An example for the endless is 5 enough, I can't handle more than one opponent

[Psychedelic Bang]

5 used to be enough!!!!

I'd much rather continue to carry a lightweight, boring little revolver sans reloads, than have to go through the motions of ccw'ing a full sized semiauto everyday. but the world has become insane...

 

[BOOGIE the oily]

Unfortunately (for me, and other honest people), carrying is illegal in my country. But if it was legal, I doubt I'd ever leave my house with a round less than a full load.
For me, the math is simple: if you need it, it does you no good, sitting on your night stand.

 

[briandg]

So, being prepared is the key to success?

For over fifty years now, people have preached at me that luck can bring you victory, or that it's a matter of destiny, they've said that preparedness is unimportant because a noble soul will push us to magnificent heights and this superpower will decide any confrontation, that skill will always lose to good fortune.

What I have observed throughout my own life, however, is that even my noble spirit can't seem to defeat someone who's just better than I am. That nerdy guy with the dopey glasses who was always sitting around reading got first and I got second in the spelling bee.

Obviously, he hadn't gotten the memo

 

[TXAZ]

A MAJOR step was left out: Step 0 Intelligence.

Law enforcement had been tracking the terrorists since they left Arizona.

Instead of a brass band welcoming committee, ....

 

[Bartholomew Roberts]

Intelligence is great; and maybe even a deciding factor here; but let's say we are doing this Force on Force. Before the scenario, I brief you on the exact car that will be the problem. I tell you they have body armor and rifles. I tell you within a five minute window when it will happen and assure you beforehand deadly force will be necessary to solve the problem. I give you every edge you need to mentally prepare yourself.

You still have to stand in the street with no cover and a pistol and stop two guys with concealment/cover, body armor, and rifles. I've done enough FoF 2v1 scenarios to appreciate what a low probability scenario that is even with much better intel than this officer had.

 

[Nanuk]

5 used to be enough!!!!

5 What? 5 anything from a snubby 38 was never enough.

 

[Lohman446]

So, being prepared is the key to success?

For over fifty years now, people have preached at me that luck can bring you victory, or that it's a matter of destiny, they've said that preparedness is unimportant because a noble soul will push us to magnificent heights and this superpower will decide any confrontation, that skill will always lose to good fortune.

What I have observed throughout my own life, however, is that even my noble spirit can't seem to defeat someone who's just better than I am. That nerdy guy with the dopey glasses who was always sitting around reading got first and I got second in the spelling bee.

Obviously, he hadn't gotten the memo

One of my favorite quotes on the subject comes from legendary college football coach Paul "Bear" Bryant. "It's not the will to win that matters - everyone has that. It's the will to prepare to win that matters"

I still think that we often attempt to solve a user issue with hardware and I say that having grudgingly and without great joy purchased a G19 yesterday to replace my P938. All the hardware in the world is not going to suffice if you are not prepared and, as in the case of the officer, able to think clearly enough to carry out that training.

I still say the #1 lesson that can be taken from the article is the officer advanced on his targets even though he was far outgunned and in a defensively inferior position. By putting "the cards on the table" so to speak with this tactic he effectively worked to nullify the primary advantages the aggressors had.

 

[adamBomb]

What is wrong with looking at actual cases?

Its good to look at cases as long as you don't assume an n of 1 = significance. I think that is what he was pointing out because on the flip side there will be cases where you fired zero rounds. There is no right answer to this discussion other than the amount of rounds you carry is fine until you are in a situation when its not. At some point there will be situations where the only thing that could of gotten you out is a tank.

 

[DM357]

Here's a better lesson, and one that doesn't require quick thinking, the "right" gun, and so on: Don't do stupid contests and exhibits like this.

 

[Glenn E. Meyer]

Folks misunderstand statistical significance. It means that some sample statistic or relationship is not likely to be due to chance. Its relevance when looking at a critical event in the extremes of a distribution events isn't really clear.

If the average number of shots fired is three, so what? Another study might find that the average was 5 and that difference was significant at the .05 level but not a .01.

The average (yet again) isn't guaranteed to be your gun fight.

N=1 - that killed the dinosaurs.

 

[Lohman446]

My point was that arguing that this case calls for X number of rounds (0r more than Y) while citing this case is as meaningful or meaningless as citing a case that took 1 and was successful. It's cherry picking data and building a card stacking fallacy.

Your point about statistics stands to a degree. In a gun fight I will not be concerned about a reasonable sample size. I will be concerned with a sample of one.

