Preface - this is not cop bashing.  

So...I'm out shooting my 700 LTR, printing .4MOA 5-shot groups average.  After I'd been there about an hour, this gentleman shows up with a couple of Pelican cases and starts setting up a couple spaces down from me.  First case opened up, and out comes a brand spanking new HK G36K.  Second case opened up, and lo, a new HS Precision with all the bells and whistles in .300 WSM.

Went back to my shooting.  After hearing several tooth-rattling blasts, I swing my spotting scope over to see how he's doing, figuring that anyone with the taste to buy a rifle like that can probably shoot pretty well. (I'm in prone, so he can't see me looking at his target- no need to be outwardly rude.)

Wow.  If I spent what he probably did (or his department) on that rifle I'd want my money back...or at least a trip to Thunder Ranch to learn how to use it.

3" groups at 100 yards.  Not just once, but several times.  He did get lucky and have one or two tighter ones..but we're still talking about 1.5".  

I would have chalked it up to nothing, and not had another thought about it, as it was no real concern of mine anyway... but I overheard him telling his buddy that he figured he was ready for duty with this rig.

Holy cowabunga.

Q[>:/]S

I can do that well with an AR15 with Aimpoint sights...man an accurized rifle only printing 3 MoA at 100 yards???

You're probably right.  Hell, I'd bet that for what they paid for those two weapons, they could have gotten an M4 and a PSS, and sent TWO people to Thunder Ranch.

Just 'cuz you own a Stradivarius don't make you a Jascha Heifetz.

No, I'm talking about 3" with the boltgun!  I don't even know what he was doing with the 36K.

Many police departments do NOT want their officers shooting better than 4 MOA at 100 yards.

This is to avoid the "why did not you shoot the gun out of the bad guy's hand" legal argument.

Several folks had to requalify due to this restriction.

Not meaning to be rude,  but I really need to see proof of that.

I can see the countering legal argument,  "Officer,  is it true your dept trains you to be inaccurate in use of deadly force?"

Edited to add:

I've been a police use of force and firearms instructor since 1988.  Been to all the schools,  shotgun, pistol, subgun, rifle,  FBI  instructor courses, etc.  I have never heard this,  even as a joke.

You'd think in all that time someone would have mentioned it.

Don't kid your self, the L word (liability) is a driving force in a whole bunch of decisions. First is how to avoid, the L word. Next is if we have the L word, how do we minimize it. Next can be if we have the L word, can we minimize or eliminate it by serving up a sacrifice, an officer or officers, as a sacrifice.

Nextly LAPD did "weapons disablement" tests. Yes they are talking about shooting a weapon in a BG's hand, grasp, to destroy that weapon. Apparently in testing they were fairly succesful. Of course that tactic can only be used in deadly force situations.

I'm sure though if it is used a few times, ANYTIME the police use deadly force and someone get injured or killed the question will be "why didn't you disable the BG's weapon"? The news media is good for ridiculous deadly force questions. "Why didn't you shoot to wound"? "Why would you shoot a guy with a knife"? And on and on.

I haven't heard of trying to be intentionally less accurate than possible. On of my co-workers is making .308 cloverleafs at 100 yds. regularly. No one has told him to open the groups up. Basically the target area is appx twice the size of your thumbnail. Accuracy does count.

Ah yes the movie shooting legal argument. The sorry thing is I've heard a lawyer ask that of police officer on the stand and the officer looked at the woman and said with all due respect, because this was not some candyass action movie.  I had to leave the court room I started laughing so hard so i don't know what else he said after that, but that was all i needed to hear.
I don't know how it is with the LEO's that hang out here, but in my city it seems like there are, and I'm sure it's like this everywhere, those officers who are dedicated to knowing what the hell they are doing, and who are into training and learning the tools and tricks of the trade, and there are those that are not. It's just like any profession. I've run into LEO's who after seeing them shoot I've thought damn thats some PPS, and other times I've meet LEOs who I think damn I don't want to be in his/her sights. It all depends on how much time and effort you put into training.

I would sure like to know what department he is from...

No.. Dont tell me.. It would just piss me off..

Don't know..he was not driving a [Elwood]Cop Car[/Elwood].  Probably not too many depts around here with G36Ks though.

I just report what I have experienced.

Several officers were invited back to pistol qualification after getting perfect scores.

They were told to shoot low and make their groups larger.

Since I only shot 98%, I was not invited back.

Most qualifications that I have heard of nowadays are scored Pass/Fail. You can pass with 100% or 80%. Just like you could fail with 69% or 1%.

So if quals are scored that way, I see no reason to "open up" things. It's just a Pass. .25 MOA target or 2 MOA target.

No one saves targets either.

Damnit Wave,  I was about to apply to your dept!

Just as a thought,  How does anyone know the guy with all the cool toys was a cop in the first place?

Just the guns alone is way above any cops salary that I know of.

Because the Pelican cases were marked SGT So-and-So, he was wearing a badge on his belt, and the weapons both had rack numbers painted on the stocks.  And, the G36K is a short-barreled MG.

I'm not REAL smart...but I did make an inference based on that...[:D]

Just curious, were you shooting suppressed??

I prolly would have walked over and asked him if his barrel was screwed on tight..[:D]

muWAHAHAHAHA....

I was shooting my suppressed 77/22 in addition to my LTR.  My Gemtech TPR-S for the .308 isn't in my hot little hands yet.  If NFA Branch will move out smartly maybe I can have it before Labor Day...lol..

