Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Handguns .45 ACP +P Speer Gold Dots...Not Impressed!

Although I'll take any kind of stop I can get, I have to agree with you. Since psychosomatic response is completely unpredictable, it's completely irrelevant in our planning.

BMT -

I wasn't aware of a Short Barrel load in .44; learn something new every day.

Yes, I'm a huge fan of the Short Barrel Gold Dots and I carry them in most every defense pistol I own. Even in my full size .45ACP, I choose the 230 grain Short Barrel Gold Dot. Expansion is awesome, penetration is more than adequate.

+1

Kevin,



While I do agree that gunfight-ending wounds can be effectuated with less than 12" penetration, I think it provident to keep in mind that barriers might have to be overcome before penetration can occur. Moreover, it might be limiting to not desire a projectile to continue to inflict damage after minimum penetration is achieved. As we know, unless CNS is interrupted loss of BP is desired. And it's hastened with rapid blood loss.

To my way of thinking, 230 grain .45 ACP projectiles offer the greatest predictability of producing rapid loss of BP.


Take care,

Mando

1

Kevin,



I gotta disagree with your analyses. No single cause resulted in the catastrophe in Miami. Arguably the arrest went awry before the encounter occurred. If anything, the Bureau might have been in a more advantageous position had it coordinated its efforts with Miami PD. God only knows how many Miami cops would have immediately responded to a "999" Officer down call, not to mention allied agencies along with helicopters. Further, the agents ceded too much control to the bad guys. While the perfect arrest is fantasy, I would have been inclined to initiate a tactical retreat, get behind the suspects, and request assistance from Miami PD. Control is essential for winning a gunfight.

I do believe the weapons used by the FBI, save the 870, were far from adequate. To my way of thinking, the 9MM/.38 Special is at the bottom of suitable calibers for saving my life.

I have seen training film of the Miami incident, and in none of them did I suspect the FBI was covering up anything. If anything, it was very candid about the incident. It would have been counterproductive or worse to deny valuable officer survival knowledge that was learned from this incident.


Take care,

Mando

Dan,



It is apparent that you're well-versed in survival.

When I first started in my erstwhile line of work, success was judged by accuracy. While accuracy is still important, in the late 80's a pronounced shift in ideology occurred. Trumping all, including accuracy, in gunfights is survival. Now the crucial question is whether the officer(s) survived, and if her/his/their tactics was causal of survival. Misses are no longer considered in a negative sense if they cause the bad guy to be unable to hit the good guy. Spray-and-pray, a gun writer concept with nebulous tactical value, is gone, assuming it was ever in. Suppressive cover fire is tactically advantageous if it contributes to survival.


Take care,

Mando

Mando

Thanks for weighing in. I have to disagree about a couple things. Spray and Pray is still around, or you wouldn't read accounts of officers firing 60 shots in the course of 10 seconds - 2 or 3 of which happen to find the bad guy. In the cases where their hit ratio is higher...it's normally found afterward that the BG didn't have a gun. Ask the NYPD about that.

Weapons training may have taken a shift, but based on what I'm seeing at public ranges frequented by law enforcement officers, there isn't enough emphasis on accuracy!

http://kstp.com/article/stories/S286741.shtml?cat=1

In the linked account do we have a classic case of "suppressive fire" of excessive fire? Thank God no innocent people were hit, but one wonders what the officers were firing at. In St. Louis in the not too distant past, a couple of officers made a car look like Bonny and Clyde's getaway vehicle after a high speed chase. In this case too, no one was hurt, though there were two children in the back seat.

Forgive me, but even when I carried a badge in both local and federal agencies, I was always just a bit contemptuous of both the weapons training and the abilities of my fellows. I recently watched a competition between two swat trained officers and a civilian doctor. He literally kicked their butts in a run and shoot course of fire! Know what? He wasn't anything special!
They were just that bad.

In case you're wondering, I'm not down on cops. Most of them don't realize how poorly trained they are. Most of them don't have the initiative to continue bettering themselves between mandated training and most of them are satisfied using the "liberal" time limits to get that "expert" ribbon and then they think because their group is smaller or they have more points, they are somehow better shooters than an officer who shoots 3 times as fast, but whose group is twice as large, yet still in the kill zones.

Guys like Cirillo didn't survive multiple gunfights and kill or wound a dozen or so BGs(by the way, with .38 special revolvers and the occasional semi-automatic, normally in 9mm)by spraying and praying, or even by tatical suppression fire. They took cover if it was available and they aimed their guns to hit the BG. In many cases, they didn't even empty their pieces!

