And exactly what do you believe is the best gun for the job?
I’ve worked for multiple agencies. The difference in training between LEO agencies is massive and sometimes barely better than what should be the minimal for a state concealed carry license. People who care about the craft wind up training off duty and often even perusing professional instructors on their own dime. A professional instructor should know this.
Kind of related: I've talked about my dad having served in the Navy and being a law enforcement officer for a state agency full-time and a federal agency part-time. He had also been shooting and hunting his entire life and we had a fairly extensive collection of firearms. Likewise, I was raised to safely handle and use firearms and they became my big passion early on in life.
The state agency dad worked for was the Department of Corrections, and the last few years of his career were spent as the assistant director of a halfway house. The firearms instructor in charge of their training and recertification every six months was formerly an Army SF guy (either Rangers or Green Beret, I can't remember because I'm getting old).
After I became an adult I got invited to come with them a few times when it was time to recertify (it's good to be the boss' son). A lot of the COs never practiced shooting in their off-time. Only when it was time for them to actually train and recertify. The practice ammo the DoC would give them so they actually could practice on their own time they would sell off.
Some of the guys were gun guys and did shoot recreationally. Some were hunters. Some took their job very seriously and wanted to keep their skills sharp. But there were quite a few who just saw it as a job and weren't out in the field very often, so they were complacent and just did the absolute bare minimum that was required of them, so they weren't very good shots.
Now, up to this point I was a young man still in my late teens, so I hadn't had any experience carrying for self defense or work. I had grown up shooting regularly and was a decent shot, I had been hunting several times, and at that time I was employed putting together semi-auto Kalashnikovs and UZIs for a local manufacturer. I got to go through their training with them, even got to practice room clearing drills in a kill house they had set up, and then go through the qualification shoot with them. In the qualification shoot I scored in the top 15% of shooters, and all of us who scored highly were the ones who shot regularly and had some kind of interest in firearms. I actually scored higher than my old man a couple of times, but we were usually both equally matched.
One funny story from one of the trips: there was one CO who...well, let's just say he wasn't the sharpest spoon on the tree. He was only ever given office work and never any field work, which meant he wasn't authorized to carry, as at that time the DoC's rules mandated that only COs in certain roles were authorized to be armed, and being in the office wasn't one of them unless you were assigned regular field work. The guy was also one of those who never went to the range on his own. In the qualification he barely eeked out a passing score.
When it came time to do the kill house, which was not a required course and 100% voluntary additional training, he decided he was going to join in. We did a walk through with the instructor, being shown the layout of the kill house, being shown how to stack up for a door breach, being shown how to navigate the hallway, who holds the hallway and where as the rest of the team clears a room, who in the stack sweeps where upon entering each room, slicing the pie, etc. We do several dry runs weapons holstered to get things down, then do a few runs hot with the instructor as the stack lead to make sure we have it down with all the noise and chaos of live ammunition being fired. After each run through the house the instructors would move around the location of the targets and the furniture in the house so that it was always different and always a surprise each time.
There were eight of us going through the training so we were able to be broken into two teams of four and take turns rotating through going through the kill house while the other team observed. Being a live fire exercise we were all wearing body armor, just in case the worst were to happen. And every couple of rotations they would break up the teams and move members around not only their position in their team's stack, but also which team they were in so everyone could get a feel for working with different teammates.
On one of the times it was my team's turn to run the house and the teams had just been reshuffled with new members. The house had been reset, targets and furniture moved to new locations, and when it came time to stack up at the door and breach I was chosen to be stack lead and enter the door first. We stacked up and I looked back to see if the other three guys were ready to breach. When I looked back I noticed that the guy directly behind me was the dumbass who never gets assigned field work because he's an idiot, and when I looked down at his weapon in his hands tucked right in next to the right side of my gut, the fucktard has his fucking FINGER. ON. THE. FUCKING. TRIGGER!
I was absolutely appalled. I turned around and asked "Are you out of your fucking mind?! What the fuck do you think you're doing?!"
He looks at me confused and says "What? What's the problem?"
I replied "Your fingers on the trigger, you moron."
He says "Yeah. So?"
I say "First rule of firearms safety, dumbass: always keep your finger off the trigger until you're ready to shoot."
He looks at me like he's genuinely confused and says "Yeah, we're stacking up and I'm ready to shoot."
I was legitimately shocked at his level of stupidity. I waved my hand around the area and said "Where's the target? I don't see any targets around here, do you? Nuh-uh. We're not doing this."
He asks "What do you mean?"
I pointed my finger at his chest and said "You're not only stupid, you're dangerous to the men around you. You're gonna get someone killed."
He gets really pissed and said "Hey, fuck you! You're just a fucking kid!"
I said "Whatever." and called for the instructor who was still up on the catwalk above the kill house so he could watch us run the course.
The instructor comes to the edge and says "What's up?"
I replied "Could you please come down here? This retard is going to get someone killed."
He comes down, walks up to me, and asks again "What's up?"
I jab my thumb towards the guy and say "We're stacking up at the door, I look back, and this guy's behind me with his finger on the trigger with his weapon tucked right into my side."
The instructor raises his eyebrows and says "No shit?"
I nod and say "No shit. I'm pissed."
The instructor sighs, shakes his head and replies "Yeah...me too."
He walks over to the idiot, squares up, and says "Clear your side arm and hand it over."
The guy says "What?"
The instructor says "Did I stutter? Do it now!"
The idiot clears his weapon and hands it to the instructor. The instructor grabs him by the collar of his body armor and drags him out of earshot to dress him down. My dad, who had been off aways bullshitting with his buddies, comes over to me to ask what happened. I fill him in and dad says "Yeah...this is why he's an office monkey and never gets field work." and follows up by telling me about the guy, who I hadn't even really met or heard about until we had been put on the same team in that last shuffle. I'd only seen him through the day during the training and qualifications, and maybe a couple of times when I had gone to visit my old man at work.
So the instructor and dumbass are off a ways. Dumbass is getting the dressing-down of his life, but we can't really hear what's being said. Just bits and pieces here and there. I did hear "This is why you're never allowed out of the office." at one point. Towards the end I think he may have raised a complaint about me calling him out because I was "just a kid", because the instructor pointed to my dad and then back to me, and the guy looked back and his mouth kinda fell open a bit and he looked kind of embarrassed. So I think the instructor told him whose kid I was...their boss' kid.
Anyways, dumbass gets sent home and my dad said they had to put him through a basic firearms safety course. Something they have never had to do before with any CO who wasn't new and going through the academy, back when the DoC actually had it's own academy. Now all state law enforcement go through the same academy. Fun fact: my dad actually spent a year as an instructor at the DoC academy and one of his partners became the head instructor there later in their career. About half a year later dumbass got let go from his job, though I never did hear why. Just that he was let go. Probably some kind of stupid boner move on his part. The instructor eventually got on with one of the local police departments and joined their tactical/SWAT teams.
Anyways, just kind of a funny anecdote from my past about officers (or anyone who carries a gun) who don't do their due diligence in regards to keeping their skills sharp through practice.
