The shooting and self defense community has a big problem. We can’t hit a damn thing to save our lives! There are any number of contributing factors to this serious problem: lack of practice, unrealistic training, poorly understood psychological and physiological concepts, the list goes on. This article will be an in depth look at the current state of affairs for combat shooting, including the detailed science behind lethal force encounters. As a bonus, there is an included training plan at the very end.

This article is primarily written for those who carry a weapon for self defense purposes, but it is based off of data from police shootings, and experiments with police officers.

There are some studies that look at civilian shooting ability, and I have included those as well, but police data is primary because it is the best and most relevant data available.

Accuracy in Self Defense and Police Shootings

On the surface this appears to be a simple question. How accurate do officers fire their weapon? This sounds simple, but isn’t. Do we really want to know the chances any given round will strike it’s target, which is quite low, or are we asking from a perspective of how likely they are to hit their targets with multiple rounds, in a single engagement? Here are the stats for the current and past officers.

1880’s Accuracy Per Round Fired 15-22% (source)

1980’s Accuracy Per Round Fired 15-30% (source)

1880’s Person Hit Rate 33% (source)

1980’s Person Hit Rate 22-42% (source)

2008’s Person Hit Rates (LAPD) 31% (source)

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I’m struck by the relative stability in terms of accuracy over a century. When we look at the 1880-1980 period we see that at best 1 in 3 bullets is going to strike the target.

The news is a bit better for overall hit rates for an engagement with some nearing 40% in the 1980’s. But, it’s fairly safe to say that in any given engagement the police are likely to hit their target roughly one out of every three shootings.

I would also point out that I don’t think joe civilian is really going to be much different. They might be slightly lower, but many of these engagements are at close range, and there is solid data showing that less skilled shooters are almost as accurate at these ranges.

Now we know that we are roughly 30% percent accurate in a gunfight. We need to ask ourselves what is causing that difference between training and the streets?

If you want to learn more about real world gunfighting. Give Scott Reitz’s book The Art of Modern Gunfighting a shot. He’s a world renowned trainer, and has spent over two decades on LAPD SWAT. He knows a thing or three.

Decrease in Accuracy in Force on Force, and Traditional Training

Most police agencies and civilian shooters spend the vast majority of their time shooting in a stationary lane, at stationary cardboard targets. Go to any range throughout the country and this is what you will see.

This is what scientists call a low anxiety training condition. There is no one shooting back at you, and there is no real consequence to a slow or inaccurate engagement.

This is a necessary method of training, but it you would be a fool to stop there. To succeed in a high threat in environment, you need to train in a high anxiety condition. This of course is force on force training (FOF). Check out these stats for accuracy in low and high anxiety environments.

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Average Police Officer Accuracy Low Anxiety 83-93% (source)

Average Police Officer Accuracy High Anxiety 74-79% (source)

Greatest Accuracy Drop from Traditional to Force on Force Training 23% (source)

Average Improvement from Force on Force Training 7.3% (source)

I think many of these stats are pretty straight forward, but some require a little explaining. We can see that on a static range, at normal shooting distances (5-15yds) officer’s are hitting in the 80-90% range, provided nothing is shooting back at them.

When the tables are turned, and they run the risk of being shot, their accuracy can drop up to 23%. There is a bit of a range here because some experiments have smaller targets and a more difficult scenario, which leads to a bigger drop in accuracy. As a rule of thumb when misses equal pain you are about 15-20% less accurate.

This leads us to an interesting conclusion. Officers are roughy 80% accurate against cardboard, 70% accurate against targets that shoot back, and roughly 30% accurate against lethal threats.

This leads us to a huge question. What is causing this huge drop in accuracy?

Decrease in Accuracy for Real World Shootings

There are a variety of factors that are at play here. Most people intuitively think that shooting in the real world is less accurate because of the high heart rate and adrenalin, or because of extreme target movements

Without a doubt these factors do play a role, but high heart rate in and of itself doesn’t contribute. This study had officers pedal a bike to max heart rate then execute a shooting task. They found no meaningful difference in shooting performance at high heart rate, and low heart rate. Which means that heart rate alone doesn’t affect accuracy.

