Leave guns to the professionals

Kinda scary, but we need to know. Bring back meritocracy--which should include expert marksmanship. Don't care that ammo is expensive--so are lives.

They are called” Armed Forces” for a reason .The US military is where shooting skills are taught , refined and sometimes field tested live .Doing away with a ( should be ) universal draft has dumbed that skill down too .. Consider Switzerland .. armed citizen army is mandatory. Training in the proper use of guns is considered necessary..why not here ?

If his agents didn't shoot well enough in the field, original FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover was known to assign such agents to remedial instruction and extensive practice on the range. When they showed enough improvement, they went back to their old assignments. Hoover wanted to make sure his agents had professional skills with their weapons. That's always a good idea, whether one is in law enforcement or is a civilian. With enough practice, one performs well under pressure.

Years ago I was a member at Nashville Armory, a Nashville police officer, in uniform, was in the lane next to me. He sent his target out to about 25 feet, emptied his pistol and didn’t put a single round on target. I was absolutely shocked.

The Democrats want to leave guns to the criminals, the government, and the road rage crowd.

Back in the day I decided to take a pistol course that would allow me to conceal carry. It was the same course law enforcement officers (for the city) had to take. We had to shoot at 7 yards, 15 yards, and 25 yards and also from a barrier, all within a time limit. It wasn’t all that difficult, but afterward the instructor told me I not only had the highest score in his class but also the highest score of anyone he had tested. The whole episode made me very skeptical of the “skill” of police officers. I would hope that the Secret Service is more demanding but that doesn’t seem to be the case.

In my department in the 80's we had to qualify twice a year. It was hard not to qualify, and most of the targets were at 7 and 15 yards and you just had to hit the silhouette somewhere. Also, range shooting is vastly different than combat shooting, the latter having many more variables. I found the average cop to be no better a shot than the average citizen, and not a gun expert whatsoever. They were familiar only with their own duty gun, where a private hobbyist is familiar with maybe hundreds.

A bit ironic but that lack of skill is why Donald Trump is still alive and President.

Over the years, I have had a number of police officers and FBI agents as friends. I was initially surprised to learn the the great majority of police officers are not at all interested in guns. As a friend, a city police department range training officer once put it "Most are just as into their gun as they are into their radio, and the radio isn't going to get them into legal trouble, so they aren't scared of the radio." The cops I was friends with were the small subset who were 'gun guys' and who practiced and competed on their own time, with their own money. A few were pretty good, many were very average shooters. The author is right that police do a very, very difficult job, and generally pretty well, but don't imagine that the average police officer is any kind of a gun expert, or expert marksman, because they are not. One of the biggest barriers to better police marksmanship is the unwillingness of cities to fund the time and ammo needed to develop shooting skills, and the willingness to replace officers who just never develop good shooting skills. Probably the best news is that most officers never have a need to actually use their weapon in a real life or death situation during their career. But, some do, and some are found to be very unskilled when they need it. If you find a good instructor, and learn proper techniques and practice diligently, you are very likely to be able to equal the shooting skills of the average police officer. And a huge fraction, if they actually care to make the effort and spend the time and money on ammo, can far exceed that skill level. And being confident of your capabilities is a good way to be less worried about the possibility of being attacked. If you want to be an armed citizen, please find a good instructor and spend some time at the range. And you very likely will find that you enjoy it, too. It can be a very satisfying and relaxing time to go out and set some goals in target shooting and meet or exceed your goals. Safety and enjoyment can be found together.

I will get arguments with this but I believe that the old 6 shot revolver police used to carry was replaced by the Glocks and other automatic pistols that carry more bullets was because the police are mostly bad shots.

No argument about police in general being bad shots, and I agree more training and proficiency tests are needed. The only issue I take is the assassination attempt. I saw photos of tactical shields hanging on the chain link fence, but they are never mentioned in the stories about the Secret Service agent missing such a close target. Seems like that could have been a factor.

Every word this guy wrote is true. I was a cop, for a couple of years, long ago in a medium-sized midwestern city. Some of the guys I worked with were excellent marksmen. Some used to be, but could still hold their own and be counted on. And some wore a gun just because they had to; they could qualify, barely, but never shot anywhere else. And their level of maintenance was atrocious. When police departments nationally began to transition to semiautomatic pistols, used police revolvers became available in large numbers. Many people who bought used Smith & Wesson K-frame revolvers were sending them back to the factory to be inspected and refurbished. S&W set up a special section of employees to handle the unexpected surge in business, and developed a procedure to discover the approximate number of times these guns had been fired. They found that a lot of them had been fired less than 500 times. Ten boxes of ammunition over a period of thirty years or so isn’t much.

I don't think this was a problem with marksmanship. I think it was a problem with intestinal fortitude.