Guns, Bullets, and Gunfights: Lessons and Tales from a Modern-Day Gunfighter

I was always skeptical about the book, but it's been highly recommended by top notch shooters and people who specialize in self defense, so I gave it a go. And boy, did I learn a lot from it, and was pleasantly surprised to do so considering how much literature like this I've absorbed. Now, admittedly, there is a lot of things I already knew much about, but then again, having been in the military and training people in self defense myself, I wasn't necessarily new to the subject, and you know what? That's why I like this book even more, because even a guy like myself saw some insight as to how people did things back then, and amazingly, a lot of this knowledge, if not, all of it, applies today.I saw a review on this book that claimed that it's outdated because bullet technology has improved by quite a lot today, and though I agree with the latter, his statement on it being outdated is incorrect. Because Jim explains in full detail why even a properly expanding hollow-point is not as deadly as believed, as the edges of it are not sharp, and it's still just temporarily displacing tissue for the most part, instead of cutting a .60 inch diameter hole in a person as someone can easily but incorrectly imagine after seeing how big a fully expanded 9mm's diameter can get.Good no nonsense book, with some amazing recollections of stuff that happened during his stake out squad stint. There was this one part where the man mentioned that his two partners dumped 10 rounds of .38 special into an assailants head, only to find that the bullets entered the skin, but skidded around the skull instead of penetrating into the brain. Basically, this man survived 10 rounds of point blank .38 special to the head. Now, that's interesting.

The Kindle version is a photocopy of the print version; you cannot change the text size, which is unreadably small. You can zoom in, but then you're reading a tiny square of the printed page, and have to move around constantly. This is not a knock on the content; I wasn't able to read enough to judge that. But if you're going to get this book, get it in print. It may be easier to read on a full-sized computer screen.

This is an excellent book for Law Enforcement officers or any Law Abiding citizen who carry a weapon for self protection. You probably want to survive a gun fight, read this and I assure you will if you follow Mr. Cirillo’s advice. I recommend this book to anyone who carry a gun on a daily basis. Mr Cirillo emphasized on important points, and made it interesting enough to make it a quick read and hit the range more often.

This book is old but the advice still applies in 2021. It is not how much you can add onto your handgun but how well you can shoot it under stress. As another famous officer said "there are no second place winners".

Great and informative stories about gunfights and training. Technical details are dated but the principles are still relevant. Made me re-examine my training and equipment. Highly recommend.

The good: Cirillo gives a great explanation of how to prepare for a gunfight, what factors are most important, not at all, etc. The stake out stories alone are worth the price.The bad: the book is too short, and despite being ~20 years old, some of the tactical information is already out of date.The ugly: the author spends a far amount of space discussing proprietary ammunition that isn't produced anymore if it ever was commercially. While it might be the greatest stuff since the black plague, it doesn't help me at all to know about it.Still, a good book and worth a read.

Cirillo has been there and done that and passes on his lessons learned. He does not indulge in damnfool gun trainer stunts or artificial philosophical frameworks. He merely relates what he learned by doing.Anyone who may have to use a weapon in self defense would benefit from reading this book.

A very good read! I have good friends who served with the author in the final years of his NYPD career and had only praise for him!The book, too, is a wealth of info' on what calibers and specific loads actually worked most effectively in the fire-fights mentioned.A great source for such technical information for law enforcement as well as the general public from one of "New York City's finest"!

