But Firearms are Different!

“But firearms are different!”

That’s the argument I hear most often when introducing Ecological Dynamics to police trainers. And they’re right—firearms are different. Deadly weapons. Unparalleled responsibility. Life-or-death stakes. Yet, does that mean we should cling to outdated methods? Or does it demand better training rooted in science?

We have to respect the unique risks that firearms pose during training, but the principles of EcoD still hold true. EcoD is a general theory about how people learn skills. If you buy into its core idea—that learners are naturally good at organizing around the opportunities in their environment to achieve goals—then the job of a trainer is to figure out how to apply those principles safely to firearms training.

A Look at Firearms Training

Let's turn to firearms and their role in law enforcement. The carrying of firearms is something that sets law enforcement apart from other public servants and the general public (… well, maybe not in Texas ;) ). Guns are symbols of the police officer’s role as the government’s official users of force and the tools of the most extreme level of that force - deadly force. Because they are deadly, they get (and deserve) special attention in police training.

I don’t usually go full academic, but for this post, I’ll provide links to relevant articles so you can fact-check what I’m saying. Using information from the Census of Law Enforcement Training Academies (CLEATA) program, Sloan and Colleagues (2021) surveyed 591 police academies about their basic police officer training programs. They found that basic police academies on average required a total of 837 training hours or about 20 weeks if a week is considered to be 5 days. Of those, 144 hours (17%) were dedicated to weapons and defensive tactics on average. Of the 144 hours, 68 (47%) were dedicated to firearms training. Firearms training also received more attention than any other weapons/defensive tactics area, reflecting its critical importance in preparing officers for real-world scenarios involving deadly force. Clearly, dedicating almost 2 weeks out of a 20 week academy indicates that firearms training is seen as important.

What does the training look like? Well there is a lot of variation from academy to academy, but you tend to see a lot of shooting at non-moving paper targets. Most of these are in the general shape of a person’s head and torso. They usually have clearly designated hit/scoring zones. The targets generally do not show that the target is armed. The students engage in fixed courses of fire - For this stage, shoot two shots to the body and 1 to the head - for the next stage, shoot 2 shots to the body of the target on the right and 2 to the target on the left. The stages are usually started by either the targets turning, a beeper sounding, or the instructor yelling “threat!”. Neither the target nor the student moves during the course of fire. Students are scored based on accuracy and usually must complete the course of fire within a certain time limit. As student’s improve, the courses of fire become more complex and often introduce other skills such as reloading and malfunction drills.

I know many of you are screaming, “but we do X or Y!” I believe you. A lot of instructors are out there doing good things. I am just trying to lay out a general process for people who may not have seen much police training.

At most academies, students will also participate in some force-on-instructor scenarios. These scenarios use simulated firearms (Simunition is probably the most common) against an armed “bad guy” instructor that can shoot back. These scenarios are usually run after students have shown proficiency on the range with paper targets. Some academies have the students learn to work their way through live fire shoot houses. Unlike standard range drills, which often involve shooting from fixed positions, live-fire exercises incorporate dynamic movement and decision-making. Students must work their way through the structure while encountering armed (shoot) targets and unarmed (don’t shoot) targets. Sometimes this is done with teams of officers.

After the academy, officers will periodically engage in firearms training for the rest of their career. This transition from basic training to ongoing practice is critical to maintaining and enhancing the skills developed during the academy. In some departments, this involves courses designed to improve the student’s firearms skills. In many others, however, the “training” consists merely of shooting a standard qualification course required by their state. These usually involve shooting fixed courses of fire at non-moving paper targets at a variety of distances within certain time frames. The frequency with with officers must qualify varies, but in most states, it is required at least once a year.

So Does this Work?

Apparently, not very well. For example, a relatively recent study of officer-involved shootings found that no round fired by the police hit the suspect in about 46% of incidents. Think about that. In nearly half of police shootings, the officer(s) missed entirely (and sometimes hit innocent bystanders)! When individual round accuracy was considered, the accuracy was only 33%. This is consistent with other studies (see Here and Here). Interestingly, despite advances in firearms technology and more required training, accuracy does not seem to have improved over time.

What’s the Problem?

Human Limits

There are two significant issues here. First, Vila and Morrison (1994) argued that we may be nearing the human biological limits of combat handgun accuracy. Their research highlights how the precise alignment required for accurate shooting is difficult to achieve under combat conditions. They use some sophisticated modeling and compare their results to actual shootings to make this argument.

There is a human limit to what can be accomplished, but I think there is substantial room to improve training before we declare that we are at that limit. We see well trained humans perform actions that are well beyond the typical person’s ability all the time (just look at any sport).

Training

For the second issue, lets talk about the training that I have described above from an EcoD perspective. I am going to assume that the point of all training is for what is done in training to transfer to the field. As I have discussed previously, for transfer to occur, the training environment must be like the real thing in critical ways. The key issues are reflected in the Constraints-Led Approach (CLA) concept of representative learning design. While things are not just simply representative or not, more representative designs will have:

1. Multiple ways to achieve a goal (called task degeneracy).

2. Choices - meaning trainees must make decisions.

3. Perception - Action linkages - Trainees can see the impact their actions have and adjust accordingly

4. Specifying Information - the cues that the trainees use to drive their actions in training should be like those that will drive their actions in the real world.

Let’s examine a typical range training scenario to point out the limitations. Let's assume that the student is being instructed to shoot a specific number of rounds at specific locations on a target resembling the upper body of a person. They are instructed to start shooting when the instructor says “threat!”

There are multiple ways the trainees can move the gun to produce this outcome, so they have some task degeneracy. But generally they are being told to move the weapon and hold it in a specific way - limiting the ways they can achieve the goal. Also they generally cannot move from their starting position.

They have no choices. They don’t choose when, where to shoot, or when to stop shooting.

They may or may not have some perception-action linkages. If they can see where their rounds hit after the course of fire, this provides some linkage. This ability usually degrades over the course of the training session because the target gets more and more holes making it difficult to know which hole is connected to which shot. Also at longer distances, trainees usually cannot see the results without having to move up to the targets to inspect them.

There in no specifying information. On the street, the officer must interpret the actions of the suspect to decide whether to shoot or not. They see the impact of their shooting to decide when to stop shooting or when to target certain areas. None of this is present in the drill I described above.

So based on this analysis, you wouldn’t expect what is being done to have a high likelihood of transferring to an actual shooting, and I would argue that this is what the data show.

We Must Do Better

Almost two-thirds of shots fired in real incidents miss their target and it doesn’t appear that things have been improving over time. Can we really afford to stick with the status quo? It's time to rethink how we train and embrace methods that have a better chance of preparing officers for real-world scenarios. In the next post, I'll discuss the first of two key issues - Barrel Alignment.