Former JSOC dude here. Circumstances requiring engaging with pistols == bad day for everyone, so only a few things matter. Front sight focus (which implies maintaining equidistance from the rear sight posts), both eyes open, fast presentation, parallel grip, smooth trigger pull, reacquire, repeat as necessary. And optical sights = more things that can break / run out of batteries / fall off and make noise / etc etc.
> Circumstances requiring engaging with pistols == bad day for everyone
I've shot a bit, but only rimfire long guns, air rifles, and air pistols. The pistols were harder to shoot by a _long_ margin, and I can imagine it'd get orders of magnitude harder w/ more recoil, noise to promote flinching, etc. etc.
So with your comments in mind, and my own limited experience, do you have any idea why every Police-critter here in Australia is armed with a pistol, rather than something easier to use? I mean, in my head it looks like this:
Police officers' main roles, ideally, are not to display a show of force. Think about neighborhood beat walks, to writing tickets to motorists, to handing out citations and doing stop and frisks. In all of those situations, handling a rifle is extremely cumbersome never mind socially awkward. FWIW, in some/manyjurisdictions, patrol vehicles come equipped with a shotgun.
"
Q: Why carry a handgun? Are you expecting trouble?
A: If I were expecting trouble, I'd carry a rifle.
"
i.e., the pistol is an everyday-carry weapon, to take with you if you think a situation might be resolved without use of force. If you know going in you're going to get in a gunfight, you go to the car and grab your shotgun or rifle.
Handguns are drastically easier to carry than rifles.
Hollow point handgun rounds drastically reduce the danger of over-penetration present with rifle rounds for likely police scenarios.
Most plausible scenarios where an officer would be forced to discharge a weapon wouldn't really benefit from a larger, more cumbersome weapon. Police usually have to shoot in close-range engagements that end in a few short seconds.
Cost is not really a factor. Look at the cost of weapons used by police departments. Handguns aren't drastically cheaper than decent rifles.
Your third point hits the nail on the head imho, but this:
> Hollow point handgun rounds drastically reduce the danger of over-penetration present with rifle rounds for likely police scenarios.
Isn't really true anymore. There are modern cartridges for 5.56 that have great ballistics while in the air, and then very reliably dump all their energy into the first thing they hit, to the point where if you shoot drywall they will make a huge hole in it but not significantly harm a person standing a few meters behind it. If you are concerned about overpenetration, today it should guide your selection of ammo, not your weapon.
Citation? If such a round exists I'd be very interested to see it.
Of all the 5.56 vs drywall tests I've seen (and there are lots out there), they never make a hole in drywall larger than 5.56 unless it has yawed, and even then it is a keyhole no larger than the un-deformed round. To make "a huge hole" in drywall it would have to expand massively and immediately, and I've never seen a 5.56 round capable of expansion when hitting drywall. Even frangible rounds essentially turn into 3 or 4 projectiles after passing through drywall, but I'd never say 1/3 of 55 grains at 2000+ fps would "not significantly harm a person".
FBI decided that, "[i]n every test, with the exception of soft body armor, which none of the SMG fired rounds defeated, the .223 penetrated less on average than any of the pistol bullets...".
Ok - but that is ballistic gelatin penetration. The comment I replied to claimed both expansion and lack of penetration in drywall, neither of which is at all a realistic expectation for extant 5.56 rounds, to my knowledge.
Not trying to sound rude at all, but you should actually read the link...
Relevant excerpts:
"Tests 1-6: Bare gelatin, heavy clothing, automobile sheet metal, wallboard, plywood, and vehicle windshield safety glass, were shot a distance of 10 feet from the muzzle."
"Tests 7-13: All involved shots through heavy clothing, safety glass and bare gelatin at 50 to 100 yards, concluding with internal walls, external walls and body armor at 10 feet."
"The Bureau’s research also suggests that common household barriers such as wallboard, plywood, internal and external walls are also better attacked with pistol rounds, or larger caliber battle rifles, if the objective is to "dig out" or neutralize people employing such object as cover or concealment."
"If an operator misses the intended target, the .223 will generally have less wounding potential than some pistol rounds after passing through a wall or similar structure."
Really unsure as to how you could possibly have come to that conclusion after reading the link....
