The authors’ own conclusion is that qualification, as American departments practice it, is not a valid measure of gunfighting ability. It tests an officer’s capacity to shoot a fixed number of rounds at a clearly defined target at a known distance, with set time limits, and clear an arbitrary threshold. None of that mirrors what happens in an armed confrontation, and none of the prevailing doctrine, technique, or threshold-setting was developed by looking at field-shooting data or evaluated against it after the fact. Their words: “the rote firing of time-honored courses and their derivatives produces well-practiced range marksmen, but it does not assess their ability to perform in gunfights.”

The implications they draw: officer safety improvements over the late twentieth century are more plausibly attributable to soft body armor and better field tactics than to better marksmanship

he data here and in other places suggest that firearms qualification does not relate to performance in the field. In science terms, firearms qualification is not a valid measure of field shooting performance.

This is not surprising given that this is a case of far transfer. Meaning that we are practicing something very different from the thing people are expected to do in the field. The research here is very clear and consistent. Far transfer essentially does not exist.

In the field, an officer must interact with people, use movement and spacing to keep a tactical advantage, attempt to de-escalate, decide that force is needed, implement that force in a way that is effective and legal, assess the outcome, alter course if needed, and then deal with the aftermath.

On the range, a trainee hears a timer beep or sees a target turn, and then fires a set number of shots at a piece of paper, which often only vaguely looks like a person, in a certain amount of time. Then they have to swivel their head because maybe the instructor is walking behind them holding up a random number of fingers.

You should be able to see that while a gun is used in both environments, the perceptual cues that control the use of that gun and the actions surrounding that use are very different. As I have discussed in depth here before, perception and action are so intimately linked that if you change the perceptual cues, you automatically change the action. This means if you are not practicing with cues that are close to the real thing, then the actions you practiced will not show up in the field.

Originally Posted By Bye_Felicia:
Qual scores should be the baseline "you are not a danger to the public and peers" if carrying as a LEO.

Making the leap to using scenario based, Force on Force training in departments on a regular basis should be the next step. Of course the issue is quantifying proficiency and justifying the budget to administrators.

there are no actions separate from perceptions

If we change the perceptual cues that drive an action, the action will change.

Let me give you a real world example. Lets look at typical firearms range training. Lets say we are teaching the trainee to draw and shoot in response to some sort of threat. We instruct the trainee to draw when we yell threat and fire two shots to the center mass of the target while remaining stationary . The traditional idea is that this activity, if repeated many times, will develop a motor program (e.g. muscle memory) that he trainee can then draw on in a real life situation.

Now lets treat this as a PAL. Perceptually what is happening? The trainee is standing still awaiting a verbal cue that will trigger him or her to draw and fire two shots at a completely stationary and non-reactive target. So the perception that triggers the initial action is a verbal cue and the trainee knows that cue is coming. So the PAL is something like verbal cue → activate two shot target engagement sequence → run post engagement sequence (breath, scan, ect.).

Now lets look at this situation on the street. The officer will be interacting with the suspect. The suspect will make a sudden move. He will produce a weapon. The officer must interpret that, decide that deadly force is required, draw, fire until the threat is stopped, and then do whatever is needed post shooting (I’m not going deep into this part for the sake of brevity).

So what does that look like as a PAL? Talk to suspect → See furtive move → Track suspect’s hand(s) → See if he has a weapon → Draw → Fire until suspect is stopped → Begin post engagement process. Of course all of this is happening at below the conscious level if you want to have any chance of doing it fast enough to save your life.

So we can see that the two PALs are very different. The state of the officer is different initially. The cues that trigger shooting are different, and the cues that trigger stopping the shooting are different. We are also assuming that neither the officer nor the suspect move during the encounter. Lots of video of real shootings shows that this is not a good assumption.

We don’t want officers to have generic stimulus → generic response reactions. We want officers who are sensitive to relevant information and adapt their actions to this information

We’re not preparing people for calm. We’re preparing them for chaos. That means reps without realism and drills without decisions just don’t cut it. If we want performance when it counts, we need to train in context, under pressure, and with purpose... It’s not a nice-to-have - it’s the bare minimum if we’re serious about readiness.

So, training in the more realistic (complex) environment improved performance in both the more complex environment and in the more simplistic (marksmanship) environment, but training in the simpler environment did not improve performance in the more complex environment. Similar findings have been found in the sports world as well. Playing in constrained game situations appears to improve players’ “fundamentals” in a way that is similar to drilling (It also provides them with better in-game decision making).

On top of that, there are lots of studies that show a substantial drop in performance when officers are put under stress in scenario-based training (see the footnote for some references)1. Many of these studies also show that practicing under stress can alleviate the decreases in performance, and don’t forget all the research into stress inoculation showing that exposure to stressors reduces the impact of these stressors.

So what does this all mean for how we train? Let me bring it all together now. We have evidence that suggests practicing in a more realistic environment produces improved performance in both the realistic environment and the simpler (range-like) environment, but not the other way around. On top of that, we have evidence that shows police officers do not use the fundamentals (e.g., draw stroke and shooting postures) that were extensively drilled in training when they are put in scenarios. We also have a lot of research showing that stress reduces performance, but practicing in a similar stressful environment can reduce the negative impacts of stress. Finally, I reviewed evidence in this post indicating that current firearms training does not appear to transfer effectively to actual shootings.

we should get people into context-rich training as soon as possible—where decision-making, movement, perception, and weapon handling all develop together. Fundamentals shouldn’t be something you memorize in isolation; they should be learned in action, shaped by the realities of stress, uncertainty, and dynamic environments. Doing otherwise risks turning drilled fundamentals into training scars that actually inhibit successful performance

Their ability to line up sights and press the trigger cleanly means nothing if they can’t process the situation and make the right decision under stress.

Participants will do as many scenarios as you can fit in a training session, but they will not rep out the same movement hundreds or thousands of times out of context in an attempt to produce automaticity. If we’re serious about improving police performance, we need to stop training officers for a range test and start training them for reality. The research is pointing a direction to go. Are we brave enough to follow the evidence?