Every recruit receives “Firearms 101" during their basic police training at the academy. A firearms instructor stands in front of the class, runs over the basics of firearms safety, and holds up a sidearm and tells them, “This is your weapon.” He proceeds to run through how the weapon operates, how you clean it and all the rest of the good stuff.
The recruit is handed some ammunition and at that moment they can barely contain themselves over the idea of shooting off countless rounds on the range. By the end of their firearms training the recruits are now experts in their issued sidearm.
Now that the recruits know how to use their weapons they are brought into a gym and taught how to retain their own weapons and disarm an attacker’s.
They go through the motions of the techniques and now become experts in weapon retention and disarming. Or so they think they are.
Law enforcement officers are considered skilled operators of their own weapons, however, most have no working knowledge of any other firearms. You might ask yourself: “Why is this important?” Say a police officer is faced with a situation where a suspect is holding the officer at gunpoint. The officer is not able to get to his own weapon, but the suspect is close enough to him that some type of weapon disarming technique can be attempted. What if the officer knew by looking at the suspect’s weapon that it could not be fired in its present condition?
This is where the concept of “Firearms 102" comes into play.
“Firearms 102" is best described as a crash course on the most common types of handguns and their basic operations. For example, the common model of a 1911 style .45 caliber pistol, often used in movies, is a single-action-only piston. Most officers would not know that these types of firearms cannot be fired when the hammer is not cocked back. What is the importance of this distinction? If the officer knows that the suspect would have to cock the hammer before firing, they would have those few precious seconds to attempt a disarming technique or draw and fire their own weapon.
Some would say that officers would not be able to remember the operations of all the other weapons they are shown. While that may the case, the distinctions between weapons can be simplified. The triggers on single action only weapons and double action weapons can be visually different. Single-action-only triggers appear to be a solid part of the handgun’s trigger guard. Double-action triggers come from the center of the trigger guard and curve downwards. Most law enforcement issued weapons are characteristic of the double action trigger.
Another example is in the operation of the Beretta brand handgun . During an incident an officer loses his sidearm and becomes unarmed. The suspect is armed with the Beretta 9mm. The officer attempts to disarm the suspect and gets into a life and death struggle to win control over the weapon. If the officer was briefly trained in the operation of this weapon they would know it was created for simplified field disassembly, and the slide can be separated from the frame with the grab of a button, even if the weapon is fully loaded with a round in the chamber. The weapon is now rendered useless to the suspect.
“Firearms 102” provides an officer with useful and specific knowledge of handguns used in the countless instances when they need to know what type of weapon they are looking at. An officer needs to know that the magazine release button on certain handguns is disguised as a screw in the grip, that when a revolver is in a single action state that the trigger pull is so light it could go off by accident, or that if a handgun does not have an exposed hammer that it is a double action weapon and so on.
Another function of “Firearms 102” is not only to familiarize officers with a weapons operation, but the practical uses of that weapon. Where and how can this weapon be concealed, can the ammunition caliber of this weapon defeat my bulletproof vest, can the ammunition caliber penetrate windshields or car doors with ease, how common is this weapon in our area, etc. This type of added training can help take weapon-disarming techniques and officer safety training to another level.
In every branch of the armed forces there are skilled professionals that spend all of their time examining the weapons of our enemies, to determine how to counteract or defeat them. Some would say that is only relevant for time of combat and policing is not combat. Law enforcement officers are engaged in combat every time they go out on the street. It is fundamental that they are given the knowledge of their enemy’s weapons to help them survive a critical incident.
The current structure of police training programs is devoted to training hours. With the average time in a police academy being 20 to 26 weeks long, the additional hours that can be dedicated to one given subject is limited. To obtain the proper certification the recruit must have this many training hours in this or this many training hours in that. The defensive tactics (firearms, pepper spray, baton, etc.) training programs of most academies are no longer than two weeks. The addition to a one-day lecture and demonstration by a proficient weapons specialist would not cause an undue burden on a training program in order to enhance the survival skills of law enforcement professionals.