[fivestar]

I have not personally been in a gunfight (thankfully) but a couple different people I know have. It went something like this: "Oh shit" followed by the gun being drawn and fired in very close quarters with no aiming whatsoever because the person/people was/were knife distance away. I know that's not how all encounters go down, but my takeaway from these stories is that contact distance is the norm and you should expect to fire a lot of rounds and not achieve very good hits if any. Bad day indeed.

[madengr]

IIRC the statistics, according to cop teaching my CCW class:

90% of handgun shootings are < 3 feet

Takes 7-15 seconds to bleed out from a direct shot to the heart (i.e. drugged up people are still dangerous after multiple shots to chest). The only instant stop is a 2" band around the head.

15% of handgun shootings are fatal (mostly due to quick medical response these days).

In the one second you have to draw, the bad guy can cover 18 feet from a standstill; have done this drill.

[mirimir]

At 18 feet, a trained attacker with a sharp knife can take one down before the gun is drawn and shot. With a machete, they'll just start with the gun arm. Self-defense law takes this into account.

[jabl]

I vaguely recall reading somewhere about some study where they found out that when the police fire their pistols, at a range of 5 meters they hit about 50% of the time.

Having spent a fair amount of time in my youth shooting with a BB pistol in my parents garage, I find the above statistic entirely believable. Shooting a pistol accurately is much more difficult than it looks, so I can certainly imagine that in a high stress situation where your own life may be on the line you'll make simple mistakes that cause you to miss..

[ekianjo]

even with a rifle, in a stable position, shooting a moving target is extremely hard while popular culture makes it look trivial.

[jabl]

Over here moose hunting is quite popular; to keep their moose hunting license every hunter needs to pass a test (every year, IIRC) that involves hitting a moving target.

Most hunters pass this test without much difficulty. Of course, on the range the distance is known (100m, IIRC), and the target moves at a constant and known speed, so one knows how much lead is needed. Still, AFAIU in the wild the results are decent.

[pps43]

On the other extreme, top Steel Challenge competitors can consistently shoot 5 different targets in 2 seconds, starting with hands above shoulders.

[azernik]

Most of those officers can do pretty well on the range, too. Problem is, adrenaline plays hell with fine motor skills - there are even specific techniques for reloading that I've been taught that require only gross motor skills, because that's all you'll have in an emergency situation.