CHAPTER 4

WHAT HAPPENS IN A GUNFIGHT

“A lifetime of training for just ten seconds.”

—Jesse Owens

Gunfights are dynamic. They are ever changing. Gunfights are loud, uncomfortable, and dangerous. Set aside any notions of glory or excitement. Even if you survive a gunfight (and that is the sole objective) you still must face defending your actions to the police and attorneys in the legal system. It is also likely you must defend your actions to your family, friends, and coworkers on an ethical level. We are going to go over some common changes that may happen to you during the stress of a lethal force situation.

STATISTICS ARE NOT GOSPEL

Before we get into the changes, both physical and mental, that may occur during a gunfight, I would like to state that these changes may not happen to every person every time. No gunfight is the same. It is common to hear in a firearm class that the statistically average gunfight is less than 2.5 seconds long, 2.5 rounds are fired, and the distance is less than seven yards. This does not mean that every gunfight follows these statistics. As an example, let’s imagine ten gunfights. Of these ten imaginary gunfights, nine were at one yard and one was at sixty-one yards. The average would be seven yards. Notice, there wasn’t a single seven-yard gunfight in the above example. Statistically, 85 percent of gunfights are within ten feet. Most of those are at near contact distances.

Statistics are averages, not gospel. Statistically, you’re not ever going to be in a lethal force situation, but statistics won’t help when you are being shot at. What statistics do give is a picture of likely happenings. The following are to be taken that way. These responses may or may not occur in your situation, but knowing about them will make you better able to cope if they do happen.

THE BODY’S RESPONSE TO STRESS

In medical terms, stress is a physical or psychological stimulus that can produce mental or physiological reactions. Stress can be both good and bad. For our purposes, the “fight or flight” reaction caused by encountering stress is both. Your body’s dumping of adrenaline and norepinephrine into the bloodstream prepares the body for either battle or retreat. This has been accepted since 1929 when the fight or flight response was first described by Walter Cannon.

While the body’s preparations allow for a temporary increase of physical strength, increased ability to produce energy and process oxygen and in some cases increased acuteness of the senses, these reactions do have drawbacks. The same physical reactions cause negative symptoms, also. These symptoms are caused by a reaction by the autonomic nervous system and are involuntary. We are going to address some of the most relevant symptoms. As I said before, you may not experience all, or any of these, nor will a person necessarily experience the same ones each time they are exposed to extreme stress. But you need to understand the stress responses, not only so you can deal with them, but so you can recover from them and know that what happened to you is normal.

TREMBLING OR SHAKING OF MUSCLES

Your body’s adrenaline dump will prepare your muscles for hard use; however, the increased blood flow, increased energy, and mental stimulation will also cause muscle trembling. If you have ever been really frightened you probably had “the shakes” afterward.

LOSS OF DEXTERITY

A common training statement is, “In a fight, fingers turn to flippers.” This means that your hands will fumble and you have to use gross motor skills and big movements instead of fine motor skills.

DIGESTIVE/URINARY SYMPTOMS

Relaxation of bladder and bowels and diarrhea are normal. This is not mentioned often, and is denied even more often. If this happens to you after someone tries to kill you, you are normal. Do not be ashamed. Just imagine how the first person felt that “had the poop scared out of them.” At least you’ll know that it’s normal, and if that’s the worst thing that happened after somebody tried to kill you, then you won.

IMPAIRED THINKING

The code red, adrenaline-reinforced mind-set is not the same as the kitchen table, drive-the-kids-to-school mind-set that you have during white or yellow levels of awareness. For our entire lives we have been taught that murder is wrong, and we as a society have internalized this to the point that we may not be able to grasp the reality that “Hey, this guy is trying to kill me!”

