

6. One of the things that has regressed from those days is the general level of police marksmanship, thanks to “spray and pray” tactics brought in with high-cap semiauto pistols.

   When you had only five or six shots in a wheelgun, and maybe two speedloaders on your belt, it paid to make them count.

   Fortunately, many revolvers can be exceedingly accurate weapons, especially when used in single-action modes. The common choice of .38 Special was a bit anemic by that day’s standards or today’s, and many departments back then were using basic lead pills.

   The instruction about how to take cover is especially good, tho. Most people don’t remember those issues about ricocheted rounds…

7. I think for a civilian shooter the close combat 1 hand use of the gun is still very relevant today. A legitimate DGU for a non cop is going to be at inside the house ranges, most likely at wrestling range and taking the extra fraction of a second to get into a 2 handed stance might get you killed. We’re not cops or soldiers and I believe our training needs to reflect this.

   I’m an old fart and I’m still most comfortable with the revolver and shotgun combo.

   • There’s a reason you old timers went with revolvers and shotguns. They’re simple, reliable, and in the right caliber or gauge more than capable of dealing with your typical BG.

     One thing in particular that I love about revolvers is that no goon will ever be able to push the slide out of battery and make it inoperable.

     • At least twice that I can think of we’ve had posts on this site that talked about semi auto slides being fouled by close proximity and the gun would no longer function. Outside of Hollywood I’ve never heard of that happening with a revolver. Would be interesting to find out.

       • Theoretically someone could jam their hand or an object of some sort between the external hammer and firing mechanism of a revolver to prevent it from touching off a round. Never heard of it happening, though and it’s an impossibility if you’re using a hammerless snub.

         I personally do not trust semi-autos for pocket carry duty after the lackluster performance of the M&P Shield I bought (and subsequently traded). Also, the Ruger LCR in .357 makes more sense to me than the Springfield XDS and the Shield. 5 .357 vs. 5 .45 ACP and 6 9mm. I’ll take .357 over both and enjoy practicing with cheap .38 special.

         YMMV, of course.

       • I’ve read fiction where a character is supposed to have grabbed the cylinder such that their fingers wedge between the frame and cylinder flutes; preventing it from indexing and coming into a cocked position. But I’ve never heard of that in real life any more than I’ve heard an account of someone pushing a slide out of battery.

         However, Beretta did increase the strength of the linkage on the m92 slide so that it couldn’t be “torn off” a la Jet Li in Lethal Weapon 4. That might have just been PR in response to the movie though.

       • I don’t remember where I read it, but I do remember a case of a police officer who was disarmed getting the web of his hand between the hammer and cylinder of his revolver (now jammed against his chest). He ended up with a broken thumb and a good cut, but alive.

       • There was an incident here with a PD officer about a month out of the academy (I went to the academy with him) who actually did get his thumb in front of a revolver hammer that was in the process of being fired at him. The firing pin put a hole in his thumbnail. Unfortunately, it was on the second shot. First shot hit him but didn’t put him out of the fight and he was able to get the gun away from the dirtbag.

       • It doesn’t even necessarily have to be a deliberate act by the BG, just close quarters contact of some type moving the slide a bit out of battery will do the trick. That seems to be what happened with George Zimmerman’s Kel-Tec, for instance.

       • I own both revolvers and semi’s. I don’t fault anybody for their choice of gun to use when the shtf. For me a lifetime of using the revolver has placed me in the position of choosing it by default.

         That’s one of the reasons I bought a sigma. It’s an auto that runs more like a double action revolver. I have been working my sigma into the rotation as I become more comfortable with it.

         But if I was forced to pick only 1 gun it would be my smith model 10.

       • Although that could’ve also been someone or something keeping the slide from cycling. Still, not a good situation.

     • Actually it is possible to grab a cylinder and keep it from rotating (don’t try it on your own gun–you can mangle your timing), but don’t count on it. Your best bet (and top priority) is to just point the durn thing away from you (and hopefully everybody else but maybe the bad guy), maybe get hand between hammer and pin (ouch) unless it’s hammerless. And woe if your hand is in the way of the cylinder gap if she does go off. (All of these work best assuming a massive revolver and a dumbass basically handing their gun to you.)

8. I learned 2 things:
   #1 that ricochets can be your friend (or not)
   #2 that mini 14’s are far more accurate than my personal experience would indicate

9. I call fake on the video, he didn’t have a reflex scope, tac light, vertical forward grip, collapsing stock, lasers, or even a gripod or magwell grip.

