Originally Posted by
Lost River
A few personal thoughts.
When people/officers start shooting, it is quite often emotional firing. They are jacked up on adrenaline. They are mad, scared, excited and/or a combination of all of the above and it takes a bit to get back in control. During that time, an officer can dump a whole mag. Officers who have already been through numerous extremely tense situations, or are simply by their nature less inclined to get wrapped up in such things tend to do better than the new people, or "that" guy. The one or two patrolmen or detectives, that everyone knows is high strung and gets worked up over things easily.
When I was working right after I left LE and was doing EP work, I had a team of guys that had specific backgrounds. All combat vets, plus a few LE/combat vets. The short version is that I wrote our organizations firearms as well as training policy. When it came to training, we spent a substantial amount of time on pure accuracy.
We always started out cold each day with "The" test. 10 rounds, 10 yards, 10 seconds on a B8. Accuracy was emphasized. Then we worked on dot drills. A few of the guys switched from carrying G19s to G34s due to this. Because it was likely that there would be numerous innocent people around, and if a shooting were to occur, it more likely than not would be less than ideal circumstances for us, I told the teams over and over "Make your first shot your best shot and alter the course of the battle.".
I said it so much that the guys would start to repeat it when I began to say it, which was actually a good thing. Along with telling them I did not want them shooting a lot, I wanted them shooting well. Precision shooting was emphasized. Only after we spent a bunch of time doing dot drills did we work on doing speed work.
Thinking how to solve shooting issues was key and using a mantra that was taught to me years ago, it was drilled into them:
"We need thinkers who are shooters, and shooters who are thinkers".
Trying not to get caught up in the moment is part of that, as is good communication. Designating shooters vs officers who are assigned to de-escalate is also a part of the toolbag. Being ready to switch roles in an instant of things are not working is also part of it.
Personally I don't care too much if I have a single stack or something along the line of a G17 on me.
That said, I see some advantages to the higher capacity guns, but it is not about shooting more. It is about manipulating less.
If I shoot 5-6 rounds with a 1911 and the matter is not resolved, and things are still evolving, I am going to want to perform a reload. If I shoot 5-6 rounds with a G17 that may not be the case. During that time I spent reloading, I could have been opening a door, shielding people, looking for an exit, grabbing a child, etc.
Each has their place and I see both sides. What I think would be beneficial is more focus on training people for dealing with truly intensely stressful situations and having them perform to a known standard. This is really an administrative issue. Many departments spend inordinate amounts of money sending their senior admin to BS classes that are really just taxpayer funded vacations at extremely nice hotels, often with wives accompanying them. That money would be better spent on the other end of the chain of command, providing officers more quality training, instead of the usual 3-4 range days per year on a square range shooting paper targets, and listening to a couple of classroom lectures, which they tune out in the first 5 minutes.
Just my 2 pennies.