Several weeks ago I ruffled some feathers with a Los Angeles Times op-ed on why I thought that the most popular handgun issued to law enforcement officers nationwide wasn’t the best gun for police. While Glock pistols tend to be very reliable, your average law enforcement officer—especially those recruited in urban areas—have little or no experience with firearms going into the academy, and only minimal, non-realistic training while at the academy. They end up putting their fingers on the trigger when under real-world stress, and having negligent discharges.

I talked about the article and the “training issue fallacy” on the GunBlog VarietyCast with Sean Sorrentino recently.

Here’s the direct download link (MP3). Give it a listen.

My segment starts about 20 minutes in, and is just under nine minutes long.

You can read the pistol-training.com article referenced in that segment here.

Despite the wailing and gnashing of teeth from some, I’ve continued to do more reading and research. I’ve become even more convinced that rank-and-file law enforcement officers should only be armed with handguns that require a very deliberate—not necessarily heavier, but longer—first-shot trigger pull.

Those officers who are serious shooters will find that they can actually fire DA/SA guns as fast or faster than striker-fired guns.

The 80% of officers who aren’t interested in spending time learning to master their firearms will see their number of negligent discharges decline.

Sadly, the truly incompetent bottom-performers will still have issues, regardless of the platform used.