Question for LE trainers, armorers, firearms program admins....vetting a NIB pistol?

[fatdog]

Some of the discussions of Sig's poor initial quality of firearms delivered to LE in the other threads got me wondering about this subject.

Not that they are alone either, since Beretta, S&W, Glock, have all had periods of shipping specific models of their guns that were not 100% street ready for every unit right off the production line, for one quality or design reason or another. And any standard of care would imply one needs to do some level of testing even with the most reliable out of the box makers/versions.

If your agency has already transitioned to a platform (which I assume to be a higher round count exercise that naturally gets each officer to test their issued gun) and you have spare new guns in the armory ready to be issued to already qualified/transitioned officers, e.g. their issued gun is damaged, broken, lost, off the the lab or evidence locker, etc. etc. How many rounds have been put down range with that ready to issue gun? Or if it is NIB unfired since it left the factory, how many rounds do you require the officer you are issuing it to put down range before they carry it on duty?

Obviously the 2,000 round new gun testing standard that has been bounced around and discussed here is out of the reach of most agencies in terms of ammo, paid time for that officer or range staff, etc. I am just curious as to what different standards are for how many rounds through the pipe before the NIB pistol is declared ready for duty use?

[KevH]

There is what is ideal and then what is practical.

We issue our guns brand new in the box and then run a one-day "transition" course which typically is around 400-500 rounds. This lets officers familiarize themself with the gun, get some confidence, break things in, and work any kinks out. Shooting it more, while that may seem ideal, would not be practical and your typical cop (or most shooters) would be fatigued shooting any more than that.

Knock-on-wood, we haven't really experienced too many problems doing this, but we've also been really lucky since 2007 when we started issuing S&W M&P's (we currently issue the M&P 2.0 milled for the Acro with the flat trigger and PC safety plunger). We issued S&W SW99's before that which were a disaster. We learned from that experience and were very lucky that S&W took good care of us.

I've seen neighboring agencies have a terrible time, especially one neighboring agency that switched from their late-1990's SIG P220's to "improved" SIG P220R's in 2009. It caused them to switch to Glocks and never look back.

For personally owned guns it varies greatly. Some guys shoot a few boxes and call it good and some shoot a few thousand before they'll carry it. It varies greatly.

The most issues I have seen are with modified guns rather than factory QC, but that is to be expected.

[lwt16]

They would issue new pistols with 100 rounds of fmj and we would run a practice qual and another qual.

If you passed on the first qual, you were gtg.

I would then take said pistol to a private range and put at least a box of our carry ammo through it along with 2-3 hundred more fmj.

No way the department would fund that for 400 sworn. They were too cheap to even run carry ammo for the 100 rounds.

[Lon]

Nothing formal says one way or the other. Since I’m the head firearms instructor now, I’d have them shoot at least a couple hundred rounds before running them through the state qual course. More if I thought they needed it.

[TGS]

Gun gets inspected by the armorers before being issued to an agent or office as a spare.

For new agents, there's a vetting process by way of being issued the pistol at the start of our in house basic special agent course, so it's got a few thousand rounds through it by the time it hits the field.

When transitioning from the SIG to Glock, agents were mandated to complete a transition course. It was pretty weak since most agents were already trained on Glocks as it was a secondary weapon issued in certain assignments, so the transition course was only a hundred rounds or so unless you transitioned coincidental to a higher round count course like I did.

For agents getting a replacement or loaner pistol, there is no specific process to vet the pistol. I took that upon myself and drew extra ammo to go shoot 200 rounds each through the office loaner pistols that I manage, but I'm 99.9% sure that nobody else would care to do that.

[jnc36rcpd]

New hires at my former department often got new guns. If they were going to the academy, they'd be firing several hundred rounds at a minimum. A lateral whose prior agency issued a different system had a state-mandated three day transition course. That entailed a lot of shooting at the instructor's discretion. I believe a lateral who was issued the same system either had a one-day class or perhaps just qualification. (We never had a lateral whose prior employer issued the SIG 226 or the FNS.)

If an officer was going to a different version of the duty weapon such as the SIG 239 or the FNS Compact, I believe only daylight and ow light qualifications occurred.

