"Hit ratio for close gunfights REAL numbers" Topic

Those of us who play skirmish games should see that gunfights at VERY close range produce less than a third of hits…these numbers can be determined by firearm discharges by the NY police department in a just released report over a decade of statistics. There is a lot of data here which is not just a shot in the dark
link

Interesting stuff.

The trick is, do you equate police and civilians with trained and experienced combat troops? If not, how do you differentiate? Also, in a rules sense, do you model ALL shots made, or only those capable of having an effect (ie model real ROF in real time or abstract out some of the shots)?

Interesting, but be nice to see it broken down by weapon type, years on the force, …

LLC aka Ron

Something I read years ago….

How many times do you hear TV news reports from some third world trouble spot describing a gun battle raging for several hours between rival militias/gangs/insurgents/government troops etc. You see footage of guys with automatic weapons emptying them down the street, sounds of gunfire all over the place. The report then ends with something like "it is thought 2 people have been killed".

Only TWO! Thousands of bullets flying about for HOURS and only two dead! In real life people hide but don't aim.

but then you have people like a friend of mine who is an officer in one of those special ultra cool high speed units. He's not considered a special shooter or anything, but he hits whatever the heck he can see (and with a pistol)

So put someone like that up against a common street gang holding pistols sideways and…..

but that is by far the exception.

Surely some of the Police would count as "trained and experienced"?

Chris Peer's "At Close Quarters" there is a pretty good representation of the quality differeces. IIRC, poor troops(ie. militia or gang members) have only a 1-in-20 chance to hit, while elite troops have a much higher chance – though not 100%.

I've pitted 4 elite Foreign Legion commandos vs gangs of militia and the commandos held their own except when pinned in prolonged gunfights – that is without any maneuvering. In those cases the militias volume of fire eventually wore them down.

I think the term 'effective enemy fire' should be considered in a firefight.

That is rounds whizzing past your head will encourage one to hit the ground and scramble for cover. Your subsequent reaction will be dependent upon many factors, but a poorly led group with bad morale may flee upon being fired at even if they suffer no deaths.

Wargames rules are abstract and the 'killing' of a model doesn't just represent the death of a soldier but also a soldier fleeing or becoming wounded for example.

Altfritz: Ahh I should have been more specific…

By trained and experienced, I mean for a firefight. Police, while trained to shoot, aren't generally trained in squad battle tactics of fire and maneuver and that kind of thing. Most don't have combat experience, even if they have years of experience as a patrol officer (unless the particular officer is a combat vet). Most officers spend their entire career without getting into a gunfight, even if they spend those years training to shoot. And most of us don't know how we will react in a gunfight.

So I mean "trained and experienced" as in a trained veteran military combat unit who has experienced hostile gunfire.

Not to disparage the average police patrol unit, they just aren't trained for military combat or have hostile gunfight experience.

Though even in combat, military units do a lot of firing and not that much hitting, but this often has to do with both sides actively using their training and tactics to take cover and minimize themselves as a target, something civilian gunfighhts don't usually display (two guys in a bar parking lot shoot it out, they generally aren't acting like two grunts on a battlefield…).

Of course SWAT teams are a different matter, but are more specialized for a particular kind of fighting than even a front line army unit.

So I guess my point is that these statistics, while interesting, might not be all that useful when it comes to recreating *military* gunfights. Very useful I would imagine for pulp or civilian gaming that involves paramilitary or untrained forces etc.

Just my two cents…not even worth that much

If you're interested in this kind of thing, you should also look at this: PDF link

Movies distort the effectiveness of hand guns considerably! Except when the camera's on the henchmen who have a hit probability of 0%. They always fail their "in the way" roll.

Though hit probability ramps up to 100% when firing at nearby pottery and earthenware.

I suspect a swat team is better at this kind of stuff than combat troops. Combat troops do precious little fighting at point blank if they can help it.

The activities in Iraq at the present are more along the lines of the swat team than anything else. Special weapons and very specific training will produce a better result in these situations. That said, all you have to do is count the bullets and the casualties to determine percentages of "hits". It ain't rocket science -- no need to be skeptical about the numbers.

mjc

no need to be skeptical about the numbers.

Who said anything about being skeptical about the numbers? Perhaps skeptical about their application to recreating military tactical combat. Like I said, great for pulp or civilian type modern combat at close range…

SWAT teams might bet better at CQB than the military (like you said, Iraq notwithstanding), but I would imagine it depends a LOT on the actual team and their experience. My local SWAT would have precious little actual in combat firing experience compared to say, the Dallas SWAT.

But it is a valid point about SWAT in general.

Flashman: You forgot to add "Large aquarium with fish" to the 100% hit list!

"New York City police officers fire their weapons far less often than they did a decade ago, a statistic that has dropped along with the crime rate. But when they do fire, even at an armed suspect, there is often no one returning fire at the officers. Officers hit their targets roughly 34 percent of the time."

"When they do fire … there is often no one returning fire at the officers" Some of the targets might be shooting back with wallets or empty hands, from what I see on the news. When one target is hit mulitple times, by one or multiple shooters, does that count for more than 1 hit?

So how do they count this
"The officers on the scene fired a total of 50 bullets, but fewer than half hit the intended target, a car carrying the three men, despite being fired at close range. The rest sprayed nearby cars and buildings, as local residents leapt out of bed and huddled on the floor. One of the stray bullets shattered a window at a train station in the neighbourhood, injuring two transport police officers with flying glass." The statistics may not be a shot in the dark but are many of those by the police?

