Monthly Archives: January 2017

(Unpopular?) Opinion

Cops Can’t Shoot- Part One: The Base Failure

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I won’t pull any punches. Most cops- most, not all- suck at shooting. It isn’t their fault. It is an institutional policy that puts them in a place to fail. To put it simply, they aren’t trained for a gunfight.

Most Police Academies last an average of 6 months. In that six months, trainees typically get two weeks each of unarmed self-defense/restraint techniques and shooting. While some departments spend more time on each, two weeks seems to be the average. Much of each of these modules pertain to use of force and escalation of force using role play and simulators. During the unarmed combat section, there is often hands on, force-on-force training which prepares officers for the realistic expectations of dealing with a combative suspect. This is good training. Where the training fails, is preparing them for a gunfight.

Most Academies spend most of their time on when to shoot, and less on how to shoot to survive. They teach square shooting- Trainees are taught a proper draw stroke, proper weapon presentation, sight alignment, and trigger pull on a paper target on a static range. If most officers were shooting paper paraplegics, this would be fantastic training. But gunfights are fast, kinetic actions, where stillness will get you hit. Training officers for a week on a square range is setting them up to fail. For many officers, this is the only training they will get. Then they will shoot on an annual or biannual qualification test that consists of the same passing standards of the academy- shooting X rounds on a paper target in Y time period. This is not adequate to teach them to survive. What should be happening is force-on-force roleplay with simunitions or the like, with officers who have been in gunfights being the OPFOR.

The military teaches a holy trifecta to win a gunfight- “Speed, Surprise, Violence of Action” If you have all three, you will win most of the time. But, in the words of Jagger, “You can’t always get what you want.” Troopers are further taught that if you can’t have all three, double up on the other two. Typically, an officer will not have the element of surprise. That means they need to put rounds on target, as fast as possible, pressing the fight to end. To do this, you need to have some actual experience with shooting accurately on the move, under stress. This can’t happen in a square cadence range of “Establish Grip-Draw-Present-Fire”. You need to teach officers to shoot, move, and communicate while under stress.

Until there is a basic change in training methods from the square mentality, cops will still fail to shoot well in real situations.

(Unpopular?) Opinion

Why I Don’t Get Excited For SHOT Show

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As I write this, we are hips deep in SHOT Show 2017 coverage. SHOT Show is the E3 of guns. For many, this is their favorite time of year. The industry as a whole uses this to show off new products, revisions to old products, and products that are in the pipeline. It’s great.

Except that it isn’t. Unlike E3, where there seems to be some accountability in actually producing on promises, SHOT seems to be where great ideas and good intentions go to die. While much of actual SHOT Show convention space is devoted to products already on the market. This is cool, but everyone knows about Glocks and Trititum sights. Most of the press coverage is devoted to new and unique products- this year things like SilencerCo’s Maxim 9 is the new hotness. Its awesome to see videos of guys getting to use and demonstrate these. Unfortunately, too often these things turn into vaporware. How many times have we seen a “Final Production Prototype” on the floor at SHOT with promises of “2nd or 3rd Quarter this year” only to never see hide nor hair of it again. Each year, I have gotten my hopes up on things like the Magpul Masada, US Palm’s takedown AK, or Desert Tech’s entire product line. The promises either end up never happening, becoming the Duke Nukem Forever of the gun world (I’m looking at you, Masada/ACR), being so delayed that people drop pre-orders, and the cool thing never has chance to thrive.

I understand that producing a new firearm is not a simple process. It takes a lot of time, R&D, and facility infrastructure to make. But until the gun industry learns it’s lesson the way the Video Game industry did, SHOT Show is demonstration of old news and vaporware.

General Information

HPA of 2015 Reintroduced in 115th Congress as H.R.367

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As anyone on the ASA’s mailing list would know, the 115th Congress has reintroduced the Hearing Protection Act of 2015 (previously talked about here), this time as H.R.367 “To provide that silencers be treated the same as long guns.” Yeah, I’m hoping they work on that title a bit, but it was just introduced yesterday and currently has 43 Cosponsors.

Text for the bill has not yet been provided, but in the coming days it will likely be a verbatim copy of H.R. 3799, along with a companion Senate bill.  While I’m not getting my hopes up, introduction into the 115th Congress gives it some advantages that it didn’t previous enjoy.  While there was a slight increase in the Republican edge in Congress, there was previously and it never even got a committee hearing.  No, the advantage comes from the fact that not only would this bill have a significantly better chance to NOT get vetoed, it also has a proponent in the President Elect’s son, who notably met with SilencerCo CEO Joshua Waldron.

In any case, I’m cautiously optimistic, while I wholly suspect the pending stamp refund to get axed from the bill faster than an M-10’s cyclic rate, that was always there as a negotiation concession.  As said before, be sure to keep up the communication with your representatives telling them you expect to see their support of this during this session.

Edit: Found this thread, good bit of information on it, and it will likely be updated with a who’s who of key figures in getting this thing moving, so pay attention, and we might end up with a good list of representatives who need to be contacted.