Cooper and Glocks

My Buddy the Gun Enthusiast sent me this quote of Jeff Cooper's

"The police establishment is now properly devoted to the Glock, and this seems to be a good choice. The Glock is a difficult piece to shoot well, and its safety problem has been solved by issuing it with a trigger that only a gorilla would love, but it has been generally admitted that the police today cannot be trained to shoot well - not so much because of time and ammunition expenditures, but because of motivation. A man will do well only at things he enjoys doing, and today's police departments are reluctant to hire a recruit who enjoys shooting. Thus the Glock's "shootability" is irrelevant. The piece is relatively cheap, it is usually reliable, and the company's service policies are outstanding."
- Jeff Cooper, Cooper Commentaries, Volume V, Number 11.

I'd read it before, but it doesn't hurt to re-read it. And comment on it, when you need blog fodder...


True, it seems. Glock made a special trigger pull model JUST for the NY police, making it a stronger draw to be more like a Double Action revolver that the police were more used to firing before switching over. A stronger trigger pull means less 'accidental' 'it just went OFF!' scenarios. And it hurts accuracy, too. Unintentional police discharges are bad for all concern, the cop, the civilian with the extra hole, bad-guy or not, the PR people down at the station, AND the confidence of the public toward the police when they learn about it.


And police are notorious for low standards or gun training. Oh sure, there are some cops that keep up with practice on their own in realistic scenarios, and recognize how important it is, both when they need to shoot and only hit what they are shooting, and when they need NOT to shoot. Too many officers only shoot at yearly range re-qualification after they leave the police academy, and then only at paper sillohuettes. The police chief of San Francisco had a minor scandal recently for not even doing THAT for a long long time.

And besides, it's not a Cop's primary job to SHOOT people. If it was, and that was all the cop did, and he could compress all the shootings he'd have to do in a career into the first week and then retire, most Cops would punch in at the time clock and punch out a second later. Few 'careers' would last a week even if they stretched it out. And that is probably a good thing. I am less impressed with the Cops that are trained as soldiers and get to act as soldiers in their police work. The problem being, when there is no 'soldier work' to do, there is too much temptation to MAKE soldier-work happen to stay in practice. Then we get shameful circumstances like the Elian Gonzales incident and unarmed grandmas experiencing what a flash-bang grenade feels like in her living room.

And few want that.