The latest national stats show a 20% hits to shots fired ratio, ie. 2 out of every ten rounds. I don't see how anyone could
make the argument that is "doing well". But your right, there's tons of roadblocks in place, maybe it does all fall back to
individual responsibility, if the number one goal is making it home at the end of the shift then shouldn't it be an absolute
solemn obligation to one's family and self to be as proficient with the pistol as possible?
Until the 80% misses start putting Nun's and baby's in the morgue - the bureaucracies are going to keep smiling and say all is good.
My Chief requires more than the state mandated % on the quals - but I think those are few and far between. Mind you he's been in a gunfight, so...
Kevin S. Boland
Director of R&D
Law Tactical LLC
www.lawtactical.com
kevin@lawtactical.com
407-451-4544
Very few and far between. We have to pass the states minimum score of 70%.Originally Posted by KevinB
It's worth trying to combine some concepts and induce stoppages during scenarios with sim guns. It's one thing to have someone work through a stoppage on a one way range, but you'll reaaallllly start seeing the pitfalls of lack of training with sim guns. You add in what else the brain is trying to assess, judge and decide on, you'll start seeing some weirdo ways to clear a stoppage. Ironically, depending on the sim rounds you're using (coughFXcough), shooters will get plenty of practice doing malfunction drills during exercises cause of their lack of reliability.
huh. I used to change hands (I'm wrong handed) when I was doing an admin load. Even with my bear paws I can't seem to actuate the slide stop to upload the gun, so I always end up switching hands. Maybe you're seeing some wacky training scar or something. Just pointing this out.When he had his first failure to fire, a left-handed shooter transferred the pistol to his right hand and then cleared the stoppage via Tap, Rack& Roll. No, he has never been a right-handed shooter;
Does that serve some sort of training purpose, or is it to massage the instructors' douchebag ego and make them feel superior to the morons they are training?
Regardless of intent, most cops will leave training like that with feelings of the latter about the instructors. We know most officers will have trouble doing malfunction clearance on the square range, why do we need to confirm what we already know is going to happen in a high pressure scenario? How does the student benefit from that? What's the value of having a guy leave training with the mindset of "sims guns are crap, the instructors are douchebags, and my entire day got wasted on this crap". Once the students feel like they are getting screwed with, they start coming up with excuses and playing the blame game, and nothing gets retained from training.
Most cops have egos the size of the moon that are about as tough as a porcelain doll. Successful training is about assessing a student's needs, challenging the student, and toeing (but not crossing) the line that turns the student into an insolent butt hurt 5 year old.
<---Hates smart phones and kids on his lawn.
You make a valid point, but you're reading a bit too much into what I'm trying to say. When I said "it's worth trying" I meant it just like that. It's not a proven or tested technique. I agree with you, instructors need to get a read on their students to analyze what will work best, but figuring out what your salty dog student will react to is a separate issue from my point.
How I came to my suggestion was through the last time I was going through some firearms training with sim guns. The class ran between intermediate and advanced skill levels of shooters with one or two outliers. Even so, I'd say the first half of the day we all looked pretty goofy. Deer in the headlights moments, performing actions out of order, etc. But by the end of the course we were going through immediate action drills with relative ease. Yes, while we weren't enthralled that the sim guns weren't running at 100% reliability, we were at least getting the malfunction clearing procedures down without really thinking about them (this was enumerated at the end of the day too).
I take a different tack. After a few decades of training less-than-dedicated shooter I have gone to the very basic KISS process. Teach one thing that will solve almost all problems, teach it well, teach it over and over. If your gun doesn't work, reload your gun. Take out the old mag, put in a new mag, rack the slide. Those that want to learn more will learn more, those that don't care will at least have a skill that will cover almost all scenarios.
"PLAN FOR YOUR TRAINING TO BE A REFLECTION OF REAL LIFE INSTEAD OF HOPING THAT REAL LIFE WILL BE A REFLECTION OF YOUR TRAINING!"
I'm glad I don't work in the type of area described in posts like this. Where I work we train once a month...being instructed, learning something based on a year long curriculum set each year. As said earlier regarding small doses frequently - it works from my observations. My agency does the same with DT's as well - once a month.
Hit rate; our guys hit all the time. Minus one "tactical blind fire" incident, our hit rate is probably in the 70% range. And that's total rounds fired from behind shot at, on the move, moving targets, etc.
Bu at one point do we not look at the students and look at the teachers, instruction, and the overall environment.
I can only speak from what I see at my agency using the system it uses. I've never seen anyone look at an empty pistol, I've never seen anyone not know how to clear a malfunction and not get back to it. I've never seen anyone that can't hit the target from 25 yards, or reload fast (relatively speaking).