Somewhere we, each of us individually, have to decide how prepared we are going to be. Are we prepared to handle the anemic pan handler who will flee at the first sign of resistance? Are we prepared to attemp to fight off Delta Force attempting to kill us? The answer lies somewhere in the middle

My argument is you succes or failure is likely determined by your skills and not your equipment and hardware will it overcome a skill deficit in most cases. Of course each person is free to determine how that influences his or her decision making. I think I've failed to articulate the argument so much at this point even to myself. In most cases there is minimal difference in carrying a 15+1 firearm and a reload (or multiples) in comparison to a firearm with less capaxity and it's easier to err on the side of being over equipped.

 

[OldMarksman]

My point was that arguing that this case calls for X number of rounds (0r more than Y) while citing this case is as meaningful or meaningless as citing a case that took 1 and was successful.

Not really.

The question is one of sufficiency. A few data points showing that some number has been sufficient would be meaningless. Data showing that a certain number of rounds properly used has been insufficient can tell us something

But we need to keep in mind the number of variables. That's where actual cases fail us. Where did the rounds hit? At what angle? Etc.

 

[briandg]

Glenn, it's always been a belief of mine that statistics gleaned from myriad random events such as this are just short of useless, here can be no accounting for the multiple variables involved in creating that one event that was studied. The best that can be done is to create some very general rules of thumb, or try to pack all of that information into a single gestalt statement. We agree on that, I believe. We can pretty easily determine statistics about what days are more dangerous for drivers, but what real use is it if we don't have a why, or even a remote understanding of the statistical data?

The demolition derby used to run here every third Saturday. That statistic of 200 collisions outside of the city limits is truly valuable to certain people.

After all of the number crunching and case studying, it's still going to be all up to "fate" whether a person will succeed. I sneezed once with my crosshairs on a squirrel.

I was reading an analysis of high voltage lines and health hazards, and one of the "scientists" (loosely termed) said something outrageous. He remarked something along the lines that statistics are all just useless, research, double blind studies, it's all baloney.

He said that when you spend sixteen hour days, work day and night, sitting alone in the dark with experiments and data, that is when you will find the truth.

Sleep deprivation, mountain dew and cheese doodles are what it takes to understand and interpret what field researchers provide.

I know that I sound like a broken record, chaos is the only constant. I never would have missed that tree rat if I hadn't sneezed.

 

[Lohman446]

Not really.

The question is one of sufficiency. A few data points showing that some number has been sufficient would be meaningless. Data showing that a certain number of rounds properly used has been insufficient can tell us something

But we need to keep in mind the number of variables. That's where actual cases fail us. Where did the rounds hit? At what angle? Etc.

Define sufficiency. Reagan had an untold number of highly skilled individuals carrying an untold number of weapons and I would bet tens of thousands of rounds of ammunition. It was still insufficient to stop John Hinckley entirely. One could argue its sufficient in that Reagan survived but one could also argue that it was not the defensive measures around Reagan that saved him - it was luck in that Hinckley failed.

So while we know there is some number that is sufficient we don't know, if we are looking at single case studies, exactly what that number is because one can point to the case study of Reagan and show that whatever that great number was it was not sufficient.

We have to be able to make a decision about what is sufficient for us as individuals. As Glenn has argued (I think) the large myriad of information out there is not vital to you if you ever have to use your weapon. What is vital is that you are adequately prepared. Its not a poor argument it just is not one based on statistical evidence. It's based on individual case studies such as the above. For his line of argument though you only need this type of case study because surely being prepared for the situation the officer found himself in facing two jihadists also indicates being prepared for the drunk idiot who has decided killing someone sounds like a valuable life experience.

The problem I have with the argument of "you might as well be prepared as possible" is it begins to justify, in the absurd, carrying many multiple firearms, a folding high capacity rifle (perhaps in a disguised case), and hundreds of rounds of ammunition. While I respect Glenn's argument I question if the argument in itself justifies a particular stopping point. For instance is a G19 and 45 rounds of ammunition (or 60 or 120 or whatever) a logical conclusion to the argument?

In the end individual preparedness is an individual decision that one must be comfortable with. I think as we discuss carrying enough equipment it is easy to get lost in the very real ability to vastly over equip one's skills.

 

[Glenn E. Meyer]

You still don't understand statistical decision making and the difference between planning for the measure of central tendency vs. planning for an event in the distribution of possible events that might be in the extreme tails.

As said by Marty Hayes:

We have a saying: We don’t train for the average, we train for the anomaly

As far as training - you are hung up on folks thinking hardware is a substitute for training, skill and mindset. Of course, that is true. However, we are trying to reach folks to abandon that world view and train up. An incompetent person is incompetent with a J frame and incompetent with a Glock. Don't be that person.

