Police..rubbish at shooting?

[ScarySquirrel]

I have a mate who was shot in the neck and side during Sunday Bloody Sunday and he didn't know until he was back on the van and a fellow soldier told him.

Great song, it really encapsulates the frustration of a Sunday. Sunday Bloody Sunday!

 

[TheVoice]

I don't know if it is true (i.e. I'm asking), but a policeman friend (he's not ARV/SFO) said they only get one weeks initial training with the Glock and MP5 - not each, one week combined. Then they have specialist training on entering rooms, tactics and so on. The rest of the hands-on gun training is their own on the range.

That seems... dangerous.

The entire course is five weeks, and at the end of the five week period they're assessed against various criteria. Firearms familiarity won't take a great deal of time to teach, obviously you need to get people comfortable with the weapons, but if they're not comfortable they're not going to get to training anyway; there's an initial assessment course that occurs before the actual training which essentially weeds out the people who clearly aren't going to make it through to the end.

 

[WillyNelson]

Most people here could learn how to use an automatic pistol including field stripping and cleaning in a couple of hours.

My sister learned to field strip an automatic pistol over the phone. Can't be that tricky at all.

 

[GolfNovember90]

they didn't have to kill him,
they shoot to stop, not to kill

 

[RaohNS]

One of the kids i teach has his sister living in the flat above, apparently he went off the rails due to rowing with his gf then she left him and he went a bit doo-lally!

 

[meghatronic]

One of the kids i teach has his sister living in the flat above, apparently he went off the rails due to rowing with his gf then she left him and he went a bit doo-lally!

Que?

 

[Meridian]

Just don't point it at anyone you don't intend to shoot. Way I was taught and should be the way no matter what.

ags

Exactly what I was taught, and what I used to teach other when I did shooting training and range safety training (civvie and cadets only). I would guess that the guy who set the weapon off in the demo fell for the old forgot-the-one-in-the-chamber fail. He probably checked the mag was empty but never finished the job by pulling the slide back.


Many years ago, whilst training cadets in weapon safety, I played a very cruel trick to ram home a point. Normally the cadets were taught to check the weapon was clear as soon as they got it from the Armourer (this was a VERY long time ago - these were Lee-Enfield Number Fours: .303 bolt-action rifles), but in this, their first lesson, I told them that they had been checked by the Armourer before being issued and that they should leave them alone. Having given them the ten minute spiel on the damage a high-velocity rifle round can do, I instructed them to open the bolts. Out of each one sprang a dummy round - very similar at first glance to real one. I thought at least one of the cadets was going to pass out. "That", I explained, "is why you never take anyone else's word for a weapon being safe - you always check it yourself."


M

 

[Von Smallhausen]

A very good way of hammering that message home.