Firearms Training: What makes a good police recruit? Let us discuss a few things that may make people think twice about becoming a police officer. OK lets start here…YOU DO NOT NEED TO KNOW HOW TO SHOOT TO GO TO THE ACADEMY! We get all ranges of firearms experience in the academy. You do not have to have ever fired a firearm before to go to the academy. That is the truth!
In fact, as a firearms instructor myself, and teaching other firearms instructors, and recruits for the last 20 years or so, I find overall those without any firearms experience are the ones that do the best over the course of firearms training. Why you may ask? Because they have no bad habits to break. Police Officer firearms training is very different than target shooting, or competition shooting, or shooting at bowling pins (although we may do that for fun). We teach the “judicial use of deadly force”.
Shooting in the academy starts out at the basics of how to shoot, to the more advanced survival shooting (one hand in case your other is injured, reloading with one hand because your shot in the other, shooting from behind cover, and more). Academy firearms training is a very good basic course in firearms. You have to understand that we use our firearms to stop some kind of threat to others or ourselves. Moreover, in order to stop that threat there are times we must use the firearm to shoot at another human.
