Acquisition of Marksmanship and Gun Handling Skills through Basic Law Enforcement Training in an American Police Department

Abstract

In order to evaluate the marksmanship skills and gun handling skills that could be learned through the basic law enforcement firearms course, the skills of 216 inexperienced shooters (185 men and 31 women) were measured before and after the basic law enforcement firearms course. The marksmanship test consisted in shooting 14 rounds from a distance of 15 yards. The gun handling test consisted in loading the handgun, unloading the handgun, and clearing a type 3 malfunction. The marksmanship scores significantly improved after the firearms course (from 43.46 to 106.86 points) but the women's scores were significantly lower than the men's scores both before and after the course. Recruits significantly reduced the time needed to load the weapon (from 27.17 to 9.12 seconds), to unload the weapon (from 15.48 to 3.84 seconds), and to clear the malfunction (from 30.13 to 11.05 seconds) but women took more time than men to clear the malfunction. The content of the basic firearms course is presented, the validity of law enforcement firearms training is discussed, and recommendations are made in order to improve training.