[feudist]

New recruits are issued unfired and uninspected guns(no armorers since the 90s when we had S&W revolver, Beretta 92, Glock and SIG armorers.
S&W M&P 9mm are standard issue. Once out of training an officer can qualify(50 rounds) with a wide number of brands. A 50 round qual is all that's required.
Initial recruit training is 1200-1500 rounds, all low bid reloads.
No duty ammo is issued or tested. You buy your own off a list of choices. It used to be weirdly specific and contradictory, but eventually it was a JHP from Winchester, Federal., Remington or CCi-Speer.
I'd venture that at least 10% of officers have assorted ball and JHP mixed up in their mags. I've found a half dozen that did...a handful of some JHP on top, with the rest being ball.
Lots of officers have carried unauthorized JHP loads/brands at one time or another, either from confusion or ignorance.
Many, many (most)officers carry the same box of ammo they bought the day before graduation the rest of their career.
We stayed lucky.
Which, along with prayer was our primary mode of planning(Primary/alternate). In-depth planning included denial, prevarication, counter accusations and feigning ignorance
We had a handful of operator induced malfunctions that didn't result in tragedy. No noticeable stopping power failures regardless of load or caliber. We only had a few shootings go beyond 5 or 6 rounds.
Weirdly high hit rates(with only 100-150 rounds a year of very basic qual shooting) and no citizens injured.
5 officers murdered but they were all killed in surprise attacks where their gun wasn't an issue.

The real takeaway? In the surrounding area(and most places anywhere I'm familiar with or have read about nationwide) we were
the standard to aspire to.

[AMC]

New recruits are issued unfired and uninspected guns(no armorers since the 90s when we had S&W revolver, Beretta 92, Glock and SIG armorers.
S&W M&P 9mm are standard issue. Once out of training an officer can qualify(50 rounds) with a wide number of brands. A 50 round qual is all that's required.
Initial recruit training is 1200-1500 rounds, all low bid reloads.
No duty ammo is issued or tested. You buy your own off a list of choices. It used to be weirdly specific and contradictory, but eventually it was a JHP from Winchester, Federal., Remington or CCi-Speer.
I'd venture that at least 10% of officers have assorted ball and JHP mixed up in their mags. I've found a half dozen that did...a handful of some JHP on top, with the rest being ball.
Lots of officers have carried unauthorized JHP loads/brands at one time or another, either from confusion or ignorance.
Many, many (most)officers carry the same box of ammo they bought the day before graduation the rest of their career.
We stayed lucky.
Which, along with prayer was our primary mode of planning(Primary/alternate). In-depth planning included denial, prevarication, counter accusations and feigning ignorance
We had a handful of operator induced malfunctions that didn't result in tragedy. No noticeable stopping power failures regardless of load or caliber. We only had a few shootings go beyond 5 or 6 rounds.
Weirdly high hit rates(with only 100-150 rounds a year of very basic qual shooting) and no citizens injured.
5 officers murdered but they were all killed in surprise attacks where their gun wasn't an issue.

The real takeaway? In the surrounding area(and most places anywhere I'm familiar with or have read about nationwide) we were
the standard to aspire to.

Holy fuck.

[HCM]

For us:

All new / spare GOV pistols are armorer inspected including those issues to new trainees in the Academy.

All Personally Owned Weapons (POW) entering service are armorer inspected and require a successful qualification course and at least 4 hours of transition training.

New issue of a new type of gun requires transition training which can vary between 4 and 24 hours.

By policy, if it’s a replacement for a broken gun or one taken into evidence etc and the officer is already qualified we can issue the spare pistol as is. However, locally we try to have the Officer shoot the pistol ASAP.

[Chuck Whitlock]

New recruits are issued unfired and uninspected guns(no armorers since the 90s when we had S&W revolver, Beretta 92, Glock and SIG armorers.
S&W M&P 9mm are standard issue. Once out of training an officer can qualify(50 rounds) with a wide number of brands. A 50 round qual is all that's required.
Initial recruit training is 1200-1500 rounds, all low bid reloads.
No duty ammo is issued or tested. You buy your own off a list of choices. It used to be weirdly specific and contradictory, but eventually it was a JHP from Winchester, Federal., Remington or CCi-Speer.
I'd venture that at least 10% of officers have assorted ball and JHP mixed up in their mags. I've found a half dozen that did...a handful of some JHP on top, with the rest being ball.
Lots of officers have carried unauthorized JHP loads/brands at one time or another, either from confusion or ignorance.
Many, many (most)officers carry the same box of ammo they bought the day before graduation the rest of their career.
We stayed lucky.
Which, along with prayer was our primary mode of planning(Primary/alternate). In-depth planning included denial, prevarication, counter accusations and feigning ignorance
We had a handful of operator induced malfunctions that didn't result in tragedy. No noticeable stopping power failures regardless of load or caliber. We only had a few shootings go beyond 5 or 6 rounds.
Weirdly high hit rates(with only 100-150 rounds a year of very basic qual shooting) and no citizens injured.
5 officers murdered but they were all killed in surprise attacks where their gun wasn't an issue.

The real takeaway? In the surrounding area(and most places anywhere I'm familiar with or have read about nationwide) we were
the standard to aspire to.

Likely typical of most small to middlin' LE agencies across the country.