Pistol Accuracy in a Combat Enviroment

How accurate is a pistol in a combat environment? If it is pressed up against your chest or forehead, unfortunately for you it is extremely accurate. Once you introduce other dynamics such as movement and distance, the accuracy begins to diminish at varying rates depending on the proficiency of the shooter. Below is a link to a video that clearly demonstrates this concept. It is a video of the final competition between two SWAT team members engaged in Close Quarter Battle. This video is from a segment of a show titled Combat Missions that ran on the USA Channel a few years ago. It was a competition where 750 former Special Operators from Marine Recon, Navy Seals, Green Beret, Delta Force, SWAT, and CIA Spec Ops submitted their bios for review, with the objective of being chosen to compete for the grand prize money of 250K. After reviewing the bios of the applicants, 24 participants (4 squads of 6) were chosen for the competition. The two final participants, who both happened to be SWAT team members (from LAPD and Miami Dade), were the last two left standing at the end of the 15 week competition after many major twists and turns. Here is a look at some of the competitors.

The objective of the final evolution was to place a round (head shot) into a five inch circle located on the competitors protective face shield, using marking rounds to make the hit immediately apparent to the judges who were monitoring the exchange via helmet cams. The first one to place a round in the opponents circle would be the winner. There were 85 or so rounds fired collectively by the two competitors before the objective was finally achieved. Here is the video.

Please note that the participants were wearing full protective equipment, so in an actual situation using real ammo, some of the other rounds discharged could have caused fatality if taken in the CNS or a vital organ.

With a little practice, a person can go to the pistol range and shoot tight groups all day long when sighting a stationary target, but once movement is introduced, combined with the pressure of the combatant returning fire, a new set of complex dynamics get added to the equation. The moral of the story is this. If someone has a pistol and is definitely intending to inflict bodily harm and you are unarmed, and you are not close enough to close the gap or do not posses enough training to disarm them, do NOT remain stationary. Get moving immediately by making your escape in an irregular pattern using random direction changes to increase the difficulty of the shooter sighting you (hopefully they will not have a laser sighting system) while creating distance between you and the shooter as you search for effective cover. One cannot out run a bullet in a straight line, so making it more difficult for the shooter to train his sights on you is a better tactic that may decrease the odds of them delivering a round that could end your career. This is not to guarantee that you won't get hit, but being wounded and ending up dead are two vastly different situations with two very different outcomes.


Other factors that may also affect the outcome if you are shot:

-- The distance from where the round originates

-- The caliber of the firearm

-- The type of round (shape, coating, hollow point, fmj, etc)

-- The powder charge propelling the round (a larger charge multiplies
velocity ie .38 and .45 are slower FPS than .357 and .44)

-- The barrel length of the firearm

-- The weight and muscular density of the person receiving the round

-- Where and what the round enters and or exits (if it exits), whether it be bone, muscle, organs, arteries, etc.