Jokes about cops shooting poorly are legion in some quarters. Having taught cops for more than 30 years, I wish to take some exception. We all know the stories. The cop who misses the whole target at seven paces. The cop whose gun was rusted shut from neglect, or loaded with cartridges so old they had verdigris on them. The cop whose dashboard-mounted shotgun had tobacco ashes or even a cigar butt down the barrel. The cop who went to work with a gun he forgot to load, or with a holster he forgot to fill.

Gimme a break. I've heard all of the above and, well, I've personally seen all 6f the above.

That said, I'm here to tell you that today's cops are pretty decent gun handlers. The proof is in the performance. America's cops win the overwhelming majority of gunfights in which they engage the violent criminals who threaten our citizens.

I can't give you the statistics, though. There's just no empirical database in this country gathering information on all police gunfights. All we have is the FBI's "Officers Killed Summary." It details the ones we lost, but does not encompass the ones our officers win. Suffice to say, you have only to follow the news to know the cops are winning.

Advances In Training

Certainly, we have better guns than ever. More powerful, with more efficient bullet designs, and more of those bullets, with faster reloads to boot. Of course, the bad guys had high-capacity, high-power weapons before we did. We have concealed body armor, night sights, flashlights attached to the guns, and laser sights. While all these things are available to the bad guys, relatively few are smart enough to avail themselves of this tech, nology, while police issue much of it as standard. We used to see more cops killed with their own guns, but retention training pioneered by Jim Lindell at the Kansas City Regional Police Academy and generations of snatch-resistant holsters have done much to mitigate that. It's still a problem, though.

Training has been the key to officer survival. Much of this has been in mindset, the core of police survival training. Rookies come out of the academy conditioned to fight tooth and nail for survival, and inspired to stay alert to danger signs they've been taught to recognize, The FTO (field training officer) concept of the last few decades has kept "the new kids" from having to reinvent the wheel, and put them on a faster learning curve toward survival of violence. Today's street cops have aerosol sprays (OC, or pepper) and stun guns (Advanced Taser) that actually work, often shutting off violent encounters before they reach the stage of lethal assault. And, I'm happy to say, all these things are available to law-abiding private citizens as well.

Indeed, armed citizens have brought much to the cops. For decades, only the FBI could afford "Hogan's Alley," the elaborate scenario-based live-fire training. But Jeff Cooper, never a cop, created the gunfight simulation now known as IPSC, and IPSC begat IDPA, and in the meantime streetwise police instructors like Frank Repass at the Orlando, Florida PD brought elements of competition into police training for the rank and file. Soon came Simunitions, a highly evolved police version of the "paintball games" "civilians" had begun and Airsoft, also developed first for civilians. Advanced cops had shot toy guns or cotton-ball bullets at each other in role-play training back in the '60s and '70s, but Simunitions was a dimension of reality-based training going much farther. There was more, but this gives an idea of the advances made in the late 20th Century.

The Crucible Of Competition

You have only to look at the combat match winners to see how many cops are highly evident. There are only some 700,000 police officers in a sea of up to 297,000,000 US citizens. The law dogs constitute about a quarter of 1 percent of America's population, but a much higher percentage of the winners in practical shooting competition. Over its quarter century epoch, four men were said to "own" the Bianchi Cup at various periods: Mickey Fowler, John Pride, Bruce Piatt and Doug Koenig. Pride was an LAPD officer when he won his first Cup (since retired), and through all his victories in what is now known as NRA Action Pistol Shooting, Piatt has been a municipal cop on the Eastern Seaboard.

Every year since its inception, I've shot the New England Regional Championships of IDPA held at Pioneer Sportsman Club in Dunbarton, New Hampshire. I've been struck by how many years the top shot was a cop. Bryce Linskey, of the Bristol, Connecticut, PD comes to mind, as does Federal agent Scott Warren. Another Fed took the Stock Service Pistol title there in 2005, one T.C. Fuller, while Enhanced Service Pistol was captured by Eric Blanchard. A state law-enforcement officer from Vermont and a sworn municipal officer who works part time for his department and part time for this magazine took the Stock Service Revolver title. Sixty percent of the champions carried badges.