Shooting at a man who is returning the compliment means going into action with the greatest speed of which a man's muscles are capable." - Wyatt Earp

Speed kills. For all the ongoing and never ending debate about speed versus accuracy, that is an incontrovertible fact. While it is true that you can’t miss fast enough to win a gunfight you can certainly hit too slowly and lose. It’s not simply speed or accuracy, that’s a flawed paradigm. It’s speed AND accuracy that you need to carry the day.

People in the tactical shooting community tend to use the FBI law-enforcement statistics to justify a wide number of training conventions, sometimes justifiably, sometimes not. Data is a powerful tool, if you understand the mechanism and purpose of its collection and evaluation. Otherwise you run the risk of the old cliche “lies, damn lies, and statistics” applying to your thought process. The FBI’s annual report actually focuses on police officers killed or injured, not law-enforcement gunfights as a whole. This doesn’t address civilian self-defense shootings, nor does it include shootings where the officer was uninjured.

A statistic which does have weight from the FBI’s annual LEOKA report is that the distance of a fatal law enforcement shooting incident is overwhelmingly seven yards or less. This is matched, at least roughly, by the statistics from the NYPD and LAPD as well. The NYPD characterizes it as fifteen feet or less, so five yards, or over fifteen. They found that only 36% were over fifteen feet. The LAPD broke their categories down at ten yards, with half occurring within that distance.

For civilians, this is likely to differ to some degree, as police officers are often attempting to effect an arrest, or protect others, not simply defend themselves. The few relevant sources of data, such as Tom Given’s data on self-defense shootings by his students, or the LAPD’s records on off-duty shootings, show once again an overwhelming majority at seven yards or less, with most being inside of five yards.

What do these statistics mean for our training? At ranges under 10 yards, especially without the opportunity to use cover, the priority has to be getting acceptable hits on the opponent first. Gunfighting isn’t boxing, you don’t want to receive any hit from your opponent if at all possible. Once you get acceptable hits, you can drive your hits to the optimal area and end the fight. Getting hits on the opponent first requires speed. Close range gunfights are not in my experience about high levels of accuracy with acceptable speed. They are entirely about high levels of speed with acceptable accuracy. Speed kills.