I hear this one all the time, and with all due respect, it’s just not true.
There are quite a few guys in law enforcement who are so good as to inspire awe and envy in even the best civilian shooters. Unfortunately, those officers are in the minority. Most police officers are only required to shoot twice a year for qualifications. For many, that’s the only time they spend at the range.
Even then, the qualification requirements for most departments are meager at best. They usually go with the standard NRA classification system, in which the minimum acceptable score is 84%. That’s the rank of “Marksman.” Sounds fair, right?
It would if we were talking about long division or English literature, but we’re not. You can’t kill people with those things (c’mon…). To put it in perspective, anyone shooting less than 75% is labeled a Danger to Bystanders. Basically, to pass most law enforcement qualifications, you have to hit the target 84% of the time.
So where do the other 16% of those bullets go?
In the case of the New York City Police Department, those bullets tend to grow legs and go around doing all sorts of things. In 2005, 8% of shots fired by officers in gunfights met with their intended targets. Their accuracy improved to a whopping 30% when their targets weren’t shooting back. Good for them.
That translates into 92% of bullets fired by police officers in one of the country’s most dangerous cities going wild.
Oh, and they fired twice as many shots in confrontation as they had in the previous year. They logged 24 accidental (read: negligent) discharges in 2005, resulting in 10 injuries.
“I’m the only one in this room professional enough to carry this Glock 40,” indeed.
84% accuracy doesn’t cut it. A person firing a gun is responsible for every bullet that leaves the gun, and bullets that miss don’t just disappear. They keep going until they hit something, or someone.
Folks, I can teach someone who’s never handled a gun to do better than that. I do it all the time.
There are some great shooters in law enforcement. In fact, most of the nation’s best shooters and instructors come from that side of the blue line. But those are the few who grew up with guns and became cops afterwards, the ones who have a passion for shooting. Nowadays, most officers come up from a social-engineering perspective, and many of them have never even touched a gun prior to enrolling in the academy.
And those are the guys who worry me. There’s a certain institutionalized arrogance with cops and guns. Many are vocally hostile towards civilian ownership and carry, and I’ve heard more than a few spout off at length about it. It all goes back to the “we’re the professionals, ma’am” attitude. Many have told me that they’d be much happier if they were the only ones with guns.
The gun-control crowd is more than happy to latch on to this, since it fits their statist idea that only the Elite should have the right to self-defense, and that the rest of us are simply unwashed Plebs. These folks seem to forget that they are subordinate to the people, not the other way around.
If you’re in public service, I don’t care about your opinions. You want an opinion on the way “things should be,” go work in the private sector, and for crying out loud, leave the guns to those of us who actually know how to use them.