Posted on 09/30/2005 9:00:39 PM PDT by HolgerDansk
Firing 77 bullets, cops wounded an ex-con early yesterday after he shot at another man and turned his weapon on police outside a Manhattan housing project, authorities and witnesses said.[...]
Six officers from Manhattan's 23rd and 28th Precincts and an NYPD housing unit fired at least 77 rounds at Rooks in two bursts of gunfire, said Deputy Police Commissioner Paul Browne.[...]
(Excerpt) Read more at nydailynews.com ...
"Lemme guess... 9MM?
sure, you got 17 rounds in there... and you need every single damn one of them. :-)"
Could you expand this answer slightly for a non-gun guy? Are you disparaging 9 mm or just saying you need a lot of bullets but its OK?
A 124 grain 9mm bullet might expand, but a 230 grain .45 acp bullet will never shrink. Ah yes, I really luv those caliber wars. (BTW, I own 9mm's and 45's)
"A 124 grain 9mm bullet might expand, but a 230 grain .45 acp bullet will never shrink. Ah yes, I really luv those caliber wars. (BTW, I own 9mm's and 45's)"
Thanks.
How many shots would Dirty Harry have needed?
No, its not OK to need a lot of bullets, and Yes, I am disparaging the 9mm as a law enforcement round.
What police need is a good reliable one-shot stop and the 9mm is not it. Lots of bullets flying around in public spaces is unacceptable.
The 9mm pistol was picked by NATO as a military round and in that context it makes a certain amount of sense. It is designed to wound, not to stop. In military contexts it is more effective to wound an enemy than to kill him. A wounded soldier requires support. It takes soldiers from the field to carry him away, and consumes resources to care for him.
None of this matters to police facing a lethal force situation. What matters to police is to fire the minimum number of rounds to make the situation threatless.
The .45ACP was designed to stop with one shot, center mass. It doesn't even have to be a very good shot. It is a large diameter, slow, and very heavy bullet. It tends to stop and expend all of its energy in the first few inches of the first thing it hits.
The 9mm is a lightweight fast bullet that tends to overpenetrate (pass through) soft materials and expend little of its (far lesser to begin with) energy in the first thing it hits.
The energy imparted on a target depends first on how much energy is carried in the bullet. Then it depends on how that energy is imparted to the target. The faster a bullet stops in a target, the more energy is transfered to the target in that time. If a bullet doesn't stop fast in the target, or passes through the target... then any remaining energy is of no value in stopping the target.
Rooks, who was on parole for a robbery conviction, was hit in the hip, neck and shoulder in front of 5 E. 115th St. He was in stable condition yesterday at Harlem Hospital. No cops were wounded.
He was struck three times out of the reported 77 shots, for a hit rate of 3.8%, which does leave considerable room for improvement, even in a duress situation.
The article doesn't explain where the other 74 rounds ended up, but they all went somewhere other than the suspect, that much is certain.
Suffice it to say that if I, as a citizen license to carry a concealed pistol, were to perform in such a fashion, I would likely face revocation of my permit, and probably criminal charges and a civil suit on top of that.
The caliber of the pistols the police were using don't explain the failure to put 96% of the rounds on target.
If anything, it would be reasonable to expect greater accuracy from 9mm than from heavier rounds with more recoil.
But that's just an armchair assessment. I wasn't there, and I recognize the importance of that rather pivotal fact.
---One or two hits center mass with a .45 or even a .357 would have ended the matter.
I'm not a big fan of the 9mm for law enforcement purposes.---
I just purchased a Glock 31C. That's a fullsize service pistol in 357 Sig, ported. It's designed to throw 125gr bullets at 1450fps, like a 357 Magnum, but with a 15 round capacity. I think it's state of the art for a combat pistol.
shot placement...shot placement....shot placement
comes from
practice...practice....practice.
A .22 will do the job in the right hands.
Someone needs some lessons on how to hit what you are aiming at.
It's good to recognize that it is easy to armchair quarterback the situation on the ground. When really bad things happen... lots of best laid plans seem to waft away like a vapor. Heaven knows I've been in situations that I wouldn't want to have FR second-guessers on my case about, but it was the best I could do at the moment.
But you're also right that there just isn't any reason for massively ineffective fire. The whole concept of the "one" carefully placed shot seems to not even be taught anymore. I don't know what's up with that.
I think there's enough of a disparity between shots fired and shots on target here that some criticism is warranted.
That said, I also know for a fact that my accuracy with a firearm would degrade rapidly if my target had already fired several shots at me, and I can't knock these guys for being scared.
I sure as hell would be.
But hey, that's what training and practice, practice, practice are for.
Here's hoping that every officer involved in this incident will find time to burn a few extra boxes of ammo at the range this weekend.
Meanwhile, for what it's worth, .40 S&W is a very fine cartridge for law enforcement work, as evidenced by the vast number of cops who carry pistols chambered in this cartridge -- which was designed specifically with terminal ballistics in mind.
I know there's a lot of buzz about the .45 ACP and the .45 GAP, but well, I'm looking at the numbers and not seeing a big difference.
Subjectively, the .45 has a nice thump to it, but I don't feel any less confident bringing a .40 to the party. Both do the job nicely, and a flat nose for mushrooming and energy transfer is part of the .40 S&W cartridge specification, which is nice.
The Glock 22, a full-sized service pistol chambered in .40 S&W, is one of the best-selling pistols for law enforcement in the U.S.
Unless I'm mistaken, the FBI Academy still issues Glock 22's or 23's (student's choice) to graduates, which says something.
Just sayin'. ;^)
he got hit 3 times it says. Geez.
Yes, it will. Though... in a stressful situation those would be particularly gifted hands. And you're also correct that shot placement just doesn't seem to be in the curriculum anymore.
But I wouldn't recommend the .22 for standard issue. :-)
I'll settle for a suitably powerful weapon, and people that are better trained to use it. Shouldn't be so much to ask.
I was just a mere Coastie doing boardings. But we spent week after week shooting competition IPPC targets. I was a trainer and a range officer... and worked the guys at the range sometimes twice a week. I did it for my own benefit. I didn't want somebody backing me up that couldn't shoot just as well or better than I could. We got them to do a double-tap pretty much by instinct.
Looking and merely thinking the bullet placement. No point, no aim, just think it. Practice, practice, practice. But have a proper bullet that will do something useful when it gets there. :-)
I used the .45ACP as an example merely because I know it. That's what I carried on duty, I've reloaded buttloads of it, and it's what I carry now in civilian life. I like it, and for good reason.
But that's not to say that there aren't lots of good alternatives. I too have heard good things about the .40S&W as well as the 10mm. I also still like my good and trusty .357 magnum revolver.
There's no one perfect all-purpose gun. But I do remember the title of my favorite Ruark big-game hunting book: Use Enough Gun. It doesn't have to be the biggest gun, it just has to be enough gun.
For anything but target practice... the 9mm just isn't enough gun. :-)
These guys need instruction. If I fire 77 rounds at a target they'll have trouble scraping up enough DNA to determine what it was.
"Someone needs some lessons on how to hit what you are aiming at."
Aiming? What makes you think they were aiming? If they fired 77 rounds with only three hits, they were just blasting away. This nonsense really ticks me off.
Whats with New Yorks Finest and their really, really poor marksmanship?
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