I've worked closely with the FBI for 15 years. I'm sure they didn't cover up anything, but it was the FBIs inflated belief in their own super-hero status that lead to the problem in the first place. The FBI doesn't "need" anyone to help them make an arrest "by God" and certainly not "local law enforcement." It would be admitting failure in the first place. The FBI's reputation among local law enforcement is well deserved. In case you're wondering...I am down on the FBI

Dan

The short barrel loads shoot a 200 grainer downrange at 1000 fps. That shoult work,, eh?

and Muzzle Flash is minimal (I know, I shoot them at 4:30 PM in January--which is after sunset around here.

BMT

Dan,

As we know, use of deadly force incidents have to be assessed individually lest undeserved generalizations are made. I have no personal knowledge of a "spray and pray" use of deadly force incident, but I am aware of shootings were multiple shots were fired, and in many cases no one was hit. However, it would be fallacy to conclude the "misses" were "bad" shots.

I do not know the facts of Cirillo's shootings, but from what I understand many were the result of surveillance.

We also have to be careful about inferring to the general population that which is most accurately the exception. And legally, the fact that a suspect in a shooting was unarmed does not make it a bad shooting. The reasonable man standard is controlling. I personally know of a suspect who was shot in the back while running away and killed. The suspect was unarmed. However, under the circumstances created by the suspect, the DA, using the reasonable man standard, ruled it justifiable.

Again, the controlling question in contemporary law enforcement is not whether the bad guy was hit but whether the good guys survived. And I can't begin to write how many times I was admonished to not die with bullets in my weapon. The goal is not to kill the bad guy but to ensure the bad guy does not cause me to wind up supine on a fiberglass examination table with a nickel block of wood keeping my lifeless head from wobbling while a youthful mortician assistant uses a rotary saw to open my skull. Therefore, before we can denounce a "missed" shot as "spray" we have to first determine if the "missed" shot had demonstrable efficacy in keeping the bad guy from killing the good guy.

Dan, if accuracy was controlling in gunfights, cops would be issued K-38 Masterpieces with wadcutter ammunition. Instead, survival is controlling, which is why cops are issued tactical handguns.


Take care,

Mando

I believe that your stance and the modern doctrine is missing the point. Accuracy ensures survival much better than so called "tactical fire" how long can suppressive fire be maintained with a handgun? There is a place for such, but it is not a adequate substitute for accurate fire..

jwp475,

No, I think you're missing the point. No one is advocating indiscriminate fire. What one must assure is not getting shot. DOJ statistics have proved emphasis on precise accuracy comes at the cost of much greater risk.

Lemme ask you this simple question: While you're standing in a Weaver stance, arms locked in isosceles triangle, taking precise aim at an adversary's 10 ring, what do you think s/he will be trying to do to you?

To survive a gunfight, one cannot make one's self a target!

Dying in a gunfight is losing regardless of what happens to the bag guy!


Good luck,

Mando

Wrong assumption, no one in their right mind is going to stand in the open and not take cover.. A Weaver stance with some one firing at you is a ridiculous scenario.. In early 06 I was work in Vagas and the Police fired 600+ rounds in a gun fight with one bad guy. Quite a few don't you think. O'yea they used suppressive fire...

Getting off the line of attack and hitting the bad guy is the best supressive fire method of all.

I think that is the most accurate synopsis of FBI field work I have ever heard.

Mando � I�m not advocating the use of any bullet weight in .45 ACP, I�ll leave that up to the individual. I�m saying that the 185 might have desirable attributes for home defense. But for argument�s sake, if you have to penetrate an intermediate object, chances are the 185 would do the job just fine. Keep in mind, a hollow point doesn�t expand in non-fluid mediums, so if you have to shoot through drywall or a refrigerator before hitting a home intruder, that bullet will zip right through most intermediate targets with little interruption to terminal performance in the intended target. What I�m saying is, if that bobcat was hiding behind a wooden fence, the end performance would be much the same.

As to the Miami incident, I�m sure you and I saw the same exact training video, which was done exceptionally well. I agree that the weapons used were on the minimum side for LE work, and were a contributing factor, but that contributing factor was way down on the list. The targets didn�t go down because they were highly motivated and better trained than many (certainly not all � Grogan was very well trained) of the FBI agents.

The main failures were complete lack of use of cover by every one with the exception of Mireles. The suspects took many non-fatal hits that would have remained so even if the agents were using .45 ACP 230 grain bullets. There was a grand total of one failure to penetrate all the way to the heart from a crossing shot. So out of dozens of shots fired, the FBI says the gunfight would have ended much earlier if that one bullet reached the heart�I don�t buy it. Even if the bullet in question completely destroyed the heart (which is optimistic at best), Platt would have been conscious for at least another 30-50 seconds. The incident wouldn�t have been much different.

The lesson from that training video was that the tactics employed were very bad. Another lesson was that they needed better performance from their weapons, which spawned the greatest press for bullet technology in history.

