How do gunfights work?

[Destructionator XV]

Intuitively, it seems to me that a gunfight should be over in seconds - the time it takes for one shooter to line up a shot and fire. But, this often isn't the case.

In movies, you see both sides firing around the other guys; using lots of bullets, but none really have a chance to connect. I look at it and think "maybe if they would just aim, this would have been over a long time ago". But, I hear about real life gunfights and wars where hundreds or thousands of bullets are fired, and it drags out for hours, with people still walking away from it.

What is really going on there? I googled "suppression fire", and it explains the large use of bullets, but why is it effective? Why can't you just watch the area and shoot anything that pops up, instead of just shooting the area?

Are the bullets fired just to scare the other guy into staying hidden rather than to physically keep him down? If so, what part scares him? Does he hear the gun firing, or the bullets flying by? Or is it the impact of bullets nearby?

(All I know is what I see on TV, so I'm assuming the sound effects aren't strictly realistic, so I can't draw a conclusion off them.)


I figure the answer is probably reaction time; the seconds it takes you to realize a gun is popping up and to shoot it might by your last seconds before that gun kills you. But it would take similar time for the guy in cover to line up his shot too; presumably more, since he now has to move, whereas you can be sitting at the ready.

I don't know.

Do any of you know the how and why of real life gun battles? Is it anything like on TV?

[Charon]

I would say that in a lot of movies that don't involve the army we see people for the most part using handguns. Which, compared to a rifle or even most automatic weapons could be considered fairly inaccurate due to human error. A very short barrel, generally not held between the sights, with only one hand to hold it. At 40 or so feet, if you're holding the gun at even a slight angle your shot is going to go wide.

As for why they don't take the time to aim, I'd call it the will to live. When bullets start flying, and you can hear the gunshots if nothing else, you want to make certain one of those bullets hits the other guy as fast as you can and that means pulling the trigger as fast as you can.

As for suppression fire, I would say it's to scare the other guy into keeping his head down, because let's face it, very few people getting into gun fights want to die. I would imagine the sounds of gunfire and perhaps the sound of impacts (if they are hiding behind something that can take the impact anyway) are what does it. Mostly the sound of the gunfire.

This is all just my opinion, I've never had a bullet shot at me (and hopefully never will).

[The Minx]

You may not know exactly where the other guy is at, so you spray bullets over an area to make him keep his head down. Some of the bullets will hit things near the point where the other guy actually is, convincing him to keep his head down.

[Soontir948]

I will say one thing for now since I have to catch a train (that I missed once already! grr) and that is the farther your target is, the more the slightest tiniest change in the angle of your aim can make you miss. That's if you're trying to aim in the first place.

[Derek Thunder]

For 99% of Americans, a gunfight would look something like this (NSFW, Youtube, etc.)

[Hotfoot]

First off, you have to consider who the combatants are, what the weapons they are using are, what the ranges and conditions are, and a few other factors.

With practice, it's easy to hit a target at various ranges at a firing range. However, in a gunfight, you are at risk of being hit yourself. Adrenaline is pumping, and if you're not used to the stress, your hands are shaking, you're afraid.

If you're dealing with gangs, they hold their guns in remarkably idiotic ways that reduce accuracy, because they're thugs, yo. Throw in the lack of general training and they don't know how do properly brace, aim, etc.

Insurgents have similar issues. Throw in sub-standard materials (I've heard from at least one credible source that the ammo used in many areas is likely to not fire).

Both of the above groups as well make use of drugs in combat situations, which can further both degrade the accuracy of the shooters and increase their resistance to incoming fire.

Police and Military often have body armor available, and make use of cover, which makes getting an accurate shot on them much more difficult in situations where cover is available. They are usually trained to fire as many shots as possible on the target to make sure they stay down. Trick shots like taking out the legs, shooting the gun, even headshots are more or less illusions hollywood has conjured. When a crazed maniac comes at you with the express interest of killing you, a buddy, or an innocent civilian, well hell, you want them dead and no longer moving.

Then there's the mechanics of how automaticand semi-automatic fire works. Fire one shot towards a target, you might miss. Throw more, and you stand a much better chance of hitting. Fire too many and you end up wasting bullets, hence the advent of three round bursts and "die motherfucker die", a chant said by machinegun operators to control their bursts.

[frigidmagi]

For 99% of Americans, a gunfight would look something like this (NSFW, Youtube, etc.)

