Revolver or semi-auto pistol for police?

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#1

We have a hot debate here (which has internal police political dimensions which go beyond just the gun debate but which are irrelevant to this thread) about whether revolvers or semi-automatic pistols are best for our police work, which very, very rarely involves police shooting at anyone and, much, much more rarely actually hitting anyone. Other than other police in the old days, but at least in the last couple of decades they’ve managed to alter the ratio in favour of shooting more criminals than police.

My view, having as a child thought that the solution to not being able to shoot running rabbits with my crappy old Winchester single shot with the bent front sight corrected by pliers was to get a semi-automatic rifle (which when I was lent an accurate semi-auto merely increased the cost of ammo without any perceptible increase in the bunny tally while the problem was corrected when I learnt to shoot accurately with the single shot), is that in the very modest exchange of fire which occurs in our police work (usually there is no exchange of fire as our police mostly shoot people who are armed with something other than firearms), if you can’t hit the target with the first six shots then you’re probably not likely to do much better with more shots fired a lot more quickly from a bigger semi-auto magazine.

I’m also inclined to prefer our police chief’s view on the reliability of revolvers, which rarely jam at critical moments (unlike a semi-auto pistol which rather embarrassingly jammed on TV last week when being fired by a reporter to demonstrate the greater advantages of semi-autos).

As for the police union moaning about the .38 revolver being useless, they’re ignoring the fact that in the case they’re carrying on about it was a rookie cop on his first night shift who killed the criminal with .38 revolver while the criminal was blasting away with a semi-automatic .22.

Anyway, what’s your view on the relative merits of a revolver versus a semi-automatic pistol in the hands of most cops who might qualify by firing maybe a hundred rounds in a good year at a stationary target which isn’t firing back?

Police chief questions Glock firepower

May 07, 2008

VICTORIA police Chief Commissioner Christine Nixon has questioned whether her force really needs semi-automatic Glock pistols that fire 18 shots.

Victoria’s Police Association union assistant secretary Bruce McKenzie said yesterday that the State Government had failed to keep its pre-election promise by not providing funds in its budget for the police to have Taser stun guns and semi-automatic weapons.

Ms Nixon said today that funds were available but she was “not keen” on semi-automatics.

“No I am not (keen on them) and neither are some of our members,” she said on Fairfax radio.

"What we’ve been looking at is what’s the evidence, why would you need a gun that fires 18 shots, do we have any evidence that we really do need that kind of fire-power?

“We’ve had an external working party look at the possibility of using semi-automatics, or what other kind of firearm might be suitable for us … in the not too distant future we’ll release that decision of that process.”

Victorian police are issued with .38 calibre Smith and Wesson revolvers which require reloading after six shots. The police union wants them to be replaced with the semi-automatic Glocks.

Ms Nixon said police had been testing stun guns with Special Operations Group (SOG) and critical incident response teams, and a decision would be also made on their use soon.
http://www.news.com.au/heraldsun/story/0,21985,23659015-5005961,00.html

Police demand semi-automatic pistols after city gunfight
May 15, 2008

THE police union will seek legal advice about whether force command has been negligent by failing to issue them with semi-automatic weapons.

The move follows the wounding of an officer Tuesday night’s deadly shootout, and union calls for Victorian police to be armed with semi-automatic pistols.

“We will seek legal advice on this issue as to whether the Victorian police force, on this occasion, were negligent in the circumstances where they’ve been provided by government with a significant amount of funds to re-arm the police force,” Police Association secretary Paul Mullett told ABC Radio.

Senior Constable David McHenry, 27, of Prahran police, was shot by violent criminal Samir Ograzden during a foot pursuit in South Melbourne when police seized drugs and a gun from a car Ograzden was in.

Snr Sgt Mullett yesterday said he believed Snr Const McHenry was re-loading his gun when he was shot in the leg but police media today said the injured officer denied that.

