I know this will date me, but before I got into LE, I was watching a Dirty Harry movie, where Harry goes to the pistol range to practice, and finds a bunch of rookies there already. Harry asks them if they have regular range times during the day, and a VERY young Robert Urich says, "You shouldn't be on the streets these days if you can't shoot."
That made a lot of sense to me, and when I put on a badge, I made sure my shooting skills were all they could be. I shot a ton of practice, and every police match I could find.
Then came the 90's, tighter budgets, political correctness, etc. And when the administrators started cutting back, the first thing that got chopped was the training budget. Qualification was trimmed from every sixty days to once a year, and scores plummeted. (Administrators blamed it on the new guns, Beretta 9's, which were plenty accurate.)
But aside from a few of us, most cops just don't care about shooting and such, as long as they pass the qualification. The same cops who whine about having to take the Defensive Tactics classes that may someday save a life. Maybe their own.
I've been on the qualification range in the last year, and stood next to people on the firing line who were putting holes in MY target because they were never taught to shoot properly. How they passed qualification is beyond me.
The scariest part is that if I get into a shooting situation, some of these idiots are my backup! :eek:
Now you know why I prefer to work alone.
PJ