For civilian carry or home defense, the need to shoot through barriers is almost a statistical anomaly, it�s so rare. It�s the nature of the threat, we�re not going after bad guys, we�re trying to get away from bad guys. LE is exactly the opposite, which is why their needs are very different from mine.

Deep penetration is always desirable when trying to eliminate a threat, but we have to be careful exactly how deep we penetrate. While complete penetration is desirable in the game fields, it�s a liability for a civilian carrying on the street or defending his home.

While I�m carrying my .45 ACP on the street, I generally carry a 230 grain bullet and sometimes a 200 grain bullet. Both have a good reputation for barrier penetration, but have very controlled penetration afterwards of usually a MAXIMUM of 12, not a minimum. That suits my needs. I get barrier penetration, good bullet expansion and sufficient penetration for my needs, with a minimum threat of target perforation.

The FBI�s standards are great for law enforcement, but I�m not a cop, so I have my own standards based upon my needs. I don�t have a departmental legal team or union lawyers who will fight my wrongful death suit, I�m on my own. What�s more, my conscience will not allow me to carry something I KNOW will completely perforate a human target, to me, that�s just irresponsible.

I recall a time I managed to "kill" an FBI agent in a training scenario! I've never seen a more angry and whiny training officer! It was nearly pathetic. My dislike of the bureau stems more from their "I'll take over from here" attitude, than it does from anything else. Actually, the FBIs modern reputation is built stone by stone on their labs and evidence analysis. Investigatively, they are no better than the best city and county detectives.

Still and all, while I certainly appreciate Mando's writing and opinion, I'll have to disagree with suppressive fire, unless the purpose is to cover a tactical advance or retreat. There are simply too many dash-cam videos of officers "machine-gunning" the country side while the bad guy makes his escape. Yes, he may actually be hit, but that has to be mainly "chance" based on the evidence.

One exception to this, would be a good shoot in Cedar Rapids some years ago, in which an officer emptied a Glock .40 into a perp. I am trying to recall, but approximately 14 rounds connected...before the perp dropped his weapon and some of that shooting was through the officer's vehicle's windshield glass!!! That's decent shooting!

Much of Cirillo's work was surveillance, but in one particular case, written about ages ago (forgive me, I'm giving credit to Cirillo and it may be I'm mistaken)involved a stand-up gunfight between the officer and "THREE" armed perpetrators, all of whom took hits! One died. One was permanently disabled and one lightly wounded but apprehended. That is a hit ratio that comes from practice above and beyond that which most officers are willing to participate in. Hence, the reason for the current attitudes concerning volume of fire over weapons expertise! Expertise should never be confused with "proficiency." Cops are generally proficient, which to my mind is an almost negligent professional attitude!

Regards

Dan

Can't, don't buy the irresponsible.... Complete penetration of a human body can't be irresponsible, if it is then misses are gross neglegence.

Sounds like you've spent some quality time with John and Vicki Farnam.

Something else that John says..."You can never miss fast enough to catch up," I've always liked that one.

Mando does have a point though. While it�s never cool to fire indiscriminately, the circumstances of the fight dictate the tactics, and rarely are the circumstances the same. I happen to believe there is a time for suppressive fire with a handgun and I�ve seen it work in simulated gunfights. Since a real gunfight involves real bullets that kill, I tend to believe that suppressive fire has the potential to work even better in a real gunfight, but I�m in no hurry to test that theory.

Back to Mando�s point though, which is good. To win, you have to be where the bullets aren�t, simple as that.

Some mental notes taken from my years as a paramedic. With one exception, the LEAST number of times I�ve seen a BG shot by cops is 8 shots. In the early days of the 147 grain 9mm, almost every person shot had been completely perforated. I consider it blind luck that an unintended victim was never hit. In later days, they switched to .40 and perforation decreased dramatically.

In my former hometown I have shot with a whole lot of cops. At the range, they couldn�t hit the broad side of a barn if they were standing inside the barn; always scared the hell out of me. I�ve been present at SWAT qualification shoots where they were heavily coaching the applicant to hit an �A� zone at 7 yards. After a while, I couldn�t take it any longer and I easily ran their qualification course from the 50 yard line. They were all amazed�I was amazed that everyone couldn�t do it.

But in actual shootings, those same cops were just plain deadly. When it came down to the real thing, they hit everything they were aiming at, and did very little missing. While I could shoot circles around any cop in my home town, I sure wouldn�t want to trade bullets with them in a gunfight because they�re in the fight and they�re in it to win. So although I was appalled by their performance on paper, I was astounded at their performance against the real thing.

I�m not crazy about their training techniques, but I can�t argue with the results

That's your call, hope it works out well.

Oh, and misses (in a gunfight) are negligent, but not grossly negligent.