Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Hunter's Campfire Det Powell, prof opinion please?

I just watched The Untouchables.

If you are familiar with it i would ask about the stairwell shooting where the kid was in the baby buggy.

All the BGs are killed by Ness and Jr except for the last and wounded one who is holding a Pistol to the throat of the book keeper. He was threatening to kill the bookie unless Ness and Jr let them go.

Ness asked Jr if he had a bead on him and Jr affirmed. Ness said shoot and Jt plugged BGuy in, presumedly the brain. He bit the dirt without firing a shot.

Now, having grown up popping squirrels in the head with a Win 62A shooting short solids and seeing them spasm a tense up rising up from the limb they are on with tail curled before relaxing and falling, in your knowledgeable opinion, would the BGuy have gone down without shooting the bookkeeper?

Thanks.

It was my thought that BG was shot in the mouth, exiting spinal w CNS shot.

In Texas we call that a head shot. What do you think would have happened, if you have any tangable training regarding such things and hopefully others with professional training or knowledge about such things, please reply.

Travis?,

I've never heard of or seen any empirical data that demonstrates what a brain shot person is likely to do in a situation like that.

My personal take is that nobody knows what a brain hit body is gonna do. I'm sure contraction vs. relaxation is largely dependent on the individual and where the brain or spine is hit and what it's hit with. Just like critters.

I've often thought Stalin should have conducted such tests during all those executions. But, you know how foreigners are. Just wanna drink their vodka and clock out.

Who knows what would happen. Could be either way.

Not a risk I would want to take.

Definitely take the shot. Otherwise, the movie is gonna suck!

A brain shot is either drop and quiver or jump and flop

I agree. You never know. Sonny Crockett shot that one dude and he didn't do anything but drop, so I guess that's some hard data. Foreigners ARE lazy.

Yes, it's largely dependent upon where in the brain the impact occurs.
At the base of the brain, where it meets the spine provides the best odd for relaxation. A hit high up in the cerebral cortex is more likely to give the other result.

They can’t all be German.

I would not count on it.

I have seen them go both ways; some you would bet the bank that there is no way in hell that he could survive let alone return fire.

Others, not so much.

Bingo .....

Some time in the 70s I started shooting deer in the brain stem in preference to the skull. I did so because skull shot deer can and do lash around considerably which if you are close can get you splattered too. I do not recall who told me the brain stem was better. But....I do not recall a single brain stem hit that lashed around after. The typical reaction is that the head falls sorta slowly and the body follows. A couple minutes after the shot a leg or legs will move a little sort of like walking, but not. I just assume that the movement occurs because the muscles run out of oxygen. I watch for that as a sign to get down out of the stand and go gut my deer now. The last four did that. I would describe the whole reaction as just a relaxation and collapse. They usually bleed very well when hit like this, but I would not describe it as bleeding out since there isn't enough blood pumped out to accountfor total blood volume.

I’m under the impression the preferred shot is the “kill box”, going thru the larynx and severing the medulla oblongata - lights out drop.

Bingo.

The only place they won't even twitch.

Hit the medulla, and even if they had a gun on a hostage, finger on trigger, it's lights out.

Yes, something like that. DocRocket is THE expert.

Nah... We have hundreds of guys here that went through sniper training, don'tcha know?

Funny how they didn't remember that basic part of the training... LOL.

Traumatic brain injuries such as those suffered by a projectile cause pretty much an instant incapacitation. The spasms observed in shooting squirrels are a followup. They may seem like they are fairly quick, but normally, they occur after the animal has first collapsed. Sometimes the squirrel is on a branch and the head shot doesn't cause an immediate fall from the tree. That's not because the squirrel gripped the tree harder, but that the squirrel was already gripping the tree at the moment of the shot, and the body hasn't relaxed enough to permit the fall. As in my next paragraph...

There is a similar reaction, such as is seen in the boxing ring with a massive smack to the head. The body becomes rigid for a moment, before relaxing. But in either case the trigger finger and all the other muscles assume rigidity, rather than a contracture. In essence, they remain fixed at the precise position they were in at the moment the blow was administered.

There was a vid floating around some time back of a guy in a police station that administered his own coup de grace. Find it and watch it. Another vid from a city board meeting where a city official capped himself in front of a large audience.

Most death spasms originate from the nerve complexes in the thoracic spine and "follow" the traumatic injury to the head. If you penetrate the actual brain pan, you're gonna get a dead perp and a living hostage.

Carlos Hathcock made head shots on VC and they’d flop around
over a ten yard diameter area!