“Snr Const McHenry was interviewed last night and we can confirm that he had already reloaded his firearm and was seeking cover at the time he was shot,” Snr Const Fitzgerald said in a statement.

Snr Sgt Mullett said Snr Const McHenry may be released from hospital today, after undergoing surgery yesterday.

The union is demanding police be issued with semi-automatic guns, arguing Victoria is the only Australian state or territory without them and funds were made available by the government for them following the 2006 state election.

Police Commissioner Christine Nixon said she was not concerned about any threats from the Police Association to sue police command.

“I’m not concerned at all,” Ms Nixon told Fairfax Radio Network today.

"The Police Association, I think, are using this situation inappropriately.

"We need to just understand the facts of what happened in this situation and then see the way we go forward.

“They’ve got a right to sue if they wish.”

Ms Nixon said she had been advised today by homicide investigators that Snr Const McHenry had already reloaded his firearm and was seeking cover at the time he was shot.

Ms Nixon said Victoria Police was allocated $10 million in the 2007-08 state budget to consider firearms the force would use in future.

An external advisory committee had recommended the force move to semi-automatic weapons, she said.

It currently issues .38 calibre Smith and Wesson revolvers.

"What we need to do now is think about how you go about it, what kind, what training, who does need it.

“We’re still looking at the evidence given to us by this external committee and we’re yet to make a final decision.”

Ms Nixon said a decision would be made shortly.

Victoria Police this morning released a statement saying: “Senior Constable McHenry was interviewed last night and we can confirm that he had already reloaded his firearm and was seeking cover at the time he was shot.”

Police Association secretary Paul Mullett said Sen-Constable McHenry’s superiors had confirmed the officer was shot either while reloading his empty revolver or shortly after.

“We’ve had these facts reconfirmed this morning from Sen-Constable McHenry’s superiors who have called us and said that he was either reloading or had just reloaded when he was shot.”

“On either version of events it is clear that semi-automatic weaponry needs to be provided to our members.”

Sen-Sgt Mullett said in either scenario, it was clear the force needed to upgrade its weaponry.

“The issue here is the fact that he had to reload is an issue, he wouldn’t have had to do this with a more efficient semi-automatic weapon,” he said.
http://www.news.com.au/heraldsun/story/0,21985,23700500-2862,00.html

#2

Sounds like a case for working on drills & skills - get in cover first then reload, rather than the other way around.
But yeah, it does sounds suspiciously like they just want some shiny new toys!

#3

Is better to have 18 shots and no need to use than need to use 18 shots and dont have it.

#4

Once Commissioner Nixon has to face some gang punks holding mac-10’s, or AK’s with her 6 shots, she will take great comfort in her logic, and i’m certain that the punks in question will be sporting and wait for her to reload…
Sadder still is that she doesnt have to work under those restrictions, and will get someone else killed by forcing them to do their work under equipped.

#5

Fortunately we don’t have that level of violence here, nor are semi-automatic let alone fully automatic weapons usually available outside some very limited criminal groups who don’t have any history of using them against police.

It’s very rare for our police to shoot at anybody who is armed with a firearm, or to be shot at.

I can’t think of any occasion where our (i.e. in my state) police have faced anything except sporting firearms or pistols, with the exception of one mass murdering ex-army gun nut who had an M14 plus a 22 rifle and 12 gauge pump action.

I’m old enough to remember when our street police were armed only with a cosh in the sixties and seventies. Firearms were issued to street police only for very occasional special jobs. Oddly enough, that was also a time when anyone over 18 could go into Kmart or a gun shop and buy a semi-auto .22 or shotgun without any licensing requirement. Now we have a strong licensing process, semi-autos are prohibited for civilians, and street police always carry firearms. Something went wrong somewhere along the line.

