Shooting Through Automotive Glass

Here's another important video from the Personal Defense Network. Now, obviously I've got my eye protection and my ear protection on. I'm sitting in a prop vehicle on a range here at us training center. We're gonna talk about shooting through glass. Now, let's assume for the moment that I've got my cross-draw holster on.

I've chosen to wear it because it's comfortable and convenient to deploy from, I'm on a long road trip. Maybe I'm moving through a stop at the exit maybe an exit ramp, maybe to go get gas. Maybe I'm traveling through the inner city. Maybe I'm getting close to my destination, whatever it is. I've come into a situation where I feel threatened by somebody off to my passenger side.

Now this is a lethal force threat. Someone's got an obvious weapon. They have intent to do harm to me or my family. Maybe they have a firearm, maybe they've already shot at me. In some way, I know that I'm caught in an ambush.

I can't move forward, I'm trapped from behind, I can't move backwards, maybe the vehicle is disabled. Whatever it is, I have no option left, but to go to a lethal force response. Obviously, once I recognize the threat I'm not gonna take time to worry about the angle change as I shoot out of the vehicle at this close range. Now, while glass does cause deviation and we're gonna talk about exactly how it does that. It doesn't cause enough deviation that I'm gonna worry about a man size target in a defense situation at this range, when speed is of the essence.

I need to balance speed and precision in terms of deviation control and shoot through that glass. After the first shot or two, it's really not gonna matter anyway, that glass is gonna get out of the way. Of course I recognize, I come down, I grip I cross parallel, extend touch, press. Come back into my ready position. Assess my environment.

Get ready to respond to the next threat if there was one, get out of the vehicle maybe make that 911 call What I'm probably not gonna to do is re-holster right away. At some point, I'm gonna feel safe to do that. Now administratively, let's take a look and think about what happened there. I drew my pistol, I extended, I fired multiple shots until the threat was down, Now what was nice about this reactive target is that I'm clearly able to see when the threat is down, when there's no more threat. Now the fact is, that the first couple of shots did not take that target out.

I continue my volume of fire, I continue my string of fire. And by the time the shots that took the target down were fired. the glass was out of the way and completely irrelevant. That may very well be what happens to you and your defensive shooting situation. Now let's take a look and see what happens when we're gonna be shooting through the driver's side in a very close quarter situation with a target that's much closer and a threat that's much more immediate.

Now in this case obviously things can happen very quickly, very dynamically. This person's very close to me, they're rushing in. Obviously I'm not gonna to reach across, move my body get full extension my windows up. I can't extend anyway, the bad guys right here. I can use body index to defend myself.

Recognize, reach down grip, come up parallel with my thighs. Orient magazine well, enclose thumb enclosed to my body, touch press. And at this point you can see that there's glass all over my lap. Glass may have blown back a little bit into my face. Now I'm wearing eye protection today.

Chances are, if I'm driving during the day, I'm wearing sunglasses anyway, the fact is once you've decided to use lethal force to defend yourself to defend your vehicle, you're trapped. You can't do anything else. A little glass blowing around probably isn't the worst thing in the world. It's certainly not as bad as being attacked, lethal threat by this guy over here. Let's actually take a look.

I'm gonna get my seatbelt off. I'm gonna come across my body safely go back into the holster. We're gonna take a look at what actually happened on this target. We can see two very different types of impacts and they're very close to one another. We see this impact is actually much larger and flatter and this impact is much more closed and actually has that powder burn.

The black of the burn that's coming off of this residue from inside the barrel on the bullet, actually on the target. So we can assume that the first shot actually came through distorted, deformed, had been knocked up opened by the glass had been opened up and came through it made a bigger hole. And also you see some of this other debris and the glass fragments, the splaying of the glass that came up here and actually cut up the paper wouldn't really do any damage, but that is gonna have a psychological effect if nothing else. And the second bullet, which came through within an inch of the first one, again, just using a body index and decent trigger control came through clean, just like we would expect because the first shot is actually the one that blew out the glass. And you can see here, the bottom edge of that circle where we actually blew the glass out from probably the first shot stayed intact, the second shot came out above that and didn't interfere with the glass at all.

Or should I say the glass didn't interfere with it, as it came through the target. Using a firearm to defend yourself from a close quarters attack while someone's attacking you from the driver's side and you can't get out of the vehicle or move the vehicle is going to be a body index shot more than likely, make sure that that's we can stays out of the way, is swept back out of the way, as you come up, parallel with your thighs into that shooting position, good index on your body, thumb index so that your slide is free. Touch, press control your trigger. Make sure that you get the shots, combat accurate shots volume of fire until the threat stops. Of course, I envisioned that threat stopping after those first two shots, it may take more.

