All departments go through their initial training for 3-6 months then (depending on the PD) their one year probation period. After that, they only have to qualify every 6-12 months and usually don’t even pick up their firearms unless to clean it in between that time. Sad. Problem is after that most just don’t train. They’ll work their shift, go home and that’s it.
Then when it’s time to use their firearms or get put into a gunfight situation, they panic and either get themselves killed or injured or put some of their own in harms way. I watch video every day of cops that get into gun fights or have to pull their weapons only to flag their own partners. Looking at this video it’s not a wonder why a cops hit rate is about 30% from 7-10 yards and even less when shooting and moving. It’s not that they weren’t trained, it’s lack of ongoing training
Paper shooting and metal plate shooting that are stationary targets are a different scenario from a life or death scenario. Many times the target is moving. You could be moving. Shooting at the range is a lot different from the stress of taking someone's life and the legal consequences behind it when the bad guy has the capability of taking your life too.
Some of my training involved running prior and sometimes even wrestling prior. Think your shooting will be accurate after that? Nice to have a stationary paper or metal targets as you put your electronic dot on the target. Congrats, you hit your target. In real stress they found many shooters never aligned their sights keeping their eyes on the threat. That is a real mistake but that's reality sometimes when you're in a real fight.
Many top shelf police department train with simunition dye bullets. They put you in something like a school or a mall with a real gun with dye projectiles. You don't know who the bad guy or guys are with all the chaos of the actors. Many have run toward the gun fire to find out in a pause of shooting the "bad" guy ran past them with the victims to get shot in the back.
Another great training tool is shoot don't shoot police video type training game. I guarantee you will not be 100% correct in your seconds decisions to shoot.
It's easy to come to assumptions how great you would do under stress.