And a large part of it is probably due to our police getting trigger happy a couple of decades ago and upping the ante with crims by pretty much executing some crims, who then executed a couple of cops, http://www.theage.com.au/news/editorial/revisiting-the-walsh-street-murders/2005/09/30/1127804659844.html . Those murders of police, along with a crim’s car bomb blowing up state police headquarters and killing a young cop http://www.theage.com.au/articles/2006/03/24/1143083990293.html a couple of years earlier, led to our police adopting a more aggressive attitude and getting a well deserved reputation for shooting too readily.

After much public and governmental concern in 1994, when of the 12 people shot dead by police in Australia 9 were killed by Victorian police, police re-training under Project Beacon saw the number of shootings by police drop significantly. They even stopped shooting unarmed people!

As a proportion of the total number of victims before and after Project Beacon, there was a 25 per cent decrease in the number of victims carrying firearms coupled with a 44 per cent increase in those carrying edged weapons (knives, swords etc). This interesting shift in the types of weapons being carried by the victims is likely to be a reflection of reduced access to firearms and an increase in the prevalence of edged weapons within the community.

Since the implementation of Project Beacon in the mid 1990s, none of the victims of fatal shootings by police were unarmed, whereas previously five of the 32 victims had been so. None of the victims carrying firearms have shot at police since the implementation of Project Beacon.
http://www.opi.vic.gov.au/resources/documents/Review_of_fatal_shootings_by_Victoria_Police.pdf at p.2

On the lighter side, police in our adjoining state of New South Wales have long been regarded as corrupt, having long ago earnt the title of the best police force money can buy. During a joint operation between them and Victorian police around the time our police reached their shooting peak, a New South Wales senior officer addressed the joint task force. He started by saying 'We’ll promise not to steal anything, if you blokes promise not to shoot anyone." :smiley:

#6

True, but for the reasons outlined in my last post a lot of people here are wary of letting our cops get too heavily armed in case they get trigger happy again.

Some of them are lousy shots with what they already have, even when the target has his back to them and they’re in the same room.

It was there that Abdallah allegedly pulled an imitation .357 Magnum revolver on detectives Cliff Lockwood (left) and Dermot Avon from City West CIB.

Lockwood fired six shots from his gun and then let off another one from his partners weapon.

Abdallah was critically wounded and died after 40 days in a coma from complications arising from a bullet wound to the back of the head.

When Gary Abdallah was shot and eventually died there was a large amount of media attention paid to the circumstances of his shooting.

The Abdallah family and their solicitor were vocal in questioning the police version of events and demanding an independent public inquiry.

Other influential groups and individuals also publicly questioned the shootings.

The fact that Gary Abdallah was shot at seven times and had a bullet wound in the back of his head were not matters that could be readily explained.
http://www.melbournecrime.bizhosting.com/gary.abdallah.htm

On the other hand, some of them are quite good shots. Like the idiot copper maybe twenty years ago who pointed his unloaded police issue pistol at a female officer in the same room, pulled the trigger, and put a fatal round into her head.

#7

One thing are the legal issues that the police could have by the use of “excessive force” and other is the survival in a street gunfight.

18 shots seems a lot for a low rate crime city but the fact is there is no more stressing situation than a gunfight inside a city, in the streets, those are most of the times in the night, at short distance and so sudden that usually the officer rarely used his gunsights, the institive aiming is the note, also the he need to look “behind” the target in order to avoid shooting bistanders, all that create as result a very low percentage of hit with 10, 15 or 18 bullets…can you imagine it with a sixgun?

I know several cases of gunfights in my country and others in wich if the police would use a revolver that man did not returned alive to home.

#8

Gun crime here, outside of specialist areas and Gangs is very rare too. Our street police dont carry weapons. Specialist Police should be armed with whatever they need to defeat the current perceived highest threat, all police do not need a fire arm though.

#9

Though you do have fast cars loaded with cops armed with the latest in auto-weaponry in case they do…

#10

They’ve had them for years in Pommieland.

Not always well thought out, though.

