CHAPTER 11

COMMON MYTHS

SHOOT AND DRAG

If you shoot a burglar and then drag the burglar inside your home, you will likely go to prison. Legal use of lethal force requires the ability for your attacker to kill you at that exact moment, and the belief that your attacker is going to kill you. Generally speaking, if you have the right to be at the location you are in, and you have no options to flee (some states do not have a requirement that you first attempt to leave; please consult the laws of your state), you may legally employ deadly force against someone who has the means to kill you and whom you believe is trying to kill you.

If you meet these criteria, the criminal being outside your home or inside should not matter. If he is not a threat, do not shoot him! Anytime you attempt to change the scene, it is going to be assumed that you were in the wrong.

ONE SHOT STOPS

There is a video circulating the Internet showing an angry litigant shooting a revolver at a lawyer. The lawyer is ducking back and forth around a tree, while this nut job is shooting him. The criminal finally walks away, and the lawyer raises his hands in a questioning motion and also walks away.

This lawyer was hit several times. The bullets did not knock him backwards as they tend to do in movies, nor did a single bullet kill him. This person sustained multiple point-blank hits and walked away. This is common.

Handguns are not the most effective means of killing; they are a compromise between portability, concealability, and firepower. If you do not die immediately upon being shot, you stand a very good chance of surviving. Never give up, and always keep fighting. Be a survivor and not a victim.

On the other side of the coin, a handgun bullet causes damage based upon the size, speed, and shape of the bullet. This is magnified or reduced based upon where the round impacts on the body. There have been extensive studies by the FBI, US military, and private individuals to find the best combinations to effect the miracle “one shot stop.” What has been found is that shot placement into the center mass is the most effective, and that if the first round does not cause the desired effect, multiple additional rounds may need to be fired to cause internal bleeding. Do not be discouraged if it takes more than one shot to save your life from an attacker, but only use the amount of shots necessary to neutralize the threat.

That being said, what do you do when someone is trying to kill you, and you firing a round into him did not stop him? Well, besides uttering an expletive or two, the next section will discuss options.

MOZAMBIQUE DRILL (TWO TO THE CHEST, ONE TO THE HEAD)

This drill is also named the failure to stop drill. It comes from a story told to Col. Jeff Cooper by one of his students. This student was leaving Mozambique under some stressful and dangerous circumstances, and was challenged by a man carrying an AK-47. The student drew his pistol and shot the man in the chest twice. These rounds did not seem to have an effect, so he shot the AK-47-bearing attacker in the head with an additional well-aimed shot.

Once this story came out, it became the center of the well-meaning but uninformed gun culture. I have heard new students in my courses state that they are not worried about being attacked; if they are attacked, they will simply “put two in the chest and one in the head.” Real life does not work this way. Headshots are difficult, and hard to manage in the best of situations. The belief that this will work every time also ignores the realities of this method.

The attacker was wearing body armor, and a headshot was necessary, but this was determined on scene as part of the OODA process. The shooter observed that the attacker absorbed two large caliber handgun hits to the chest; he orientated to the situation by realizing that the attacker was wearing armor. Then he decided the best way to stop the attack was a headshot. The action is obvious; he aimed at the head and ended the attack.

This was not automatic. It was deliberate and based upon the situation, as any rounds fired should be. If you must subscribe to this two-to-the-chest mentality, a viable option can be found in Tactical Pistol Marksmanship: How to Improve Your Combat Shooting Skills by Gabriel Suarez. In his book, Suarez describes the Mozambique drill and says that after the first two shots, the sights should automatically be placed at the attacker’s head. If the head is seen, the attacker has not been neutralized, and a headshot should be fired. I disagree, because at this beginning level, a headshot is a tall order to complete. A way to duplicate the difficulty of a headshot is to blow up a nine-inch balloon and tie it loosely to a target stand on a windy day. If you can hit this moving, unpredictable, and small target on command every time, then you are beginning to be qualified to think about the Mozambique drill.

A better option may be to aim for the pelvis. If the pelvis is shattered, it will be hard for the attacker to stand, much less run at you. The pelvis is also much larger than the head, and it is nearer to other areas of the body, so that a miss aimed at the pelvis has the same likelihood of striking a leg or the belly rather than missing the attacker completely as a miss aimed at the head would.

While some trainers disagree with this method (they don’t think a pistol shot would break the hip), others swear by it. I have even heard anecdotal evidence of criminals giving up because they thought their victim was trying to emasculate them.

This is an option for you, because if the first pair of rounds didn’t drop your attacker, it is likely to take a few minutes for them to bleed out and some action needs to be taken. Move away, shoot them again, do something. Remember, once you are attacked and decide to use deadly force, you are committed to action and must never give up until you are safe.