Instead of 36-50 round qualification courses where one just stands there and absorbs recoil, maybe instead each officer could be put in a shoot house with realistic targets at realistic distances and see what happens...
we will give an example of a practice frequently carried out with good results. It is designed not only as a test of skill with the pistol under difficult conditions, but also as a test of bodily fitness and agility, qualities which to the policeman at any rate are every bit as necessary in the circumstances which are so often encountered in shooting affrays.
In this practice, which we have called "The Pursuit" the shooter is started off at the run, outside the range, on an obstacle course consisting of jumping a ditch, running across a plank over water, crawling through a suspended barrel, climbing a rope, a ladder, and over a wall, finishing up with a 100 yards dash ending at 4 yards from the targets.
Without warning or waiting, two surprise targets are pulled, one after tho other, and at each he fires a “burst" of three shots. The targets are exposed for no longer than it takes to fire three shots at the highest possible speed.
..and the "fun house"...
All they see from the outside is a wall with a door through which, one by one, they will have to enter the lodging house. No one knows what he will encounter inside, and the only instructions given are that innocent civilians are not to be "killed", such actions likely to impeded promotion.
The first man to shoot pushes in the door, closely followed by the range officer, and proceeds with caution or with reckless abandon, according to his nature, along a dark, narrow, twisting passage, kicks open a door at one point, descends a few steps, treads on floor boards which give way under him,climbs some more steps and os and finds himself in a dimly lit room occupied by apparently harmless people (dummies) who vary from mere lodgers to dope fiends or stool-pigeons.
He has to take in the situation in a flash, for his appearance is the signal for the fun to commence. A shot is fired at him a (blank cartridge in the control room), and the criminals commence their “get-away" ("criminals" are life-sized targets that bob up from nowhere and disappear quickly, heads and shoulders that peer at him round a corner, men running swiftly across the room, possibly at an oblique angle etc, all masked at point in their careers by the “innocent bystanders", who must not be shot)...
"...if the gentlemen of Virginia shall send us a dozen of their sons, we would take great care in their education, instruct them in all we know, and make men of them." Canasatego 1744