Derek, please don't troll threads or if you must troll threads get your numbers right. With over 7% of the US population having military training and vastly more having police training your percentage is very off. In short this is vastly below your standard operations sir.

Do any of you know the how and why of real life gun battles? Is it anything like on TV?

*sigh* You know Adam you could have simply pmed me or any of the other vets on the board. I'll take y'all through it, but I won't answer any personal questions. The answer to the first part is yes. The answer to the second part is no, at least to the classic everyone standing the street opening up gun fight.

Intuitively, it seems to me that a gunfight should be over in seconds - the time it takes for one shooter to line up a shot and fire. But, this often isn't the case.

You would think that but there's this one ugly truth about a gunfight. People, at least people who want to live through a gunfight, move.

Standing still and aiming in the open is a good way to become a causality. Even in a gangbanger firefight, although frankly it's more likely you'll get hit by accident by your own side.

Very rarely is a firefight made up of two sides showing up in a clear confrontation with everyone knowing before hand there is gonna be a fight. Most of the time, firefights start by ambush. This was true in the wild west, is true in most wars and in gang violence. It's also true in most confrontations with the law as Derek's video shows.

Basically one side jumps the other and opens fire attempting to end the fight before it starts. In military we do that because well... this is war and fair fights are for suckers. We wanna live and go home. Gangsters do it because... Huh pretty much for the same reasons I think. I've never been in a gang shoot out or had much contact with a gang so I could be wrong.

In movies, you see both sides firing around the other guys; using lots of bullets, but none really have a chance to connect. I look at it and think "maybe if they would just aim, this would have been over a long time ago". But, I hear about real life gunfights and wars where hundreds or thousands of bullets are fired, and it drags out for hours, with people still walking away from it.

Ditch the movies, most of them are dead wrong. Although Saving Private Ryan, Blackhawk Down and a few others get it pretty close to right. We will use an urban example because that's where most firefights take place now. This may because that's where there are the most people and guns, both vastly necessary for a firefight. Here's how it breaks down.

Side B is moving a group of guys through Side A's turf. Side A finds out about and decides to hit them. They set up an ambush by laying in wait in a building by Side B's route. When Side B comes into view, they open up. Now even if Side B is walking before hand, zeroing in is easier said then done. Human movement can be erratic and hard to predict. It doesn't help that many cultures and sub cultures actively look down on aiming (see urban gangbanger, North America, see Militia Africa, see insurgent and terrorist Middle East and Central Asia). While aiming in you're also very hyper as a large number of naturally produced hormones and chemicals from your flight or fight reflexes are slamming through you. So your aim is crappy even if you're not from the above cultures/sub-cultures. Training can overcome this, but nothing is perfect.

Now Side B is taking fire. Being shot at is bar none the scariest moment in your life. You hear the high pitch whip crack and realize in your hind brain that was a weapon and then feel the air of a bullet whizzing by way to close. The skin on the side of your face closest to the bullet flight path will attempt to crawl it's way to the other side of your face. You will feel the insane need to scream and pee and run all at the same time. If you do that, you'll die.

Instead of that, the boys of Side B will take cover. That's top propriety in the first seconds of a firefight, cover is life. Standing in the open to aim is death. This is harder to do then it sounds. In the movies everyone automatically knows where the shooter(s) are firing from. Not so much in the real world. Someone is trying to kill you and you aren't sure where from. Impacts from bullets will provide you a good idea where not to be however and you will move quickly.

Now Side A has lost it's best chance for a bloodless (for them) victory and is trapped in everyone worst nightmare, a protracted gunfight. Assuming this is a military confrontation, anyone who can do so will call for arty or armor support, as well as broadcasting what is called a Flash Report. A Flash Report is basically declaring who you are, where you are and that you are in contact with the enemy and command should help you do something about that. Let's assuming neither side can get air, arty or armor support as that would end our firefight really quick. Both sides are under cover and not retreating, which means they pretty much have to duke it out assuming that reinforcements for the other side are en route.

Side B is gonna open up in return, which leads us to...

I googled "suppression fire", and it explains the large use of bullets, but why is it effective? Why can't you just watch the area and shoot anything that pops up, instead of just shooting the area?

Are the bullets fired just to scare the other guy into staying hidden rather than to physically keep him down? If so, what part scares him? Does he hear the gun firing, or the bullets flying by? Or is it the impact of bullets nearby?