But I believe firearms training (and training in general) is important where I work and 15 years ago we were pretty progressive in how we were going to run our training program -and the results have been good.
Last edited by nwhpfan; 01-04-2015 at 02:07 AM.
A71593
We have similiar issues in my organization...as I imagine most of do unless the agency has a solid commitment to taining such as nwhpfan's outfit.
Angus, given that you're identified a problem, I'm sure you will find ways to address the issue. I would suggest running simpler drills until your officers are proficient in both clearing malfunctions and reloading on heir own. Qualification drills have an unfortunate habit of teaching officers to follow the directions of the range officer rather than solving problems on their own.
While I like the idea of using force on force drills, we have found that most malfunctions in our SigSauer 226 Simunition weapons cannot be cleared by tap/rack/assess. That said, force-on-force can teach officers to manage ammunition.
Training officers to simply reload when the weapon stops working is something I read in a Larry Nichols article many years ago. While it's simplicity has its appeal, I think most officers can and should be trained in other clearance techniques. Reloading won't work if the officer is not carrying a spare magazine when off duty or in plainclohes. I agree that a spare magazine should always be carried, but many simply will not do so (or may be down o their last magazine in a firefight).
I picked up a drill at an IALEFI RTC some years ago that reinforced skills and was both fun and challenging. Five or so weapons were set up across the range. The weapons were in various stages of inoperability (unloaded, stovepipe, manual safety engaged). At the go signal, the officer moves acoss the range, gets the weapon operational, and delivers a required number of shots to a target. You can run variations such as setting up two mirror courses and have officers compete. In most organizations, running some malfunction drills before this exercise is probably a good idea.
Fom running the "malfunction junction" course, I note that many officers skip the tap aspect of tap/rack/threat, often repeatedly and with an instructor yelling "Tap, rack, threat!" behind them. Those who only qualify with the shotgun when mandated have tremendous dificulty loading them. Lastly, these odd handguns that go round and round are a mystery to many, including those who started their careers with them.
I would take that comment and, in combination with what David said, challenge folks to look at this more critically in terms of what works as opposed to what all good shooters should know.
I did a class a few years ago for a large LE agency where many of the instructors had never done SHO or WHO reloads or malf clearances. Obviously, they didn't teach such techniques in the Academy. Now admittedly I was flabbergasted by the lack of at least covering that at a basic level but ... in all the years of the agency's existence, an agency that gets in a fair number of 2-way gunfights each year, it had been an issue zero times.
If officers are missing 80% of their shots, perhaps figuring out why that is happening and addressing that should be a higher priority than worrying if they know how to do the almost-never-necessary things like WHO backflip reloads. Stoppages, IMHO, are best addressed by having quality weapons, mags, and ammo. Will there still be occasional stoppages? Yes. Should officers be taught the best way to do that? Yes. They should never have to figure stuff out on their own in the middle of a fight if that can be helped. But letting them see the movie once or twice so they can recall it later on down the line might be enough in the grand spectrum of things they could be spending their time & ammo allotments on.
The issue gets worse when there is a high profile wild event. The guy who gets his right hand blown off and needs to shoot, reload, etc with his weak hand is going to be a story that gets around in our circles really, really fast... much faster than the "officers draws, fires six, hits twice, bad guy DRT" story that happens every day will get around. So we become tuned to seeing the far outlier events as a serious problem when in fact the guy who threw four rounds into the no-safe-area "backstop" in the middle of the street is probably worth more concern.
If you have infinite training resources, you teach everything to the nth degree. Once that infinite resource starts to dwindle, you need to prioritize. In a .mil unit with old, poorly maintained, worn out M9s maybe malf clearances are more relevant than to the agency that just bought all new G17s. The agency issuing NY+++ Glock triggers might need to give up some of the rare OBE training to make sure guys can press the trigger without throwing the sights into the next zip code.
Looking at what is relevant to your specific audience is important.
As instructors, we often want everyone to be great at everything. No one wants to see an officer killed or injured and think, "If only I had taught him how to XYZ." I've never been in that situation and cannot even imagine what it must feel like. But at the end of the day, again when resources are limited, the goal has to be giving the most people the most valuable training even if it means you cannot give every shooter everything.
Probably the subject for another thread, but when I teach/taught at agencies one of the things I'd discuss with FIs was how to motivate non-gunny cops to practice more. Motivating guys to be more serious about using the resources they can manage is better than trying to force them to drink from a firehouse once a year. IMHO (never been a cop, solider, Marine, or even mall ninja).
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