QKShooter said:
This was an unusual question posed on another oddball forum. I read the answers over there & (of course) I have my own opinion but, I'll post the question exactly as it was posted there and see what answers I get over here.
All members welcome to chime right in on it. :yup:
"I've always been taught and trained to shoot nice tight groups.
I'm a decent shot and has never been a problem.
The last few months Ive talked to several LEOs who've told me to open up my shot placement.
Specifically they've said to place each shot 5-6" apart so as to increase trauma.
I'm still inclined to shoot tight center mass (as in 2 to the chest 1 the head, as needed) but what are your guys thoughts?"
The idea that shots 5-6 inches apart as opposed to 1 inch make a major difference in the trauma inflicted seems reasonable at first blush.
But if you consider that the human body is not a uniform, homogenous mass (like a block of ballistics gel), it looses its validity.
Because of varied tissue density, bullets seldom follow a straight path through the human body. They change direction as they strike bone, or pass through the boundary between tissues of different densities. If the round is deformed on contact, this will also alter the path the round takes.
For practical purposes, you are firing into a box of meat. You know where the round enters the box. You might know where the round leaves the box. Only the pathologist knows where it goes in between.
An example from real life:
The county police were dispatched to an apartment complex in our first due area - one of the livelier once - for shots fired. The first units on the scene found nothing, but as they were getting ready to clear, one officer noticed a blood trail. About 100 yards away, they found a man down in the foyer of one of the buildings.
We arrived to find a healthy looking young adult male, with a single small caliber wound to the front of the right chest, about on the nipple line. Single entrance, no exit. He was not breathing and had no pulse. Although we restored a heartbeat for a while with aggressive resuscitation, he was pronounced dead a short while later.
From looking at the location of the entrance wound, one might expect to find the bullet in the right chest.
But it was not. The round, a .25 cal FMJ, entered the right chest nearly perpendicular to the body, passed through the lung, and struck the rib on the other side. It then rebounded off the rib and passed directly through the left ventricle of the heart, coming to rest in the front wall of the left ventricle.
Goes to show that just because you know where the round entered the body does not mean you know the path it took once it was in there.
Matt