Rob Pincus

Session 4: Psychological Stops

Rob Pincus
Duration:   4  mins

Description

The majority of defensive shooting situations result in the threat being stopped psychologically, not physically. While we cannot count on (and do not train for) the threat changing his mind before we are forced to stop them physically, we must understand the role that psychological stops play. This Session explains why understanding that most stops are psychological is so important, especially to putting anecdotes or statistics from prior events into perspective and considering how they should influence your gear and training decisions.

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I don't know if you're aware of this but the overwhelming majority of people that are stopped by defensive shooting, aren't stopped by the bullets dropping their body into a pile of useless, organic matter. They're stopped psychologically. Because loud noises and flashy things in their eyes make them scared and they run away. And that's true. And I refer you back to the evidence.

Go watch the videos. Go watch the dash camera videos and especially go watch the surveillance camera videos. Because the surveillance cameras represent a different kind of predator almost all the time. The predator who's going to fight the cop is a different kind of predator. The predator who's going to walk into the convenience store or the bank or the restaurant or the ATM robbery and gets met with lethal force response.

Wasn't expecting it. The guy who pulls the gun on a cop kind of knows. The cop has a gun. He's got the flashy red and blue lights and the shiny badge and the gun. So he may think I'm going to take the cop out.

But somewhere in his brain he knows that if the cop doesn't magically drop when he fires his first shot there's a gun can be pointed back in his direction. Different kind of predator. The kind of predator that goes up to the person at the ATM is thinking sheep right? Victim, no potential for defense. If they were wearing, wearing the gun on their side with the flashy red and blue lights when they pull it up to the ATM they probably wouldn't pick them as the mugging victim.

So bad guy comes up with the rusty knife or whatever it is. Give me your wallet. Good guy says, Hey, step ,about now guy"s in another County. Most of the time, certainly by the time the shooting starts. That's defensively accurate fire by the technical definition, right?

If I pull out this knife and I say I'm going to stab you in the face. And Tom pulls out his gun and shoots at me and misses. And the round goes by my foot. But I say, Oh, I didn't know. Tom had a gun.

And I dropped my knife and run away. That shot significantly affected my ability to present a lethal threat. It changed my mind, okay. It psychologically affected me. And it's important that we acknowledge that because the problem is when you start reading the reports of some guy used, you know, four inch 38 revolver and fired one round and survived his fight.

When you see that like 80 times in a list of defensive shooting results and you don't factor in the reality that 90% of those guys with four inch revolvers were cops. And that 93% of those shootings were not physiological stops. They were psychological stops. You may come away from that book of data. As many people did saying, Oh, well I need a 38 revolver.

That's the ultimate defensive gun. 38 revolver is not a bad defensive gun but it's not magical. When you fire bullets at people who aren't expecting to have bullets fired them. They stop fighting a lot of time. You can't count on that, but it's real.

So you'll get some guys at the gun counter who will say, Oh all you need is a 22. You start making bang, bang sounds. And those people will run away. And you'll be fine. Maybe you'll get people at the gun counter.

That'll tell you, you just get a pump shotgun and makeup, clicky, clicky sound on the other side of the door and bad guys will run away because they know what's coming next. They'll be scared. That's not even shooting. That's not even defensive accuracy. That's just defensive efficiency.

We call that when any action you take significantly affects the bad guy's ability to present a lethal threat right? Lock the door. You got a deadbolt on your bedroom door, reinforced door like an external door, but you put it on your bedroom. So you've now got a reinforced door and your barricade area. You lock the door, you hide behind the door.

You call the police. That action can significantly affect the bad guy's ability to present a lethal threat. If he can't get through the door, he can't hurt you. Police are coming. They're going to get there before he gets through the reinforced door.

Good job. You win and you didn't have to fire a shot. That's defensive efficiency. We talk about defensive accuracy. We're talking about the shooting.

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