Sounds like the average run of the mill dept. Good for you and your guys, great dedication. Some places don't have the ability/money. A few of the guys I know can not shoot legally unless they drive 24 miles one way through the backwoods and pay $75 per year for that.
Awww, the poor guys. ...
I drive further than that to get to the grocery store. And I'm willing to bet that every single one of them earns more than the salary my husband and I are successfully raising five children with. Yet I've managed to learn to shoot pretty well, budget or no budget, because it is my
responsibility as someone who carries a gun in public that I know how to use it.
Look, TheeBadOne, can't you just admit that this was piss-poor shooting on the part of the officers involved? Just
once, could you admit that a fellow officer
may not have been doing the Very Best Thing? Might even have been (
*gasp!*)
wrong??
It's even more silly to claim that officers are
never wrong than it is to claim they are
always wrong. And it's as annoying as anything I can think of, too.
Tamara has her finger on the pulse of the gun scene in that town -- if those officers haven't been spotted in the gun stores buying ammunition, nor encountered at the range burning ammunition, just
maybe their piss-poor performance
might be due to lack of practice. And the lack of practice would be, ultimately, a lack of personal responsibility.
You want to claim that if they can't hit the broad side of a barn, it is the fault of the department. But these people who have chosen to carry a gun in public have a
personal responsibility to know how to use that weapon, in addition to whatever professional responsibility they might have.
If the department isn't meeting the professional needs of these guys, each and every one of them
still has a personal responsibility to know how to shoot well. And it's a crying shame that anyone, LEO or not, would try to excuse them from exercising it.
pax
We are responsible for actions performed in response to circumstances for which we are not responsible. -- Allan Massie