Edit: now that I think about it, people unfamiliar with ballistic testing might not know that gelatin is almost always used to find out data about efficacy downrange regardless of what other things are being tested, so I can kinda see how you might take my comment at face value and feel that it was immediately contradicted if you didn't read the entire summary (which is a bit long).
Ah, ok. I read the "Equipment Deployed" section which called out gelatin, body armor etc. but not walls and such. Ctrl-F'ed for "drywall" just to be sure and didn't hit since the term isn't in the document (though obviously they mention walls lots of times which I failed to notice).
I still say though, the original comment I replied to is mischaracterizing what happens when 5.56 hits drywall. It does not make a huge hole, and I don't know how you could say it "would not significantly harm" a person on the other side. See some tests here w/ photos regarding drywall and 5.56 penetration: https://www.theboxotruth.com/the-box-o-truth-14-rifles-shotg...
Pistol calibers very well may penetrate further after passing through drywall (as the FBI tests indicate) but there is no evidence to claim that 5.56 is less than lethal after passing through a sheet of drywall.
Hopefully this will at least get you to look for modern, home defense rounds and then come to your old conclusions about 5.56 and dry wall... I'm not trying to prove you wrong here, just trying to get you to do some research about modern 5.56/.223 and really just modern ballistic advancement in general.
"The hypothesis turned out to be correct: V-Max bullets started fragmenting within the first sheet of drywall and completely blew to pieces on their way out of the second sheet, leaving dramatic craters." http://how-i-did-it.org/drywall/results.html
Another thing in favor of a pistol: it's far more manoeuvrable when clinching [0] or grappling [1]. Police are rarely advancing on a target guns-drawn. It's more likely they'll have to draw from a clinch.
I have no LEO experience but I'd imagine increased mobility, decreased chances of rounds exiting the target and hitting an innocent bystander, and cost are the primary reasons.
Concerning over-penetration, that's largely a function of ammunition. Hollow-point rounds from a submachine gun don't (practically speaking) over-penetrate any more than those fired from a handgun.
If the concern is hitting something behind your target that you're not supposed to, over-penetration would actually be pretty low on my list of concerns about a submachine gun.
Though your comment is very much beside the point, I'm nonetheless left scratching my head.
Are you suggesting that submachine guns make you more likely to miss your mark? If so, this is spoken like someone with absolutely zero firearms experience, as submachine guns are much more accurate and controllable than handguns...
No I've fired a handgun and a fully-automatic submachine gun several times in the last few months. Accuracy on the first shot, sure. Unless you're on semi-automatic I'd be deeply concerned about uncontrolled misses on subsequent shots. Maybe the London police's MP5s are a billion times more stable in the shoulder than a MAC-10, but still - even with ample training I'd keep it on semi-auto pretty much all of the time, or 3-shot-burst at best. The muzzle rise builds fast.
You're being disingenuous by sneaking in the notion of long-burst fire. Your point about mussel climb and automatic fire is akin to saying "if you hold a pistol sideways -- gangsta style -- and repeatedly jerk the trigger, your accuracy will suck". Well duh! Use the thing properly!
Yes, firing from the hip on full rock-n-roll is less accurate than controlled shots from a pistol, though I should think that was both obvious and beside the point.
Carefully controlled shots from an SMG are systematically better-placed than carefully-controlled shots from a pistol. Full stop. Moreover, SMGs are so damn easy to control (again, assuming they're used properly, i.e. with the extensible/foldable/fixed stock) that you can trivially put 3-to-5-round bursts in a human torso at 5 meters. Anybody who can't do that has no business carrying an SMG.
Surely you'll concede than in just about any professional situation, full-auto fire is not used. Full-auto fire is a suppressive technique, and as such it is largely relegated to military action (and not with SMGs, by the way).
It is absolutely absurd to suggest that pistols are more accurate and more controllable than a firearm with a longer barrel and stock.
>> You're being disingenuous by sneaking in the notion of long-burst fire.
Not really. Try moving a fire-selector from safe to semi under stress and see how quickly you stop. Then look at the number of shots fired from fully-automatic weapons during police shootings. Then tell me long-burst fire isn't a concern when deciding where they should be deployed.