Jim joined the New York City Police Department in the 1950s and by the late 60s was a firearms instructor. Then cutbacks made his post redundant and he was asked to join a new ‘stakeout squad’ being formed to do something about the high incidence of robbery/murder in New York at the time. He said no, but his partner talked him into it by saying it would be easy. And so it was for the first two hours of the first shift: then a robbery went down and when the dust settled Jim was left wondering who’d been firing his revolver, as he did not feel in control of the event. A point he returns to repeatedly in his book: the subconscious taking over and all that training and practice kicking in. You will have experienced this yourself: it’s why your foot is pressing on the brake pedal before you thought of braking. And that highlights another point – the subconscious kicking in to save you is because it is drawing on all your training and experience. How many miles did you drive before passing your test? Now think of ammunition as miles. Nobody with 400 rounds of training behind him is going to have what it takes to trigger the subconscious into action – but back to Jim Cirillo. One robber died at the scene and the other two were arrested in a hospital emergency room. Jim writes as though he has a lot to say and not much time to say it in. Aside from being a policeman Jim was also a keen handgun hunter, so he had experience of making his own ammunition for specific tasks, the reality of ballistics and the practicalities of what can be carried discreetly. The book is a series of explanations of each of his points, delivered in much the style we imagine he taught students; so the first bit is about firearms safety, gun-proofing your family and much else that he knows about not wasting ammunition. Then he moves on to what he did with revolvers – with a lot of name dropping: he liked Dan Wesson barrels, but stick it on a Smith and Wesson frame, add a Bo-Mar rib and watch your target scores climb – and your trousers sag if you try carrying that hunk on duty! He gets stuck straight in with an explanation of his search for suitable street ammunition. His problem on the Stakeout Squad was that bad guys duck for cover in a gunfight; same as everybody else, and that leaves their head as the only target. Low velocity bullets can bounce off skulls, or penetrate the scalp, then slide around the skull to exit opposite their entry. Hollow point ammunition can fail to expand if the hollow gets stuffed with clothing fibres on the way in and when it does expand it mushrooms into a larger calibre ball round that parts tissue rather than tearing a hole through it. He wanted something akin to an apple corer and where he gets to in the book is one called a pin grabber – shooting bowling pins is a similar problem to shooting heads – they are round and bullets slide off them. Not so these pin grabbers; designed with what looks like a serrated leading edge. Anything other than ball is a potential problem in semiautomatic pistols and he deals with that issue before moving on to the selection criteria for gunfighters and a lot of detail from his training courses. After six years in the Stakeout Squad he moved on to a federal agency and fed his knowledge into other peoples training. Massad Ayoob’s told an anecdote about meeting Jim Cirillo for the first time in the 1970s after Mass succeeded to Jan Stevenson’s chair as guns editor of Police Magazine. Mass was by then developing the theories that would become his ‘Stressfire’ programme and when he met Jim, he asked about aural exclusion and tunnel vision. These are experienced under pressure; you tend to see only the threat to the exclusion of all else and won’t hear your partner’s shouted warnings because he’s outside the orbit of your tunnel vision. Mass wondered if Jim had seen any evidence of the bad guys having those experiences during the adrenalin dump that likely occurs during the robbery: such as, do they hear your shouted warnings and do they react to them? Jim said they might not hear shouted warnings due to the noise of the gunfire, at which point the chief told Mass not to dare publishing that remark. He didn’t, but Jim does – in this book; in the context of his first gunfight. The robbers appeared, so Jim does likewise and they couldn’t have been suffering aural exclusion at that point because the groin guard fell off Jim’s body armour and all guns turned in the direction of the clunk. That’s when he felt his revolver jerking in his hand and was still wondering who was firing it when the gunfight ended. It’s one of those books that finds its way onto the shelves of those interested in firearms matters. Looking along the shelf, Americans have held centre-stage for the last hundred years – Massad Ayoob, Jeff Cooper, Julian Hatcher, Bill Jordan, Ed McGivern,– to name but a few, but Jim can step up to that plate and stood tall with the rest until his untimely demise in a traffic accident.

give a good background and basic knowledge about hand weapons , ammunitions

A must for everyone who nedds to use a gun into a gun fight. After this book your thinking about fighting with a gun will never be the same.

This book draws a line between solid practical shooting that ensure you remain on the safe side and the rest of the staff that will prove to no avail in a real confrontation. Jim Cirillo is another great teacher that inspires in decisive moments.

Great book!