[[{“value”:”Story and Photos by Paul Pawela
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One of the greatest Western gunfighters of all time, James Butler “Wild Bill” Hickok, had a lot of experience with deadly-force encounters and thus had a lot of opinions on the subject. For example, he always emphasized the importance of
headshots to put his enemies “out of action.” In one of Hickok’s most famous gunfights, which took place in Jefferson County, Nebraska, against four men, a fistfight escalated into a gunfight. Hickok first shot the man to his left, mortally wounding him. Instantly, one of his companions shot Hickok in the shoulder, rendering his right hand/arm incapable of holding his primary weapon. Undeterred, Hickok switched to his nondominant hand, using his backup gun (where have you all read about the importance of backup weapons before?) to shoot the other three threats, killing all three with headshots that hit their brains. The surviving assailant had his jaw shot off, which later would be medically reattached, but he would be disfigured for life.
In St. Joseph, Missouri, another documented case of Hickok’s dispatching of his enemies with a headshot occurred with a man named Bill Mulvey. Mulvey was shooting two firearms at once, hoping to lure Officer Hickok to the scene with the intention of becoming famous for killing the gunfighter. As Hickok came around the corner, he realized Mulvey had the
drop on him. Mulvey, pleased with his situation, taunted Hickok. According to legend, Hickok looked past Mulvey and said, “Don’t shoot him in the back, boys; he’s drunk.” Falling for the ruse, Mulvey turned to see who was behind him, which proved to be a fatal mistake as Hickok shot and killed him with a bullet to the head.
I could document more instances of Hickok shooting people in the head in self-defense; however, time and space are limited, and tact compels me to move on. It is essential to note that Hickok carried two Colt .36-caliber revolvers, later switching to Colt .44-caliber revolvers and .41-caliber derringers. The importance of this point is that Hickok used single-action revolvers, firearms that require them to be cocked by pulling the hammer back to fire. If those feats could be achieved in the past with revolvers, think what can be accomplished with modern semiautomatic pistols. There is no reason the same feats cannot be performed today.
MANY FACTORS DETERMINE the extent of damage caused by a gunshot wound to the head, including caliber of the gun, size and speed of the bullet, trajectory, and the site of the injury, according to the website of the American Association
of Neurological Surgeons, which states:
“A bullet wound going through the right frontal lobe tip toward the forehead and well above the base of the skull is likely to cause relatively mild clinical damage, because it passes through no vital brain tissue or vascular structures.”
“However, a similar bullet passing downward from the left frontal lobe tip toward the temporal lobe and brainstem
is likely to be devastating, because it passes through eloquent brain tissue and is likely to injure important vascular structures inside the head. A bullet trajectory through key blood vessels in the brain can result in rapidly expanding blood clot in the brain that can critically compress the important brain tissue resulting in immediate death at the scene.”
In the late 1970s, Colonel Jeff Cooper founded the first commercial gun school in America, Gunsite Academy located in Paulden, Arizona. Here he introduced the Mozambique drill into his modern shooting techniques. Taking into account that body armor was being utilized by criminals, Cooper thought the drill would be excellent for modern times. It’s a close-quarters exercise where the shooter fires twice into the torso of the target, and then follows up with a headshot for the final blow.
The drill was named after a Rhodesian mercenary named Mike Rousseau, who fought in the Mozambican War. During combat, he encountered an adversary armed with an AK-47. Rousseau fired two rounds from his Browning Hi-Power
pistol, hitting his enemy twice in the chest, but this was insufficient to kill or incapacitate the combatant. As the enemy continued to advance, Rousseau aimed for a headshot to stop him; however, his shot went low, striking the enemy in the neck and severing the spinal cord, killing him instantly. After Rousseau relayed this story at Gunsite, Cooper immediately incorporated this technique into his training, referring to it as the Mozambique drill. Looking at the timeline, about 100 years after Hickok died of a gunshot wound to the head, Cooper began applying the lessons learned from the Western gunfighter’s self-defense style at Gunsite Academy through techniques like the Mozambique drill.
ACCORDING TO THE data we have on gunfights, in the last four decades, there has been one instructor with over 65 civilian students involved in gunfights. That instructor is Tom Givens, considered one of the best in the business. Givens hosts TacCon, one of the premier tactical conferences on the subject, featuring world-class instructors presenting over the course of several days. Givens has published numerous articles and several books on the subject of gunfighting. The author’s favorite book is Fighting Smarter: A Practical Guide for Surviving Violent Confrontations (a must-read). In Givens’ documentation of personal data, 93.1 percent of his students’ engagements occurred between 3 and 7 yards (9 to 21 feet). At 3 yards, one can easily achieve a headshot using a point index shot.
My own data indicates that more than 80 percent of civilian gunfights occur within arm’s reach, typically at a distance of 3 to 5 feet. Consider how criminals place civilians in deadly situations, forcing them to resort to firearms. This includes actions like attempted armed robbery, carjacking, physical confrontation, deadly assault (using hands, knives or guns), and sexual assault.
Editor’s note: Author Paul Pawela is a nationally recognized firearms and self-defense expert. For his realistic self-defense training, see assaultcountertactics.com.
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