Unpredictable Reactions

One of the least predictable aspects of a gunfight is predicting how you or a suspect will react once shot. Where the suspect is concerned, rounds that should drop him may not. He may continue firing back with a stamina that defies credibility. By contrast, you may succumb to a relatively minor wound that should be survivable, unless you are prepared psychologically for the physical and emotional impact of being shot. There are times when even soldiers under severe enemy attack died without being wounded because in the heat of the battle conditions were so dire they mentally concluded they were going to die so they physically died.

The flip side of this phenomenon is when a suspect has sustained physically fatal wounds but mentally continues to fight. Medical researchers have established that nearly twenty percent of the time, suspects will not be incapacitated by just one round, despite being fatally wounded. For all intents and purposes, they have been killed but don’t know it yet. Some thirteen percent will keep going for up to five minutes; nearly seven percent will go on even longer. In Philadelphia, an assailant was shot square in the heart, yet managed to walk down a flight of stairs and open two doors before he collapsed. In New York, a suspect hit in the stomach, bladder, and gallbladder ran three blocks before collapsing. Even multiple shots will not bring down some suspects. In Los Angeles, another suspect kept firing through twenty hits before the 21st finally dropped him. In another case, a suspect was shot 33 times with 9mm rounds before ceasing his threatening movement.

You can see in so many cases that the suspect can still kill you even after you have “killed,” them. Instead, you should continue to shoot until you “stop the threat.”

You can study ammunition from now until the end of time by shooting rounds into ballistic gelatin, but what can’t be measured is each human’s capacity to continue the fight right up to the bitter end. You must develop an indomitable spirit in yourself to ensure the bitter end is his and not yours.

Keep your head down and keep the faith,

Reno