Curious if you've ever fired a submachine-gun on full-auto? You'll either rise significantly within a few shots or you're applying enough downward pressure to make it very unstable during recoil.
edit: Your edits to the above post seem to be repeating themselves and adding italics. Maybe I'll just concede the argument so you can stop hyperventilating at your keyboard. Calm down, seriously, for your own health.
>> over-penetration would actually be pretty low on my list of concerns about a submachine gun.
That's what I said. I haven't argued with #1 at all, in fact I've specifically agreed with it. #2 would be my biggest concern in deciding when to deploy fully-automatic weapons to routine law-enforcement. It's a common (and increasingly so) thing in the US to do is to issue semi-automatic only rifles to police officers for their patrol vehicles. In London you'll see a number of police officers at various high-risk locations carrying MP5s, slung while on guard. If I'm not mistaken, they are select-fire.
So in deciding which firearm I would issue for which deployment, what I'm saying is that my list of concerns about a submachine gun or similar firearm, whether or not the situation and the training level of the officers is appropriate for the potential of fully-automatic fire is far higher on my list of concerns than over-penetration. If you miss the target, everything is over-penetration.
I don't see how that's "absolutely absurd". I don't think data is available on how well officers manipulate safety switches under stress, but the rate at which even moderately trained personnel blow through all their rounds without hitting anything, military or SWAT, is astounding. So yes, don't use automatic fire if you don't need it. The reality is not so simple, IMO.
Here in the UK, police aren't routinely armed. We rely instead on specialist firearms officers who usually perform a rapid-response role but sometimes patrol high-risk locations.
Over here, it's actually much more common to see a police officer equipped with a sub-machinegun or a carbine rifle than a handgun. Firearms are used as a tactical resource to be deployed as needed, rather than an insurance policy for ordinary officers.
Can't say I blame them. Why would someone take on the chance of being charged with murder for carrying out their job's duties? It's not an easy problem to solve, but I think the ease of access to firearms is only going to increase, and they're going to have to get the UK police sorted with carrying.
I'm not convinced the laws should be any different for the Police, should they? A justified shoot is a justified shoot, regardless of who is pulling the trigger.
Perhaps the laws in the UK need fixing (they did in New Zealand last I checked) but it should be a level playing field.
I don't think there's a great answer here. Without special legal protection, you're asking police to take a job that would require them to make decisions in a couple of seconds and if they make the wrong decision, they face a high risk of either death (should've shot but didn't) or life in prison (shot but shouldn't have). I wouldn't take that job if it payed 500k/yr, but we're asking officers to take it for 60k/yr?
I'm not asking for police to be protected if they're malicious, but if a police officer completes all his training correctly and tries his hardest to make the right decision in that pivotal moment, but makes a mistake and shoots when he shouldn't, then he's sentenced to life in prison if he is held to the same standard as a civilian.
And people wonder why their police officers aren't the best and the brightest: anyone making a rational decision under these terms wouldn't take the job.
"but if a police officer completes all his training correctly and tries his hardest to make the right decision in that pivotal moment, but makes a mistake and shoots when he shouldn't, then he's sentenced to life in prison if he is held to the same standard as a civilian"
But that's the problem! The civilian shouldn't be going to jail, either, should they?
That is, I don't think the standard for prosecution for killing someone should be different for civilians and police.
Some would fix the problem by giving the police special immunity; I'd fix it by changing self defence laws for everyone.
Or perhaps, to put it another way, under what situation could you imagine yourself as a juror convicting a civilian of murder, but acquitting a police officer who acted identically?
> Some would fix the problem by giving the police special immunity; I'd fix it by changing self defence laws for everyone.
Thinking about that for a bit and it sounds reasonable. A cop should only be shooting someone if he believes his or someone else's life is in danger and that's the same standard as civs in most states.
Perhaps cops in the US have more protection with their unions and such. I assumed that there must be a difference between US and UK because UK officers are refusing to carry whereas US aren't, but that difference might be that US officers get fired if they refuse to carry.
I don't mean to turn this into a CoD/Splinter Cell nerdfest, but while I've seen many vets post on HN, I don't recall anyone from JSOC doing so, do you mind sharing anything about your experiences? Assuming there is anything you are able to share freely.
Does what you did in JSOC have anything to do with your current career? Are there any skills or lessons that you have found particularly useful in your civilian life?