Once you're in cover, your aggression kicks in. That nasty whore born son of a bitch tried to kill you! So you kinda want to try to kill them back... However Side A is in cover, so you're not excaltly sure where they are. You got a general idea though and you really want them to stop shooting at you. So you start popping off bursts at the building they're in. You try to direct your fire through windows in the hope of hitting side A in blind luck. Side A now has pieces of metal moving in excess of the speed of sound coming right at them. You remember everything I said about how scary that is? Well it's scary enough to make Side a duck. Sure they could try to aim their fire back, but that means exposing yourself. Giving said high speed metal a fleshy blood filled target... One you're rather fond of. Most folks prefer not to do that.

Now we come to the last and longest part of the firefight. The maneuver part. Side B is gonna try to regroup and move to flank or surround Side A. What flank means is being able to hit the other guy from 2 sides. In a fire fight you do to do that in two sides that make a L shape. This is because if the two sides are directly facing each other, you're not just shooting at the enemy but your boys across from you and every missed bullet is likely to make someone on your side want to have a long talk with you... Using a tire iron as a translator.

Side B will do this because their best bet at winning is forcing Side A from their building and out into the open, where they can be slaughtered. The best way to break an ambush after all is to attack it. Side's A best bet of winning is stopping Side B from doing this, usually by maneuvering themselves. The best way to stop an attack is to counter attack it. This means the guys on both sides will spend more time running from cover to cover then they will shooting. But don't worry someone on both sides will be shooting at all times in an effort to keep the other side from moving or shooting back.

This means the firefight will spread out. At this point more guys will likely join the firefight.

In the end Side B will either assault Side A's strongpoint (the building) force Side A out of the building and into a street where they'll be gunned down or Side A will bog Side B down and shot them down one by one. On the flip side one side or another could decide to withdraw, in order to do that they need to keep the other side from following them and doing said gunning them down. The best way to do that is to withdraw in small groups while everyone else covers you with mass fire. Those small groups do not withdraw in a mass insane run either but move to a further back covered position so they can cover their friends who have yet to fall back.

[Brother-Captain Gaius]

Frigidmagi has a pretty comprehensive explanation of fire and maneuver, but as a side note there tends to be other psychological factors at work as well.

Whatever cynicism you may hold told toward the human race, the plain fact of the matter is that most of us just aren't cut out to kill another human being. When you have a living, breathing person in your sights, it's not necessarily easy to pull the trigger. Snipers don't just have raw, physical marksmanship skill, they have the deceptively uncommon ability to kill people.

That's part of the reason fire and maneuver tactics have evolved - much of it revolves around shooting in the general direction of the enemy rather than specifically picking out targets.

Frigidmagi also mentioned Black Hawk Down, and I highly recommend giving it a close look. In particular, pay close attention to the firefight scenes and watch the way the combatants tend to duck into cover, pop off snap shots, and employ suppressive fire.

There are other factors to consider as well: iron sights (and even advanced optics) as well as the human eye are imperfect. Forget the accuracy of the weapon itself for a moment and consider that the further away a target is, the smaller it appears relative to your own iron sights. By about 300m, the target is actually smaller than the supposedly precise tip of your sights. How do you hit something which is smaller than what you're using to aim with?

Furthermore, when you say "firefight" it tends to imply some level of military cohesion and organization. You can think of it in an abstract, strategic sense: Unit A (be it a fireteam, squad, platoon, or whatever) is shooting it out with Unit B. PVT Bob of Unit A is not really shooting at CPL Joe of Unit B; rather, Bob is a part of Unit A and Unit A as a whole is shooting at B as a whole. Bob helps his unit by adding to its volume of fire, spitting out bullets alongside his squadmates and flinging them in the general direction of the enemy.

It's important to get away from the more intuitive notion of Bob shooting at Jim; again, rather, it's better to think of it as Bob's unit is shooting at Jim's unit. In this sense it's easier to see why lots of bullets are flying around and not that many people are being hit proportional to shots fired.


EDIT: Consider a medieval analogy: If you have a hundred-strong company of archers, how do you expect them to behave? Would you expect every individual to aim his bow at a specific member of the enemy hundred-strong company and then fire? Or would the company as a collective simply aim at the enemy company and just fling their 100 arrows with no intention to hit some specific individual?