Unfortunately, most carriers don't train. It is true that they may make it through the single mugger be gone incident. However, we are speaking to a higher standard.

 

[Lohman446]

I guess my big question is where in the tail does on stop once one begins to prepare for events outside of the "normal" distribution and that is assuming we are even discussing a standard distribution. Looking at a standard deviation the extremes, those with greater than a 1.5 standard deviation, only occupy, one one end only occupy 6.7% of the cases. If we allow ourselves to go clear to a 2 standard deviation before calling it extreme we get this down to 2.3%.

That 2.3% take a tremendous amount of skill when compared to the rest of it - if we can somehow figure out how to reconcile enough variables to cram encounters into a standard deviation chart. Frankly I expect the data would become very skewed towards a "positive" skew were even less of the encounters are represented on the extreme "hard" side.

Again its up to every individual to decide where he or she should train and prepare for but if we set the "bar" too high towards the extreme encounter more and more people will be turned off because of the amount of time, effort, and money that will be required. We must not be in a position where we take the idea of "prepare for the extreme or don't bother" because very few people are actually going to prepare for the extreme and we can have a long conversation about what exactly the extreme is - for instance is it the 5 competent attackers who have picked the time and place against a single defender? I would say yes, yes it is.

 

[Double Naught Spy]

People have said it for years.

"Is five enough? Yes, except when it isn't."

To be honest, statistics mean nothing once the shooting starts. They are not predictive of how your gun battle will turn out, only descriptive of what has happened in the past. You don't get to pick what part of the curve your battle is in until after it is over.

 

[adamBomb]

I guess my big question is where in the tail does on stop once one begins to prepare for events outside of the "normal" distribution

When you need to get through 100 armed soldiers and need a tank with air support to accomplish it.

The amount you carry is enough until you are in a situation where it isn't. I can come up with situations all day where what anyone on this forum carries won't be enough. If you truly want to play the stats, just having a gun is already preparing for the anomaly outside the normal distribution as most people won't ever need a gun, let alone need to fire it. How much is enough? We can only say for sure in hindsight.

 

[OldMarksman]

Define sufficiency.

From the dictionary: "the condition or quality of being adequate or sufficient". In this context is should be plainly obvious that we refer to being adequate to effect a physical stop.

Reagan had an untold number of highly skilled individuals carrying an untold number of weapons and I would bet tens of thousands of rounds of ammunition. It was still insufficient to stop John Hinckley entirely.

You apparently ignored the words "properly used".

The problem I have with the argument of "you might as well be prepared as possible" is it begins to justify, in the absurd, carrying many multiple firearms, a folding high capacity rifle (perhaps in a disguised case), and hundreds of rounds of ammunition.

Just how might that begin to justify anything of the kind?

I guess my big question is where in the tail does on stop once one begins to prepare for events outside of the "normal" distribution...

There are no "events 'outside' of the normal distribution".

...and that is assuming we are even discussing a standard distribution.

That may be your assumption, maybe.

Frankly I expect the data would become very skewed towards a "positive" skew were even less of the encounters are represented on the extreme "hard" side.

What on Earth do you mean by that?

Again its up to every individual to decide where he or she should train and prepare for but if we set the "bar" too high towards the extreme encounter more and more people will be turned off because of the amount of time, effort, and money...

What do you mean by "turned off"? Are you contending that people who understand the difficulty of achieving some kind of perfection will not try to improve their skills?

To be honest, statistics mean nothing once the shooting starts. They are not predictive of how your gun battle will turn out, only descriptive of what has happened in the past. You don't get to pick what part of the curve your battle is in until after it is over.

That hits the nail on the head!

 

[briandg]

lohmann, if I'm understanding your reference to hinkley, you seem to be saying that many thousands of rounds on the ground in that area, maybe one hundred men, and they still didn't keep one lone nutter from firing at the president at near point blank range has some sort of significance. It doesn't.

In sacramento, squeaky forgot to put a round in the chamber of her .45 and in san francisco sarah moore missed him at about 40 feet.

Neither of those encounters included bullets used by secret service officers and one didn't even involve the secret service at all, a civilian stopped the attack. are we to understand that bullets don't matter?

There is no relevance to how many bullets are necessary and how many are provided to ensure safety. Seriously, squeaky had four rounds, and didn't fire a round. Sarah had six, I guess, and missed with her only round fired. Chaos, or the existence of unpredictable variables that could never, ever be imagined or prepared for are what turn the entire concept of what defense equipment is needed into a pretty much meaningless argument.

Clint smith said that the only thing that you should take to a gunfight is an atom bomb.