The anti-cop anarchist left is losing their minds over the National Rifle Association’s (NRA) National Police Shooting Competition (NPSC), which is being held in Albuquerque, New Mexico. The contest has been held annually for more than half a century, and features civilian and military law enforcement shooters from the United States and other countries.

Let’s hear what the loons have to say.

In previous years the National Rifle Association’s (NRA) National Police Shooting Competition (NPSC) included events with names like “Head Shots Only,” in which the event’s course description contends that police officers need to practice shooting directly at people’s heads.

Courses like this are only one of the many reasons why, in Albuquerque, New Mexico, activists and family members of police shootings victims call the annual NPSC the “killer cop contest.”

The competition is set to begin September 15 at Shooting Range Park in Albuquerque, New Mexico. The contest brings together more than 500 officers from various law enforcement agencies across the country to judge who’s best at using lethal weapons. A similar regional shooting competition has already begun.

The NRA’s law enforcement division has organized the NPSC annually since its first competition in Iowa in 1962, actively reaching out to officers and inviting them to the contest. This year law enforcement officers from as far away as Germany and Venezuela are expected to attend, according to NRA spokesman Lars Dalseide.

Long-time organizers against police violence in Albuquerque who have attended previous tournaments describe the competition as a celebration of the heavily militarized policing tactics and practices that have been at the center of a national firestorm in the aftermath of the militant police response to protests in Ferguson, Missouri, over the killing of unarmed black teenager Michael Brown.

“These are events that celebrate the efficiency in coordinated use of lethal force, using high-powered military weaponry,” said David Correia, a University of New Mexico American studies professor and local organizer. “This is not some sort of municipal police conference … if it were just about municipal policing it wouldn’t just be about the use of high-powered weaponry; there would also be events about community policing or ways for officers to show their proficiency in community engagement.”

A local Fox News station also talked with the protesters.

On Saturday, the first day of the National Rifle Association-sponsored National Police Shooting Championships in Albuquerque, demonstrators staged a mock funeral procession on the road to the shooting range, forcing competitors to the shoulder. On Sunday, protesters shot foam bullets and water guns at targets in a city park. The protesters note that since 2009, 32 people have been fatally shot by Albuquerque police. The most recent case that sparked outrage was in May when James Boyd, an unarmed homeless man, was shot in the back at his makeshift campground in the foothills of the nearby Sandia Mountains.

In April, the Department of Justice released a scathing report citing APD’s use of excessive force that violated the constitutional rights of the victims.

“This is the year the [DOJ] report confirmed our department has used excessive and lethal force unconstitutionally and this is not the time for police to be shooting targets in a competition that looks like people,” said Sayrah Namaste, spokeswoman for the Albuquerque Coalition to Stop Police Brutality. “They should be stressing de-escalation skills, not shooting skills.”

Let me see if I understand their “logic.”

The protesters don’t like law enforcement officers who fire prematurely or unnecessarily at a suspect.

The protesters don’t like law enforcement officers who fire too many shots at a suspect.

The protesters don’t like law enforcement officers who shoot too accurately at a suspect.

The protesters don’t like law enforcement officers who practice head shots.

As a general rule, people (not just police officers) fire their weapons prematurely, unnecessarily, or too many times when they are scared and they lack confidence in their ability to engage a threat with a given weapon system.

In any given self-defense scenario, you are far more likely to see a noncombatant shot by someone with little to no training than you are someone who has lots of training and regular practice. The reason for this is very simple: people who don’t train don’t know their capabilities or limitations, and know that their ability to competently use the weapon in their hands is very low. They are more likely to get on the trigger faster, fire more shots, and miss more times than a trained shooter in almost every conceivable scenario.

The solution to this problem is, of course,  more training… not less.

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This includes both basic square range/static target shooting from a fixed position to build basic technique, and then a progression to differing levels of stress and complexity to simulate real-life scenarios. A possible next step up from shooting square range-static targets is shooting a course of fire under time constraints. A step up from that is adding movement, both in the form of shooters having to move from cover to cover, and the introduction of momentary and/or moving targets. It is through these kinds of training that a shooter both develops their skills and learns where their personal boundaries are.

The irony is that these protesters are attempting to prevent officers from developing the advanced skills they need to not shoot until they absolutely must. These protesters would deny officers the chance to expand their competence, which should have the end result of both less shots fired, and more accurate shots fired.

They don’t seem to grasp the very basic fact that more training, not less, creates the opportunity to develop excellence.

The absurdity of their argument is obvious.

Those who complain that officers fire too accurately, and practice head shots, however, are simply simpering idiots.

All responsible shooters want to avoid firing shots at all if they can avoid being put in a situation where they must fire. If they are forced to fire on a lethal threat, they train to stop the threat as quickly and as efficiently as possible. The best way to stop a fight is with aimed fire at the center of exposed mass. When an aggressor is in the open, this means shots to the torso on what is typically a moving target… no easy feat.

In the real world, bullets don’t make big splashes of blood like they do in Hollywood movies, and they don’t throw people down. People can be shot multiple times and show no immediate reaction at all to even perfect shots.

This called a failure to stop.

There can be any number of reasons that a person fails to stop when hit with pistol bullets, starting with the fact that pistol bullets are inherently weak. They may be flushed with adrenaline due to their “fight or flight”response system kicking in, which has happened in a seemingly limitless number of cases where someone else notices injuries before the injured person does. They may be inhibited by alcohol or drugs. They may be wearing body armor. They may know that they have been hit, and simply do not desire to stop fighting. Even shots that are ultimately fatal rarely stop someone immediately, as evidenced by the infamous FBI Miami shootout, in which the bank robber killed two FBI agents and wounded four more after what proved to be a fatal shot through his lung that stopped just an inch from his heart.

The proper response to such a failure to stop on a torso hit is to move to head shots, and if that proves to be too difficult a target or isn’t working, to move to the pelvis. Experienced professionals (and those of us amateurs who have been trained by those professionals) will attempt to stop an aggressor with a pair of shots to the center of exposed mass, and if that fails, we will follow standard training doctrine and attempt to “break down” the aggressor by alternating followup shots to the head, upper and lower torso, and pelvis until the threat ceases to be a threat.

These untrained, cop-hating anarchists—let’s call them what they really are—can’t see through their ignorance and hatred of police to understand that this sort of Practical Police Combat (PPC) shooting competition helps train officers so that they develop skills they can take back home to their departments and more effectively train other officers.

This training results in more competent officers with a better understanding of their capabilities and competencies, who will shoot less often, more accurately, and will pose less of a threat to bystanders.

It’s too bad that these extremists, many of whom are relatives of criminals killed in justifiable police shootings after posing a lethal threat, refuse to see that reality.