I used to have a friend who worked in internal affairs for a major city Police Dept. Part of his job was to study how these things took place.

One of the things that was very obvious – and he'd actually seen a gunfight on closed camera footage that showed this – was that two men running around a parked car shooting at 5-20 feet can easily miss one another, and both run out of ammunition. The shooters are dodging, bobbing, and aren't able to stop and aim – they are too excited and scared.

In 'The Rules With No Name' it is easier to hit someone at medium range than up close, because the man with the gun has to move much further as he tries to track a moving target.

Murdering a man who is seated in a chair drinking a cup of cocoa is, of course, easiest at point blank range. But even then, people get nervous and miss.

Murdering a man who is seated in a chair drinking a cup of cocoa is, of course, easiest at point blank range. But even then, people get nervous and miss.

Hmmmm…are speaking from personal experience here? Remind me never to YOU off!

Don't worry, Keith. I'm the fella who gets nervous and shoots the saucer out from my victim's hand while missing him completely.

Then I scream and run out of the room.

It's happened twice so far.

Only TWO! Thousands of bullets flying about for HOURS and only two dead! In real life people hide but don't aim.

Yeah, and those two were innocent civilians who got caught by stray rounds, oftener than not.

MJC: Ok, then as long as I have a cuppa tea or cocoa or coffee in hand when you're around I should be safe.

The stress of close quarters combat makes hitting anything unlikely.

At the OK Corral, in a narrow 18' wide alley, eight guys fired something like 34 bullets at each other and only eight hit their marks. That's closer to 25%.

I think a lot of us have seen the dash camera footage of the gunfight that erupted when troopers pulled over those two militant guys in the blue Suburban. A dozen of more shots were exchanged at a range of no more than 10' and not one hit. The two guys got away.

Excellent link Dave. Thanks.

What's really interesting is that the 34% hit ratio can be accurately reproduced on a six-sided die.

From the article:

"In the New York reports, the hit ratio of officers who committed suicide with a firearm — and, therefore, hit their target 100 percent of the time — is included when the overall average is calculated, bringing it up."

One of the Fencibles lives in Greenwhich Village, around the corner from a wild shoot-out last year in which a crazed gunman slew a bartender and two unarmed auxiliary cops before being shot down by armed cops.

He said it was clear from the bullet holes in widnows and such afterward just how wild the firing had been. There were a lot of shots fired.

Windows, not widnows. Sigh.

I remember a SWAT team killing an armed and dangereous felon. Five officers fired TWO full magazines from MP5's, full automatic. Four to six FEET, five rounds hit, two lethal. He was sitting in a car, not shooting back and surrounded.

Interesting read. Here in Sweden it is very different. Police
very seldom fire but when they do they have an uncanny ability
to hit and kill, for both good and bad. Swedish police uses 9mm
had FMJ until a few years ago when we switched to hollow points

Some examples. One shot fired at a running suspect, in the dark
by a running officer at 50 yards. One hit suspect died before
ambulance arrived. FMJ round

Man with knife attacks three officers, one round fired, suspect
dies before ambulance arrives. HP round

Fight in apartement, officer fires two rounds both strikes suspect
in the leg incapacitating him. HP round

Riot, officer down with headinjury. Two rounds fired, one hit
suspect downing him and almost killing him. FMJ round

Man with axe attacks officers, one round fired killing suspect. HP round

Man with Assault rifle charges police, one round fired at his leg
hits and shatteres the bone badly, downing suspect. FMJ round

Bankrobbery, several rounds fired at policeofficer wounding him.
Officer fires one round killing robber. FMJ round

Man with knife attacks officer. One round fired killing
suspect. FMJ round

Man with knife stabs two officers, one round fired, breakes the
spine making the attacker paralized from neck down. FMJ round.

Man with gun shoots officer three times. Officer fires two rounds
both hit, badly wounding suspect. HP rounds.

There are more incidents but these I remember off the top of my
head.

Swedish police, all together about 16000 for a population of 9
million, usually shoot about 10-20 times a year, not counting
warning shots. Usually one suspect dies per year on average.

Most shots fired are directed against cars being driven towards
officers or against aggressive dogs. Fire against humans are
maybe 2-3 times a year.

Average number of rounds fired are above one round but below
two rounds. Hit percentage is very high and the risk of dying
if being hit is skyhigh! Shooting training in the academy is
very good with live fire, simfire and lasertraining. But after
that there is not much of training when you actually work.

But for some reason officers hit what they aim at and fire
very few rounds.

"Chris Peer's "At Close Quarters" there is a pretty good representation of the quality differeces. IIRC, poor troops(ie. militia or gang members) have only a 1-in-20 chance to hit, while elite troops have a much higher chance – though not 100%."

link

I wish I could find another article I read months ago: iirc, the cop rate of hits was 12% and the average gang banger (they practice more often than your average cop does, the article claimed) was on the order of four or five times better!

So don't commit your violent crimes in Sweden then!

In the Falklands war it was approx 300 rounds for the Brits to hit one enemy.

In WWII, it was 4-5000 rounds.

For British Special forces at point blank range the hits are only 1/3rd. They are taught to shoot, even if they can't hit as the firing inteferes with the other side's shooting!