There are other, less obvious factors that do affect shooting performance from cardboard to force on force, and I would suppose that they are exacerbated when dealing with a lethal force encounter.

Anxiety, Experience, and Shooting Good Guys

Anxiety itself is the key to accuracy degradation in a gunfight. This degradation is caused by actual, observable behaviors during force on force training. Check out these stats.

Percent of Time Officer Shot No Shoot Target During FOF 18% (source)

Percent of Time Rookie Officer Shot No Shoot During FOF 62% (source)

Speed Increase Comparing High Anxiety to Low 11% (source)

Percent of Time SWAT Officer Shot No Shoot During FOF 18% (source)

Percent of Accuracy SWAT Officer greater than Rookie 21% (source)

*FOF is force on force

These are some very interesting stats. Many of these studies looked at officer behavior in force on force (FOF) training, especially as it related to eye behavior.

They found that more experienced officers tended to focus on areas where a weapon could be almost exclusively, where as rookies did not, often times looking around the room, or at the assailant’s face. For more info on this check out this article.

This allowed the more experienced officers to process the shoot no shoot scenario faster. Interestingly enough the SWAT officers had the same error rate in shooting a guy holding a cell phone, as compared to other studies. There are a couple of reasons for this.

Researches have noted that under high anxiety conditions humans tend to interpret any behavior as more threatening, and respond accordingly. So it seems from this data that where you look is a key determinate of shooting the right person. Those rookies who’s gaze’s wandered or who closed their eyes shot the good guy at triple the rate the SWAT officer’s did!

It also seems that training and experience matter, with SWAT officer’s being over 21% more accurate than rookies in the same scenario.

This shows that there is plenty of room for meaningful increase in accuracy, speed, and discrimination between shoot no shoot targets. Researchers also noted that after having experienced high anxiety most participants no longer saw a decrease in accuracy.

Better Training Methods

The goal of this training isn’t just to get stressed out and practice shooting, its to acclimatize to that level of stress, so it does not degrade your performance because for any task there is an optimal mount of stress or anxiety you should experience to perform your best. This is called the Yerkes Dodson law.

It basically states that under arousal, in psychological terms, inhibits your performance just as hyper arousal does. In one you are nearly asleep when you should be amped, in the other you are basically on speed when you shouldn’t be.

Designing a Scientific Gunfighting Plan

Based on everything we have learned, it sees that we need to design a solid plan to take advantage of the many benefits of FOF training.

Dry Fire

The base of any good fire arms training plan must be dry fire training. This is the base of your shooting skill and allows you to finely hone your weapons manipulation and learn to index your weapon at a subconscious level. It has the added benefit of being free and something you can do in your home.

The amount of dry fire you need depends on your desired skill level. For SWAT officers, SOF personnel, and other face shooters, 5-7 times a week, 30 min a session is probably a good amount.

For self defense minded folks and more casual shooters 2-3 times a week 20 minutes a session is probably ideal.

Live Fire

The next level of training is live fire on a traditional range. Again the amount of training needed depends on the skill level required. Face shooters should probably shoot live fire 1-2 times per week, 1 hour per session. With most folks around the 2 times a month mark.

Force on Force

The researchers noted that there was no decay in shooting ability 2 weeks after the last training session. We don’t really know how long this maintenance period lasts but we can still make a few recommendations.

For face shooters, FOF training should be every other week, an hour at a time, to once a month at the longest. For everyone else I think every 2-4 months is probably a reasonable amount.

For those keeping track at home lets see how much time this training would take each month.

Face Shooters: 18 – 24 hrs per month

Defensive Shooter: 6 – 8 hrs per month

This seems like a pretty reasonable training schedule to me. Most folks will be putting in a little over an hour a week using the best training methods currently available. Ultimately it’s up to you. Just how much is your life worth?

Thanks for reading. Leave your thoughts in the comments section below.

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