Our elected Sheriff often answers calls in the middle of the night. Just as it should be...

Not too many private citizens have G36s, by the way.

Just a thought,  Yesterday I watched some guy with a shorty and all the attachments you could ever want shoot "minute of washtub" at the 50 yard line.  I don't think he even hit the 100.

By contrast, the cop shooting next to him with a Remington pump and iron sights kept an entire box of .22's in the 10 ring.

 

Did he look at your stuff? Question you? Is it a leo range? Did ya know him? I'm kinda surprised he didn't strike up a conversation if you were shooting suppressed, and he didn't know you..

Nope, not an LEO range...he looked over at me a couple of times, but never said anything.  Never saw him before.

No one has ever screwed with me at all on wanting to see my paperwork.

That's kinda the way it is in these parts too. Someone may start a conversation, but it's usually 'cause they wanna try them out!! [:D]

Yeah John, sure you did. Everyone on this board knows Cops can't shoot worth a damn. Hell, anyone on this board can out shoot any Cop any day. Just ask 'em. [sleep]

Alot of cops are untrained losers. I watched them practice here in Dallas over a  Mountain creek lake. Than ran a military type raid which has room for casualties. In the military, casualties are expected for the police they are not. Hell, my brother and I could whip the $hit out of DPD, and all we do is play "Navy Seals". All our exercise are live fire. Now maybe we are weird, who knows? Half of us "Navy Seal" actors here at AR15.com could whip the $hit out of typical LE. I know there are others. Most of them know how to look cool and stuff, but dont know what real gunfire is. I remember when I used to duck at the sound of gun fire, now it's analyze whats going on and then act.
GG

oof.

This isn't really where I intended this to go...

Wave...ya beat me to it.  LMAO!!

If he is his departments "sniper" then I wish he could shoot better than that. But the reality is keeping every round in a 3" group is more than good for LE sniping.

The average shot a LE sniper takes is 72 yards and the brain pan is larger than 3" at any angle.

my agency went to a "pass" or "fail" scoring system for qualification. Until that point I had fired a perfect score every time.

Risk management recommended the pass/fail system so we could avoid the "shoot the gun out of his hand" arguement in wrongfull death suits.

This is true...then I'm at least idly curious why they (whoever the agency was) saw fit to waste about $3,000 of my tax dollars on a .300WSM when they could have just as easily bought a Savage Tactical and $500 Loopy scope and been just as well off.

I outshoot cops all the time in IDPA and I'm just classified as a marksman.

The only Cop I know personally is always telling me that he's the ONLY one that ever practices with his sidearm. The others, he says, care nothing about being proficient with it until it's time to qualify, and then as long as they do qualify, they're happy.

Calling my friend a "Gun Buff" would be a serious understatement; how many people do you know that keep a pistol in their silverware drawer, refrigerator, (among other places too numerous to count), and have had a holster for their S&W 29 sewn onto the side of their recliner? Breaking into this guys' house would be a MONUMENTAL fuck-up.

Unfortunately, it wasn't me.  I'm not able to hold a rifle in a standing position just yet, don't have the arm strength.

Off of sandbags with a .22 you are in some serious competition however!    

A lot of truth here. I occasionally shoot with a couple of LEOs, but they are shooters(like us) that happen to make their living as a LEO.

Once/ year the cops have a get-together in PA, called the 'Police Olympics' and our club scheduled a match for any interested parties. As a shooter in the sponsering league, I was allowed to shoot. I 'bronzed'. I think my score was a VERY LOW 400 out of 500. (Piss poor)Most of the regular(read 'good') shooters were not there.
This is FUBAR, as I'm really not that good.

LEOs are trained basically with pistols and shotguns, in addition to that, they are faced with the liability issue as well as department budget issues. They're often only issued a couple of boxes of ammo/year for practice, generally Blazer.

Let's face it, any decent IPSC shooter pops off 20-50K rounds/ year. Most LEOs can't afford the money for ammo, especially if they have young kids to support(a divorced cop gets crucified)

Like many things, the average LEO is a victim of many things. Politics, the courts, department budgets, asshole pols, and many other things. Including piss poor training and leadership. We bitch about LEOs, but when you get down to it, there's a lot to be said for most of them overcoming these problems.

I think the average LEO would probably like to
shoot/learn better LEO skills, but doesn't have the opportunity.

Some time ago, I offered the training guy at the local PD the opportunity to use our local range and get some SERIOUS coaching from some damned good shooters. He gave me some pompous ass reply about 'Police needs' and so on and that they had a 100 yd range yada yada yada.

I told him that the XTC match was 2,3 and 600 yards and he paled. Then he acted like I was a Lee Harvey Oswald wannabe and stomped off really embarrassed. Seeing a 300 yd rapid target with a 100-10X score in the back of my pickup was the last straw.(I had been using it at 100 yds to check a group, sandbagged. He didn't ask, so I didn't tell. By this time I had lost respect for him.Let him think I did it offhand at 300!)

His mentality saeemed to be: 'The patrolmen won't respect me if I don't teach them myself', the cousin of NIH(not invented here)

IMHO, 95% of the LEOs out there would CHEERFULLY accept schooling from a non-LEO NRA qualified HM if it means learning a skill that helps insure they get to go home at the end of their shift.

I once opened a popped lot of eyes wide once when a CLEO and I crossed swords once. I told him I wanted to see a civvie review board, not to second guess working cops, but to make sure that good working LEOs weren't being thrown to the wolves by CYA supervisors.

Not bashing, but the truth as I see it.