Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Hunter's Campfire Most shots fired by a civilian in self defense?

There is a number that I was curious to find that has turned out to be somewhat elusive to locate. Basically I wanted to know what the maximum number of rounds a civilian has fired in the USA during some kind of self defense or defense of others situation.

One of the problems with this question is that it is way easier to find out how many times police officers shoot civilians. For example, a quick Google search will link you to a story from last year of 8 police officers shooting Jayland Walker 46 times after firing 94 rounds at him after he fired at them first. Moral of that story? Don't shoot at cops.

But trying to find similar examples where civilians used or needed a large number of rounds have been harder for me to pin down. Maybe law enforcement agencies don't report that level of detail. I'm not trying to prove anything or argue something. I simply like to have hard quantifiable data when I'm thinking about something instead of having someone else tell me what I should think. But most of the time when it comes to civilian shootings, there is a large number of articles on the average number of shots needed to thwart an attack. Then the writer usually starts extrapolating hit/miss rates, theoretical number of potential assailants before finally arriving at the number of rounds that in their opinion a civilian should reasonably carry.

I've read a lot of those arguments. I understand the logic behind them. I realize there's some range in what people decide they're comfortable with to feel sufficiently protected either at home or with a CCW. What I've been less successful at is determining the most rounds a civilian has actually legally used when there was no law enforcement involvement. I have a lot of analysis & opinion. I've come up short on facts that can be linked to & read about. Does anyone know of a particularly "high" number or rounds fired in an incident on the right end of that bell curve?

ever gotten the feeling in your research that the press and the left doesn't want us to know the answer to that question?

good reason the answer may be so allusive.

Always a possibility. It's one of the reasons I didn't post this question over on HuffPost.com . But there's a lot of different voices & sources of information on the internet. The statistics I want might be there & simply buried under a bunch of unrelated but similar links. Maybe I need to try a variety of search engines. I think it would be an interesting number to have.

One of the reasons for my curiosity is that I have a really good friend who I've known from childhood who seems to feel that too much is always a little too inadequate. High capacity CCW with a spare magazine, AR-15, tactical shotgun & various pistols stashed in strategic locations is the norm. When asked why, it's always defended by a vague gesture towards the horizon and reference to an unspecified danger from an unknown source that intends violent harm. I don't have a problem if he feels this way & I would never try to dissuade him or move him out of his comfort zone. But when someone tries to convince me that I'm being foolhardy for not embracing their viewpoint, then I like I said in my earlier post, I like having some hard numbers to mull over. I don't like other people doing my thinking for me & then informing me what my conclusion should be. To be honest, I just like debating and arguing about stuff. We solve a lot of the world's problems sitting around a campfire at night.

When you find out - please post it up. I'd be interested in the result.

Wake up General Lee, he might have some insights.

Contacting John Lott maybe??? Does he have a website of any kind?

The website on his Wikipedia page is a dead link but there appears to be some interesting data at the research center he works for. Thanks for the suggestion:

https://crimeresearch.org/data/

Where's AI when you need it?

The answer is all of them. I would qualify that with, "at least in the first magazine". Save a couple mags for secondary attackers.

You're welcome.

The difference between non-LEOs and LEOs is that non-LEOs only have to shoot enough to escape/escape injury, LEOs have to shoot enough to subdue the target. They don't have the option of running away like regular folks.

This is what I need AI for:




Thank you! This was the answer I was expecting even if it’s not the answer I wanted.



Correct. I would be very surprised if a citizen were to shoot 94 times as in my example above. But I’m not trying to make a comparison between the two groups because I would never expect them to behave in a similar manner. It’s just easy to find the info on one group while the other has a bit of fog around it that is a somewhat frustrating.

How many rounds were fired by the Civilian wood cutters at the Wagon Box Fight. Might be a good place to start.

That's already happening at the corporate levels. Were building systems to resolve inter-company billing disputes.

Totally my fault on this one. I should have clearly stated that I was curious about more recent times since concealed carry & stand your ground laws became more common. Having said that, I always like a good bit of history so I'll read more about the event you mentioned.

On a more serious note, you need to be aware of natural biases the data.

Here's an example. Let's say a guy with a 5 shot snub nose revolver is killed after he empties gun.

From a data standpoint, he fired 5 rounds, but maybe he needed 20, or 60 to win. We don't know, because he ran dry and failed to survive.

So as part of your research I'd include figures for the guys who run dry and still die when making your decision.

I work with data & metrics a lot as a database programmer. The quote "There's three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies & statistics" is always at the forefront of my mind. Whenever looking at data or statistics it's important to know how it was gathered, what it actually represents & if there was any undo influence that puts a thumb on the scale. It's okay to use less than perfect data if that's all you have available. It's up to you to let people you share conclusions with know about the caveats that make those results imperfect. Passing off statistics as "the absolute truth" when there are valid questions is an integrity no-no.

Exactly.

Here's another great example of this:

Jared over at Active Self Protections analyzed thousands of self-defense video's and seen very few battlefield pickups and magazine changes.

But since most video is focus on a small area's, his data collections naturally biased against the kind of extended, wide ranging events more likely to create the round counts your looking for. That doesn't mean his work is worthless, it's just not the whole picture.

I would think the obvious answer to your question would be "all of them"... if I have a 17 round mag or a 7 round mag in a self defense situation I'm going to be firing all of them... and then reload if I have another one available...

Thanks for the info. This will be another interesting thing to look at. The main thing I want to convey is that I really don't have any idea or expectation of what the number I'm looking for might be. I've seen some convenience store / restaurant robbery videos where a civilian will pop off several rounds from a pistol. But I can't remember ever seeing a reload. So I fully expect there are plenty of examples with single digits of rounds fired. But I didn't know if there was a home invasion or other event where dozens of rounds had been fired. And that was what I was curious about.

I'm sure there might be examples of gangs, drug dealers or drive-bys where lots of shots were fired but those wouldn't fall under the category of "legal self defense". A simple way of putting it is I was curious as to how extreme a situation had occurred that might involve a regular person like me.

The largest number of intruders killed in a home invasion that I've seen was 8. Survivor used a shot gun, but this was also probably gang/drug related. This brings up the whole issue of gang/drug related shooting, which, like police involved shooting can have a very different character than the self defense incidents on "normal" citizens.