Well, if you really want to know how much training the average cop gets, here is a link to the TCLEOSE web site with the curriculum for the basic police academy. The section for firearms (section 2) has the material covered in class:seamusTX wrote:Police officers generally don't have all that much training. I don't know exactly what they do get.ClarkLZeuss wrote:... "Well, the police are professionally trained in handling firearms." This is where the rubber really meets the road. How do we respond to this?
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After basic academy, there is only a requirement to qualify once per year. Some agencies do more training some do less. I would guess that the average cop spends about 8 hours per year on a firing range for their department. When i was with SAPD, we did one full day per year. At TABC, we do 2 days per year, but average 4 hours per class. This is actually a little better than SAPD because we usually have fewer officers in a class. One academy just borrowed 300 rounds of ammo from us for his whole class. Another we send our trainees to required 2000 rounds per officer for training.
For my new agents academy, I currently have 24 hours at the range. This is for both pistol and shotgun. Next year, we are probably going to add 24 more hours of patrol rifle.
As pointed out, some officers will have more because of their personal interest and desires. This puts them on an equal basis with the average hobbyist who also shoots for his own interests. Average cop is a little better shot than the average citizen (who isn't interested in guns at all) but not much. And much worse shot than the average firearms hobbyist.