Great post Surf.  I wonder if any studies on reaction times have been done regarding the firearm.  Specifically, I wonder if there is kind of a mental point of no return where a person might process the information but it's too late to come off the trigger. I think it would be interesting to see the gap.

There is quite a bit out there when you start digging.  This is a very complex topic and I could not possibly get that in depth on it here as it could be an entire seminar in its own right.  I will give some points to consider and to search for.  In short, there are points of "no return" so to speak.  As an example, a person has gone from Observation, Orient and are at the decision phase.  From the moment they make a decision to the time that the action has happened can be extremely quick.  Now if they receive new visual information during the decision to the act phase, the cognitive thought process can take much longer to come up with an alternate course of action even longer than the when the initial action has already been completed.  Lets say an Officer has someone at a low ready or at gun point and the decision was made to use lethal force and fire.  It may only take .30 of a second to complete that act.  Lets say that at halfway between that time frame (.15 sec) the other person drops the weapon leaving the Officer only .15 seconds to stop their actions.  It would be virtually impossible to stop this action as it takes the cognitive thought process way more time to take in the new visual input, get to the brain, have the brain decipher the information, come up with a new response, then send those signals back to the trigger finger to not take the shot.  For this reason many people truly misunderstand reaction time, because of the cognition involved in the process.  We also need to consider how events may slow down or even speed up due to the chemical or physiological effects in the body that distorts events and time.  This is also why people might shoot an individual as they are falling to, or even on the ground.  Or when a car is heading to run them over and they begin shooting even as it is swerves and they continue firing as it is going past them instead of running them over.  Under stress the mind does some crazy things with how time appears and how the thought process works.  Which is often why people ask how come an Officer shot so many rounds at a vehicle even after it passed them, when they were no longer in front of or in a risk of being run over.   

Again a lot of people misunderstand reaction time and the factors.  Some might think that reaction time is getting a timer putting trigger finger on the trigger with weapon aimed in and firing as soon as they hear the beep.  Good times with this method is around .10 - .15 seconds, but this is highly flawed as it is a known stimulus that we are waiting for without the need for cognitive thinking.  When we factor in the cognitive process, ie
attention, working Memory, processing speed, long-term memory, visual processing, auditory processing, logic and reasoning, combining that with prior training and or experience, plus the chemical or physiological factors that the body goes through during the "fight or flight" process, reaction time can be amazingly slow and time can get "warped".

So for your question, we need to take into account not only reaction time, but the thought process and how the chemical and physiological effects on the body may react to the thought process and the action phase.  I know your into the law thing and there is a reason that experts, truly excellent subject matter experts in this arena can be invaluable in a courtroom setting.

Yes thank you Surf for the great post. It is good to see it from the LEO point of view.

As an armed private citizen, it's best to know what mistakes to avoid and how to avoid getting mistakenly shot.

It sounds to me that if one is legally armed and LEOs are around, best to keep the gun holstered, or if you can't help it, keep the gun pointed down and the finger off the trigger. 

Also probably a good idea to clear the ears so as to hear when police issue a verbal command.

Would this ensure that one will not get shot at if one is legally carrying in one's property?

I get the question, but it is a difficult thing to answer as there are so many factors to consider.  There is a lot of responsibility to carrying a concealed firearm especially from the training aspect of things in regards to LE contact.  The home thing is a difficult situation as we all feel that the home is the castle and a lesser instinct exists within our own home to momentarily relieve ourselves of our weapons as opposed to in a public venue when we are contacted by LE. 

Finally, someone who actually sounds like he knows what he is talking about!

Good run down. 

Glad there is more to it than just placing accurate shots under 1.3 seconds.

Well there is more to it, but a good point from this is that if someone doing a bad thing were to encounter a highly trained individual, the leeway or margin of error time wise for the bad person to correct their behavior dramatically decreases.  Training and experience can provide more knowledge on why a quick response is necessary.  In essence the higher trained, the more you understand how quickly you can get killed and the justification factor becomes more easily understood and explained.

Great post Surf!  I just wanted to add though that in a LEO legal training hopefully the training department would not just look at agency use of force policy but actual court cases such as TN v Garner, objective reasonable test Graham v Connor, any LE contact Terry v Ohio, and repercussions that happen to a suspect Scott v. Harris.  So in light of this an officer may well be able to defend their actions of stopping the threat (you) even though you may be in the right (albeit dead) unless a lawyer can prove the fruit of the poisonous tree was held (slim).

All in all comply with LEO commands and fight the legal fight after when you're alive.

Use of force policy and virtually all training lesson plans are heavily influenced and written to comply to existing case law.  For a training division it could not be successful otherwise.  In LE, an individual trainer / instructor cannot, or should not be teaching firearms, tactics, defensive tactics (DT), use of force etc, without being heavily versed in case law and how it applies. Of course like anything in life there are few guarantees.