New Challenges!

07 Feb 10

Changing Requirements:

American police pistol-qualification courses used to include stages of fire with targets as far distant as fifty meters. When I was first sworn-in, back in 1970, I remember it well! Subsequently, most such long-distance stages were gradually withdrawn, and now the majority of qualifications require reasonable accuracy at ranges no greater than ten meters.

However, with new challenges on the horizon, we are now obligated to reverse the trend and go back in the other direction!

Recent terrorist incidents in Beslan and Mumbai have compelled us all to soberly re-consider several important points:

(1) Mumbai/Beslan-style attacks are far easier for terrorists to organize and export than are more grandiose assaults involving nuclear, chemical, and biological weapons. But, they still generate relatively high body-counts among the innocent, embarrassingly reveal the impotence of western governments, and yield wide-spread publicity, along with paralyzing fear.

(2) More such well-organized attacks, involving squad-sized (or even larger) amalgamations of rifle-armed terrorists, on schools, shopping areas, hotels, and other densely-populated locations in the USA and other Western Countries, after their demonstrated success at Mumbai and Beslan, are probably inevitable! We've seen them on a small scale already.

(3) First-responders, legally-armed citizens and uniformed patrol officers, are likely to be armed only with pistols, at least in the short-term.

So, the question is: How much capability is it reasonable to expect from pistol-armed officers? Can my pistol-armed, patrol officers be depended upon to neutralize rifle-armed terrorists at ranges between twenty and fifty meters?

My colleague and professional shooter, Ron Avery, points out the any pistol with a sight-radius significantly less than four inches (10.2cm), in the hands of all but extremely talented shooters, will be limited in effectiveness to twenty meters. Conversely, nearly everyone can be trained to hit human-sized targets at fifty meters, when they are supplied with a pistol with a sight-radius of four inches or more.

Admittedly, in order to make these difficult shots with our pistols, we will have to persuade the target to hold still for several seconds, but it can still be done, and our officers, and non-police students, need to know it can be done, and be confident that they can do it!

"Oh, how I wish I had a rifle," will be a plaintiff and hollow cry when the attack begins! We are all going to have to respond without delay, and it will be on a "come-as-you-are" basis. We know we'll all have pistols! We are a good deal less sure of what other weapons we will have immediately at hand. Our pistols may indeed be the only weapons we get to use, and we must have supreme confidence in them, and ourselves!

With the currently-exploding market in "concealed-carry" pistols, manufacturers are focused on producing small guns. Many such pistols, though otherwise perfectly functional, have short slides and, thus, short sight-radiuses. While suitable as back-up pistols, these short guns, with their limited range, need to be re-evaluated with the foregoing in mind.

As a main, carry pistol, a four-inch (or longer) sight radius is now a critical feature, if we are going to have the range capability that is likely to be acutely necessary for first-responders. Our sincere affection for small pistols must thus be tempered with the necessity of honestly confronting these new challenges.

As an ancillary comment, every police beat-car needs to be equipped, as soon as possible, with a high-capacity military rifle (and a bandoleer of spare magazines) in the cab-portion of the vehicle, so that it is instantly available to patrol officers. Rifles locked in precinct stations, or even in trunks of patrol vehicles, have scant chance of ever being involved in a gunfight.

Look what happened to FBI Special Agents in FL in 1986 and to the LAPD in North Hollywood in 1997. In both cases, heavy weapons, locked securely in trunks of vehicles, remained there, safe and sound, for the duration!

/John