Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Handguns One shot stops.....

My theory on low shots is a disruption of the nerves of the cauda equina. When your spinal column gets low in the back it flares out from the commonly understood concept of a "spine" that is a narrow structure, to a wider fan based structure. The name is derived from the tail of a horse. A projectile might not be hitting the preconceived notion of the "spine" but disrupting the nerves that are fanning out into the lower body. Yes, there are plenty of major arteries in the lower body, as mentioned the femoral in the legs but also the lower abdominal aorta, hitting either of those will result in a rapid loss in blood pressure and lead to unconsciousness or at least diminished physical activity due to lack of oxygen.

When you reach down and touch the area around your belt we normally call the hip, you are actually grabbing the upper region of the pelvic girdle call the iliac crest. I am not volunteering to be shot here but I have seen bullets pass through the IC and it leaves a puncture wound that does nothing to negate mobility, nor are there any vital organs located there. At that point even the major arteries are being shunted down through the pelvic inlet, away from the IC. Rattler hit it well, to really break someone down with a pelvis shot you need to hit a fist sized joint that can be confusing to find on someone wearing clothes, let alone baggy sweats. To find it on yourself stand up, push your junk out of the way and push up until you find your pubic bone, now depending on your build slide your hand out about 3-4 inches and you have found your hip. To further clarify it while standing, lift your knee up to your chest and find the joint in the flexed area.

I personally would not target the hips unless everything else was somehow covered up. From an anatomical view the pelvic girdle is a circle and would need to be broken in two points to destabilize its structure. My overwhelming choice will be center rounds on the armpits and go up from there. The cranial region may be more mobile but it is frequently more exposed from cover as assailants tend to be like us, they want to locate the threat and will primarily search with their eyes.

I strongly encourage force on force training with simmunitions or airsoft to expose some of the dynamic realities of being in a gunfight. It is great to understand what you might be facing and even better to learn your own limitations based on your skill set, age, physical abilities and hardware.

Sorry, will climb off of my soapbox now, and yes I spent a week at the Holiday Inn recently.

We weren't led to believe anything regarding how fast those two combinations would incapacitate a assailant. Basically, if we were engaging a single assailant he got triple tapped whether he had a vest on or not. The vest materials just get better and more comfortable and concealable. One thing the vests were not designed to do is protect you from multiple hits. The vest material will give quite a bit; enough so that under where the bullet struck the officer will have at least a nasty bruise if not broken ribs too. If you shot someone in the vest 5+ times with a good self-defense round they are going to suffer significant blunt force trauma. I have "heard" of people dying of internal bleeding due to taking multiple rounds in the vest, however, I can't site a source so take that observation however you wish. Additionally, if you have your .223 or .308 with you, unless the perp is wearing a level IV Flak jacket a .223/.308 round hardly slows down going in the front and out the back of the vest and person wearing it.

I have trained with simmunitions and they hurt like a bitch when you get hit in an unprotected area. I have also searched a dark building, by myself, for a burglary suspect that was allegedly armed. I can tell you the pucker factor from training with simunitions doesn't even come close to engaging in the real thing. If I hadn't had a close fitting pair of uniform pants I would have sucked 6" of pant material up my colon. But...simmunitions certainly beats not training at all. Gunner's description of what he experienced when he was shot tracks very closely with the descriptions LEOs have given after being shot. Tunnel vision is almost a given among other debilitating bodily reactions.

my Marlin Guide Gun has generally lived by the bed cause i have never had much for handguns and its the handiest rifle i have.....always figured on the 1 in 1,000,000 chance one of the rez rats around here broke in AND was wearing a vest even if it didnt go through the phugger was not gonna be happy taking a warm loaded 405 grain hard cast from a 45-70 to center mass

If your vest is not designed to be multihit capable your wearing a low bid vest. Yes if you take a hit on a vest you should be checked out, trauma from backface deformation is not something to be ignored but multiple non penetrating rounds cannot be counted on to stop a fight.

I never claimed it did, but not even the most expensive well constructed SOFT body armor is designed to take multiple hits (think of a turd with an HK MP5 dumping a mag into your torso). It's flexible and gives, in some cases pushing the vest deeply into your body causing serious trauma. The soft body armor[sic] was designed to allow you to recover and return fire if you don't get the first shot off. Gunfights are fast and generally at close range, and they guy who gets the first HIT on his opponent will likely win the fight. There are always exceptions, but the above is true.

I guess I will have to ignore my experiences of touring some facilities, watching multihit testing in person (which ironically included a mag dump from an MP5 into a 6" section of the vest) and examining typical trauma from backface deformation. Yes there can be crushing injuries if the energy is high enough. Somewhere I have a picture of a fatal hit from a large bore lever gun. The vest "caught" the round but also drove the vest several inches deep into the chest, killing the officer but that is the exception. In the vast majority of cases the impact will cause a bruise that looks like you took a hit from a baseball with no medical treatment necessary.