Obviously disregard any of this if you don't feel comfortable talking about it.
Don't want to derail the thread too much so I'll keep it short. I did technical "things" that correlate to my current civilian career. Lessons: biggest one was to eat humble pie and realize past performance =/= future success when different domains are involved (mil vs civ). Useful things: I'm generally pretty chill when things are going wrong. I.e. client meeting goes horribly -> "Hey at least we're not in X country getting shot at / how do we optimize for next time / etc."
I also don't get stressed after my military time. This has sometimes come across as me not appearing concerned enough when things are perceived as bad.
My time/training has helped greatly with attention to detail and focus. Being able to complete a mental task while completely exhausted is something which is definitely trained.
I'm not trying to speak for the parent of your post. To put combat in perspective, it's hard to even convey what is "normal" to the military.
Some things which would be (more than) dangerous on a civilian level: helicopter dunk tank, boxing, climbing from a boat to a ship on a cargo net, working with a squad full of 19 year olds with live ammo, a lt with a map.
Going to the grenade range, pulling the pin and you're now holding a live grenade. The only safety at this point is an individual's ability to not freak out and remember what to do.
That's mostly infantry related dangers. The other branches and sections all have large machinery/vehicles ready to run people over or blast them off the flight deck. I know of a sailor who was flown out after a table slid across the mess deck and pinned him to the wall.
The list could just go on and on -- heat exhaustion, hunger, exposure, blisters, bites, infections in the field. All of this is the normal and doesn't even begin to touch on combat where someone is actively interested in doing you harm.
edit -- the point of the above is that first you have to calibrate from civ normal to mil normal before considering combat. Even military normal is so far removed from IT related stress it is laughable.
I imagine after being in that kind of environment most "crises" at your civilian work seem quite mundane. I appreciate your response and if you ever feel like sharing more I'm sure most here wouldn't mind the occasional derailed thread.
This has certainly been my experience (from a slightly different background). I work full time as a developer, but part time as a firefighter/paramedic.
> And optical sights = more things that can break / run out of batteries / fall off and make noise / etc etc.
If you're talking about a pistol, the right Trijicon optic might easily be the most reliable part of the weapon. The issue is that is really difficult to use a handgun with optics well. Intuitively, people might think it makes the gun easier to use, but it's a feature that can really magnify your mistakes.
I have not personally been in a gunfight (thankfully) but a couple different people I know have. It went something like this: "Oh shit" followed by the gun being drawn and fired in very close quarters with no aiming whatsoever because the person/people was/were knife distance away. I know that's not how all encounters go down, but my takeaway from these stories is that contact distance is the norm and you should expect to fire a lot of rounds and not achieve very good hits if any. Bad day indeed.
IIRC the statistics, according to cop teaching my CCW class:
90% of handgun shootings are < 3 feet
Takes 7-15 seconds to bleed out from a direct shot to the heart (i.e. drugged up people are still dangerous after multiple shots to chest). The only instant stop is a 2" band around the head.
15% of handgun shootings are fatal (mostly due to quick medical response these days).
In the one second you have to draw, the bad guy can cover 18 feet from a standstill; have done this drill.
At 18 feet, a trained attacker with a sharp knife can take one down before the gun is drawn and shot. With a machete, they'll just start with the gun arm. Self-defense law takes this into account.
I vaguely recall reading somewhere about some study where they found out that when the police fire their pistols, at a range of 5 meters they hit about 50% of the time.
Having spent a fair amount of time in my youth shooting with a BB pistol in my parents garage, I find the above statistic entirely believable. Shooting a pistol accurately is much more difficult than it looks, so I can certainly imagine that in a high stress situation where your own life may be on the line you'll make simple mistakes that cause you to miss..
Over here moose hunting is quite popular; to keep their moose hunting license every hunter needs to pass a test (every year, IIRC) that involves hitting a moving target.
Most hunters pass this test without much difficulty. Of course, on the range the distance is known (100m, IIRC), and the target moves at a constant and known speed, so one knows how much lead is needed. Still, AFAIU in the wild the results are decent.
Most of those officers can do pretty well on the range, too. Problem is, adrenaline plays hell with fine motor skills - there are even specific techniques for reloading that I've been taught that require only gross motor skills, because that's all you'll have in an emergency situation.
