A friend sent me a link to this article on surviving gunfights.

Of course the best way to survive a gunfight? Don’t be in one. Use everything that you can from awareness to mindset to avoidance to descalation. Avoid the gunfight.

But Higginbotham’s article isn’t about that. It’s about actually being in one. Higginbotham’s credentials are well-established, so he’s worth listening to.

The notion of “center mass”, yeah… I’m now of the mind that it’s a silly concept. I mean, I see where it comes from, but look at what “center mass” is of a human. Putting your shots in the center of that mass put them somewhere in the abdominal region. That’s not where you want to put things because there’s nothing vital there.

Realize as well that again, all pistol calibers suck. So what do you need to do? Keep shooting until the threat has stopped. But realize, some people may not know they’ve been hit, some people will keep on truckin’ for quite a while after having been shot even if the shot was in the right places. There’s no guarantee.

Head shot? If you can do it, great. But try some Force-on-Force training and see how many head shots you can get off.

Moving? Good thing. It was Tom Givens that convinced me that even the side-step motion is good (I used to consider the side-step silly in a “real” gun fight and more something done in classes and at the range due to range and administrative realities). That is, while drawing, just step to the side. Givens likes to call it a “WTF? moment” because it’s something that the attacker didn’t plan for and it causes them to reset their OODA loop… a “WTF?”, which could be enough to give you advantage. It also gets you off the line. Sure all sorts of things like j-hooking and other sorts of movement are great if you can, but at least just side-step when you do things like draw, reload, and so on. If you can’t practice that at the range, then make sure you do it when you dry fire.

The only thing about the article that bugs me a bit is how Higginbotham downplays all the caliber stuff, then he gets right into the caliber stuff. So which is it? Does it matter or does it not matter? The reality is it doesn’t matter a whole lot and there’s no guarantee. They all suck. Pick what you can shoot well, fast and accurate, that allows you to practice. Modern expanding ammunition helps. Skill trumps equipment.

Still, a good read.