Quote:
Originally Posted by lrrifleman
Often we see the phrase "police qualification" thrown around, but I have to take that with a ton of salt. Having been a teacher for too long, I have to ask by which standard do they qualify!
Most of the LEOs that I know qualify on the Q target. As a school board President, and the need to rely on our local street cop that needs to attain either 70% or 80% to qualify on the Q target in the event of a school shooting mortifies me. When it comes to range qualification, I have a much higher degree of respect for an officer that qualifies on a B27-style or K-D silhouette as opposed to the Q target.
In my opinion, if an officer can't achieve a 100% score on the Q target, they need to reimburse whichever entity that paid for their training. Like each and every one of us, police officers own every round they fire. I shiver at the thought that a marginal body shot on a Q target allows a police officer to carry a sidearm.
I don't offer this as a condemnation of police officers, but strongly believe that a department shouldn't adopt a potentially less capable arm in order to enhance an officer's ability to qualify.
Here endeth my rant.
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I agree. I've read a number of disturbing reports of police officers firing upwards of 30 rounds of ammunition at a target within 7 yards yet only scoring 3-5 hits, and these reports often specify that said officers were carrying 9mm pistols, mind you.
So yeah, apparently even after lowering the bar for officers to qualify by adopting a cartridge which is easier to shoot and saving money on ammo in the process which ought to enable them to train officers better by purchasing more ammunition, apparently certain officers still can't hit for beans.
Frankly, I don't buy that the switch to 9mm Luger had anything to do with optimizing the shooting performance of officers, it's merely an excuse to justify switching to lower cost ammunition, which in reality was most likely a decision made primarily through the consultation of accountants.
The FBI can claim all they want that the differences in ballistics performance between 9mm Luger, .40 S&W, and .45 ACP are marginal at best, but regardless of whether or not said statement is 100% accurate, I don't believe that they conducted thorough, costly experimentation in order to reach that conclusion because obviously .40 S&W was working just fine for them, so why would they have any reason to perform said testing for any other reason than to cut costs in the long-term?