When I lived in Salt Lake City, Utah, my local range bought and installed a live fire simulator.
An image was projected on a screen with "self healing" fabric. You shot at the bad guys with live ammo. Your hits were recorded (very accurately) by the system. The "self healing" fabric needed to be replaced every week or so.
I have no LEO training, just a naturally cool head and good aim. I did pretty well. The experience was very realistic - at the end of the course, my heart was pounding, and I could feel the adrenaline flowing.
I read the MMM article and it did not ring true. I think the people here had bad instructors who knew what was expected, and proceeded to give it to them. I have introduced about 18 people to guns over the years, almost all of whom had never fired guns in their life. I am a patient and thorough trainer, and by the end of the day, my trainee is almost always shooting very well. I cannot believe that these people received professional training and started shooting badly. I have been to Front Sight in Nevada, and in less than 4 hours, have learned to properly and effectively handle a [b]machine gun[/b], for crying out loud!
M15A2, I completely agree with you, using the logic of the article, we should disarm all the police immediately.
I am tempted to write to the article's author and offer to give him a free training session...