If you have to defend yourself in this situation. Now we've demonstrated shooting through the glass to both sides of the vehicle. The reason we haven't really worried too much about the deviation, the deflection caused by going through that glass is because of a couple of reasons. One, the targets are relatively close, when the targets are close we're not gonna worry that much about deviation. Obviously, with the very close target on the driver's side when we shot from a body index the amount of deviation inherent in that shooting position is going to be much greater than the effect of coming through the glass.

We also need to remember this, especially when we're shooting out the side, only the first shot is really gonna be effected by the glass at all. And because of the rules about the way glass deflects we understand that we don't have to worry about as much from the side windows, not nearly as much anyways we need to worry about it through the front window. And here's why, when a round goes through glass what tends to happen, regardless of the angle of entry is that the exit angle tends to move closer to a 90 degree exit. In other words, regardless of how a round may come into this windshield if it comes into the windshield from the outside and it's below this angle, straight up out of the windshield it's gonna tend to pull towards that angle. So as the round comes forward maybe from someone trying to defend themselves, there's a bad guy out in front of the car, they're shooting straight that bullet's gonna get pulled and deflected upward.

If someone's shooting into the vehicle through this windshield, someone's shooting back towards the driver that round's gonna tend to get pulled down and travel this way again at a 90 degree angle through the glass. So when someone's shooting in, of course because there isn't that much distance between the windshield and the person we aren't nearly as worried about that deflection in that angle. When you're shooting out however you might want to take into consideration the fact that your bullet is likely when shooting through this type of a windshield to get pulled in this direction. Now, if you're in an SUV some type of vehicle with more of a straight flat window it's obviously not going to be as much of an issue. If you're inside of a sports car with a very low rate windshield it's gonna be more of an issue as that bullet gets pulled more off of your intended path.

Let's actually get in, we're gonna use this paper target and I'm gonna use a very specific administrative shooting technique to try to get around as close as I can to that square on the center of the target. And we're gonna see how the windshield might affect that shot. Of course, I have got my eye protection and my ear protection on. My firearm is ready, I was doing an off body carry, maybe again a situation where I'm trapped. I can't get away, I can't drive away.

I'm gonna have to lean back get full extension, use good sight alignment, sight picture good trigger control, and take that shot. And let's take a look and see where that shot ended up. I'm gonna de-cock and clear the pistol, make it safe. Now let's take a look at the huge amount of deflection that we actually had this time. Now, granted, there may be some operator error involved some standard deviation balance, speed and precision issues, but I assure you generally from 15 to 20 feet, I can get a lot closer to my intended point of impact than that.

So being that much higher than my intended point of impact is obviously a factor of the rake in that windshield and how greatly that path of the bullet was altered closer to 90 degrees coming out of the windshield as the bullet path was deflected up. And my point of impact was obviously a lot higher and let's get back in the vehicle and we're actually gonna take a look at what happens when I shoot through basically the same spot. And we're gonna see probably a much less dramatic effect on the path of the bullet, less deviation. And we're gonna get a lot closer to where we wanna hit this time. Okay.

So I'm gonna chamber a round and make ready, again get into my administrative shooting position back into the same place I was basically shooting right through that hole. Good sight alignment, good sight picture good trigger control. And now what we see is going through the opening. Now, granted we did open up a little wider hole, but because the integrity of the windshield had already been broken down, we can see that I'm actually a little bit below my intended target area. This time I'm gonna choose to get out in my ready position is if I was gonna get out of the vehicle, maybe I was gonna move someplace safe.

Maybe something else was going on. Of course, this point, I'm going to clear the firearm Place it inside the vehicle. Let's go ahead and take a look at the target. This time we can see a couple of things. One, I'm obviously much closer to my intended point of impact as predicted not nearly as much effect.

Now because we had already blown the windshield out. It's much less predictable about what's gonna happen when that bullet goes through. If there's less integrity to the top of where the round hits, it might actually get pulled down or this could have sailed straight through a clean spot in the windshield, we're not sure. Could had no effect than I could have just shot low but this is much more like what we would expect shooting at this distance without the interference of the windshield which is what we saw right there. The other thing I wanna look at is again, just like we saw in the close shot when we were shooting outside of the driver's side window this bullet shape is much more deformed and there's much less residue transfer.

Whereas when we look at this bullet hole it's got the typical residue transfer and it's a much tighter 40 Smith and Wesson caliber bullet hole right there because that boy was much less interfered with by the glass. So again, when it comes to deflection, think about the angle of the windshield and moving towards a 90 degree angle exit when it goes through the windshield. And remember that your follow-up shots, if you're shooting from about the same place at about the same target are much less likely to be effected by the windshield itself. Keep all this in mind if you do ever have to defend yourself while inside your vehicle, when shooting out is the only option. Check out more videos, just like this one at the Personal Defense Network.