HGM,
</font><font color="blue" class="small">( s for the trained professionals you refered to. I agree, this is precisely the reason the 9mm became so popular. The FBI debacle in Miami got it started. )</font>
I have been told that the FBI has studied LEO shootings and that an officer in a fire fight will hit at about 50% of their qualifying score. I have looked for the study but never found it. But this is what I have been told. Sounds right though.
The FBI Miami shoot out did not lead the movement to 9MM in the FBI. The FBI moved to the 10mm and from there to the .40 One of the agents was armed with a 9MM that had a silver tip ammo which was one of the best bullets back then. It had hit one of the suspects, the one who was moving in and out of cars killing agents wounded on the ground. The bullet had hit the man in the chest and almost hit the heart but did not fully enter the heart. The coroner said it was a fatal hit. After this hit he had gotten out of a car, executed one agent maybe two, and tried to kill another with a 44 mag. He shot a couple times at the other agent but missed point blank shots. This agent the picked up a pump shotgun and fired four rounds one handed at the bad guy. Hit the bad guy numerous times with buck shot. The bad guy was still active and trying to drive off in a car at this point. The agent walked up to the agent shooting on the way. At some point the bad guy lost consiousness and died. I'm not sure if they know which round killed him since he had numerous hits that would be fatal.
Both bad guys died.
</font><font color="blue" class="small">( I forget the numbers, but many many many rounds were fired by these guys because they could not handle the stres of the situation. They may have been traind with a firearm, but not with stress. )</font>
Two of the agents where SWAT qualified. One was the best shot in the Miami office. At least one of the dead agents was SWAT qualified. They fired something like 70-80 rounds at two guys with .223 rifles who where shooting back. The good guys hit 18 times. The bad guys had killed at least two armoured car guards for no reason. They had also shot and left for dead a couple of other people. One bad guy was an ex Marine and the other was Ranger qualified. They fired something like 1500 rounds a week in practice. These weere VERY BAD Boys. One of the mysteries is that one bad guy stayed in a car while they other was out moving and killing. If both bad guys had been moving and shooting its very likely more agents would have been killed as well as local law enforcement.
In fact the agents had hit the bad guys mulitiple times with with wounds that would kill. But just because you are hit does not mean one drops and it fight over like in the movies. These guys kept fighting.
Good firearms training programs add stress but there is no way to add the kinda stress one would have when you have your friends getting killed around you and someone is trying to kill YOU. The FBI did a dang good job in Miami. They had some things go wrong. But things often go wrong. Their biggest problem was that the bad guys would not go down. The bad guys had the will to stay up and fight. Only one agent appears to have shirked his duty. Two agents died. One is crippled for life.
Later,
Dan
