25 Aug 21
The nation’s largest police department, NYPD, has had yet another epiphany!
Since using G19s (for the most part) since the 1990s, all equipped with department-mandated “NY Triggers,” which boosted trigger pull-weight to a nominal twelve pounds, the department has now decided to reduce trigger pull-weight back to five/six pounds, which is the way most Glocks come from the factory!
The first class of recruits to have been trained with the new system will graduate next month.
The issue is, of course, balancing practical accuracy with the likelihood of UDs.
UDs are an embarrassing issue with police departments, usually a bigger issue than is poor accuracy!
Back in the revolver days, virtually every police UD resulted from the officer manually cocking his pistol. So long as officers fired exclusively via the “trigger-cocking mode,” UDs were rare with revolvers.
In fact, for a time NYPD issued “uncockable revolvers” in an effort to deal with the UD issue. There was no full-cock notch on the hammer, and the hammer itself did not have a spur, so it could not be manually cocked.
Accuracy was unaffected, but UDs did go down significantly!
Yet, accuracy was still far from acceptable!
Bullets fired by police officers at dangerous felons actually impact somewhere on the felon himself less than half the time. Other (errant) bullets go on to hit other things, sometimes other people!
Some PDs boast better accuracy, but police bullets that fail to impact where intended continue to greatly worry police chiefs, mayors, and especially the public!
NYPD insists, correctly, that poor accuracy:
1) Generates errant police bullets that endanger innocent people and property
2) Results in additional shots being fired by police, which are unnecessary when the first shot(s) fired hit the intended target, and have the intended effect.
3) Results in dangerous felon(s) not being stopped immediately, but continuing to endanger officers and innocent bystanders.
Going from a twelve-pound to a five-pound trigger will, without fail, boost accuracy significantly. This is already being clearly demonstrated by superior qualification scores.
The question is:
Will this change also lead to a significant increase in UDs?
We won’t know that for at least several years.
We do know that accuracy and “safety” are mutually antagonistic.
Ultra-light triggers do generate UDs, particularly in the hands of officers in departments with inadequate
training budgets.
Yet, ultra-heavy triggers are not compatible with any species of practical accuracy, with all the unhappy consequences noted above.
Is five pounds about right?
We’ll probably never know, and the argument will go on forever. In the interim, police chiefs need to make decisions!
Of course, there is the usual gaggle of smug ignoramuses who say that accuracy and precision are inherently bad, because they increase officer efficiency and “deadliness.”
No point in arguing with these clowns, but they do get their folderol printed!
“There will always be statements that are absolutely true, but that defy rigorous proof. That is, we suspect they’re true, but we can never be absolutely sure. In fact, the foregoing applies to everything we think we know!
Thus doubt is, and should be, endemic to all human reasoning. We can ‘know the truth,’ but we can never know that what we ‘know’ is the truth. We have to confront the fact that no matter how ‘sure’ we are of anything, we might be completely wrong!
Mathematics is no refuge! Our naive hope for certainty is dashed as we discover that even mathematics is neither complete, nor consistent.
There is a curtain beyond which we cannot see, and that cannot be lifted, neither by our philosophy, nor our science, nor our religion!”
Math axiom
/John