This can cause something called cognitive dissonance, where the mind tries to reconcile two equally believed thoughts—in this case, the belief that people do not kill and the fact that a person is trying to kill you. This is the reason that people who survive lethal force encounters say things like, “I don’t know what happened; it all just happened so fast I just couldn’t think.” A denial response may also occur, such as, “This cannot be happening to me.” It is possible in extreme situations for someone to go into a catatonic or zombie-like state; your mind can completely shut down. This is something that training can deal with—the more mental programming you do by training, the less likely this is to happen.

Sometimes in cognitive dissonance things of minor importance can take on a great importance. This is how your mind attempts to cope. Have you ever been in a very bad car wreck and your spouse worries about the ambulance crew seeing her with her hair a mess? This is not vanity; it is a coping mechanism. You must beware of this, however. Because of cognitive dissonance you may recall some trivial matter, like scratching the slide of your pistol, with greater detail and seeming concern than you recall the dead body of your attacker and why you were forced to shoot him or her to save your life. This may be taken out of context and methods for dealing with this will be discussed later.

It is also possible to have what seems like an out-of-body experience. You may have a sense of disconnection; it is even possible to fire shots and not remember ever firing your weapon. This topic is discussed in depth in a book I highly recommend: Deadly Force Encounters by Dr. Alexis Artwohl and Loren W. Christensen.

TEMPORARY BLINDNESS

Hysterical blindness is rare, and generally happens to the untrained. Basically, the individual experiencing hysterical blindness is so scared that his or her brain simply refuses to see the stressor anymore. Normally this also occurs in tandem with a panicked fleeing of the scene.

TUNNEL VISION

Tunnel vision is the narrowing of the field of view to the most obvious threat. This can cause obvious problems such as not seeing other threats, or not noticing innocent bystanders in the line of fire. This symptom can blind you to other options such as cover.

Unlike some other symptoms, this one has some options. Have you ever watched well-trained combat shooters on the range? After they fire, they bring the handguns to their chests (muzzle pointed downrange), and using exaggerated movements, turn their heads to the right and to the left.

This movement is done to break tunnel vision and to scan for additional threats. It is a skill that you must practice, even though it seems simple. Too many simply go through the motions and do not actually see to the sides when they are performing this action. Make a point to look and recognize what is behind you when you do this. Have a partner hold up fingers and call out how many he or she is exposing.

AUDITORY EXCLUSION

Tunnel hearing is also a term for this symptom. This is similar to tunnel vision except it affects hearing. If you hunt or know hunters it is common for them to not wear hearing protection in the field. The same goes for police or the military. These same people faithfully wear hearing protection on the ranges shooting the very same weapons they carry in “real life.”

It is common for them to not be bothered by the gunshot when placed in a stressful situation. This might be positive, except the same effect will also keep you from hearing warnings yelled to you. “Hey! Watch Out;” “He’s behind you;” “Stop! Police!” are all things it would behoove you to be able to hear. A good way to break auditory exclusion is to forcibly give verbal commands to your threat to retreat or drop the weapon. This communication on your part not only reduces your physical stress related symptoms, but also firmly reinforces your desire to not be the aggressor.

TACHYPSYCHIA (TEMPORAL DISTORTION)

This is the effect of seeing an incident occurring in slow motion. When both the visual portion of your brain and your gross motor control are accelerated, your actions can seem to speed up, and your stressor’s actions can seem to slow down. Have you ever been in a car accident and everything seems to be happening in slow motion? Tachypsychia is why stressful situations are sometimes perceived this way. A person’s temporal distortion is believed to function more effectively the higher the individual’s level of training.

The study of effect of stressors on a person’s body is a relatively new scientific field and the study of effect of stressors on a person’s mind is even newer. Basically, the more training and repetition a person has done in advance, the less these things affect them in a life or death situation. But as entire books have been written on each little paragraph above, you may want to spend some time researching this in depth. Massad Ayoob, Loren Christensen, Lt. Col. Dave Grossman, and Dr. Alexis Artwohl are all excellent authors on this subject, but are by no means the only resources in this field.