   • No shoulder thingy that goes up, either.

10. I hope modern day training has changed the way they shoot from cover. The video showed that bullets tend to ricochet staying close to the surface. However another part of the video showed officers standing very close to the corner of the cover wall (putting their head and arm exactly where the ricochets would be). They should get back from that corner one or two steps, giving the ricochets more distance to move farther away from the surface.

11. Wood stocks are out. Plastic and rubber stocks are in.
    Horses are mostly out. Computers are mostly in.
    Men ran the police forces. Now politically-correct-appointee double-minority females who look like men are running more and more liberal cities even though men make up the vast majority of cops.

    When I last lived in San Francisco, mayor Newscum appointed an admin female cop without qualifications to run the department because he liked her department vision poem. It just so happened that ‘Chief Heather Fong’ aka ‘Cheap Leather Thong’ was non-male, non-white, and non-heterosexual but I’m sure those last two points had nothing to do with why she was made Chief.

12. Did any one else think of Dragnt when the movie came on?

    • No, but I kept waiting for Dirty Harry to show up. Same cars, same side burns, same guns…

13. Current training doesn’t do much one handed handgun shooting, and I’m not going to say that is good or bad, just different. No one should train to collect brass and put it in a pocket. And the officer that came around the corner of the bank with his shotgun gave up all cover by standing in the middle of the sidewalk. At least they didn’t show anyone shooting off the roof of their car with only 2 pieces of glass protecting their torso. Some of what they showed in relation to use of cover is pretty good, keeping ones legs out of sight as well as your torso. I was a bit surprised to see shooting weak handed shown as much as it was, something I am ALWAYS telling people to do.

    • +1

      I’ve read that hands are common casualties of gunfire in gunfights. Best to train with both, IMO.

14. Seems there was quite an emphasis on weapons proficiency and marksmanship. Evidently that’s no longer needed. Or something.

15. While there are a good number of things to argue with (most especially wadcutters! Good heavens, never train with those things… oh, wait, Glocks don’t shoot wadcutters), I agree with the notions about one-handed shooting.
    I’ve been able to watch a good number of real police videos, and the first thing that struck me was how common one-handed shooting is in real fights. As mentioned above, the other hand is often needed for other tasks, or the range is so short the second hand could slow the first shot down to fatalness.
    I like my revos- I’m an ICORE match director- and I have a lot of faith in them. But the amount of practice to stay proficient is higher than with modern selfloaders. And, let’s face it, if there’s more than one assailant, six just isn’t likely to be enough, especially in the case of drugged attackers.
    The .38 Special, though, is a suitable caliber if 9mm is; what failed in these old days were the bullets. Gold Dots and DPX overcome that failing.
    And- I was taught decades ago to incapacitate a revolver at close range by grabbing the cylinder- it will stop deader than a doornail (while you can also be deflecting the muzzle). If it’s that close, it’s probably your best hope.
    I shot my Detective Special in a full-blown USPSA match a couple of years ago with Comp III speedloaders and +P ammunition. My friends were rolling on the ground laughing. I got my hits… but it took forever. I hesitate to post this, but… http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hHYHWJRphe4&list=UULZi31hzNjBzHeDT124EEaA&index=50&feature=plcp
    I guess I should avoid 24-round fights.

    • seriously, frickin awesome.

    • Hey! Good job!

16. There were some pretty good points (and some bad ones) in this video. I liked the emphasis on cover, especially keeping feet and elbows behind cover, and talking about becoming familiar enough with the shotgun to remember to release the action to put a round in the chamber.

    I don’t like all the one handed firing (though I think for cops and CCW types, there is goodness to being able to fire one handed from the hip at what my boss used to call bad breath distance). The shotgun fired from the hip just bugs me. It’s a shoulder fired weapon, even with buck from a short barrel the sights are your friend, and follow up shots are much quicker. Firing a recoil operated semi-auto from the hip could be deadly, as often the action won’t cycle due to the weak grip.

    • I’ve never met an autoloading shotgun that wouldn’t cycle just fine from the hip.

17. The dude that is learning pistol shooting from behind cover has horrible trigger finger discipline.

    • Exactly. One of the (bad) legacies of the double-action revolver.
      You could get away with that stuff on one of those.

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