The bad boy fast response armed police squads had some very fast Rover SD1’s in the 1970’s and later the Rover Vitesse in the mid 1980’s http://www.roversd1.co.uk/police_cars.htm

Only problem was that the sloping roof meant that any copper over about five foot four had to crouch in the back seat and arrived at the incident with his head locked in the face down position. I’ve been in the back seat of those cars (quite innocently - I was thinking about buying one and didn’t because I couldn’t fit any adults in the back) and like so many great British cars they were destroyed by an easily avoidable flaw.

#11

Lucky you.

I wish we could go back to that.

I also wish we could go back to cops giving potential public nuisances (like me and most of my mates) a judicious clip on the ear or a kick up the arse when they’re about fourteen and getting them back into line. Instead of the current anarchy with certain groups who take on the cops when the cops are just trying to get them back into line when the nuisances are in their late teens or early twenties and running wild with no respect for the cops or the rest of society and no fear of the cops, because if a cop had given them a well deserved kick up the arse a decade earlier the cop would have been in trouble so it never happened.

#12

If poor training is a major issue, then the revolver wins hands down because it is far safer, and will help prevent easily preventable accidents with “unloaded” firearms (you can even see from the user’s perspective whether it is loaded or not while it is closed) .

Given how difficult it is to shoot a handgun well, if you give them an auto then that’s 15 or more rounds pinging around the countryside instead of six.

I believe that most police shootouts are resolved within two rounds anyway.

Reminds me of a great Jeff Cooper story:

A black cop in the US armed with a 38 revolver had just dropped a perpetrator armed with a 45 automatic with a single round. Jeff Cooper, a man renowned for his opinion that all handgun calibres should start with the number four, asked him if he had felt under-gunned. the reply was, “shooting straight with my 38 beats getting jive from a 45”!

#13

Thanks for that.

I was hoping for your opinion as an expert.

As your expert opinion agrees with my ignorant one, it must be right. :smiley:

I think the problem isn’t so much ‘poor training’ as the training they get here is quite good for what it’s directed to, but a failure to set proficiency standards high enough.

My very limited and untrained experience with Australian and American military service pistols is that past about twenty yards a human target has a very good chance of survival if I’m pulling the trigger. If moving, the target’s survival is just about guaranteed. At five to ten yards a stationary target has a very poor chance of survival even with me on the trigger, but it decreases in proportion with the rapidity and erratic nature of their movement. Give me a rifle in the same circumstances at those or greater ranges and they’re almost certainly going to get hit. Well, at least if they’re stupid enough to be stationary. :smiley:

Police official standards of maintaining proficiency with firearms tend to focus on range shoots of a fairly small number of rounds once or maybe twice a year. Realistically, I doubt that anyone without an awful lot of prior experience (which our police almost never have unless they’re members of a pistol club) is going to be accurate without firing perhaps fifty rounds at least every couple of months.

Pistols seem to be intuitive ‘point and shoot’ weapons but in my limited experience, including as a kid emptying a couple of mags of a US Army .45 Colt at an embarrassingly close tree stump without even frightening it, they aren’t and they need solid training and practice to achieve any sort of proficiency in a combat situation.

#14

P.S.

My last post ignores the difference between learning to be accurate on a fixed range and combat shooting.

#15

What is the point of having unarmed policemen when the well armed crims of the crime syndicates are often packing the latest technology?

Arguments in Australia for and against gun-control ignore the fact that police have to be prepared for the very worst at all times. My own personal feeling is that we should give them a low velocity weapon, something that only puts a hole in the crim, rather than taking his arm off. Does such a weapon exist, though, outside the realms of the slug-gun?

As for semi-auto vs revolver, why not issue both? Train the cops to use one or the other, and spread the assets around to cover all bases. Most of the time, they are going to go for their guns only when they feel that a taser is not the weapon of choice, and this will be in circumstances where the crim is likewise armed and dangerous.

Accuracy should the the over-riding concern here. Which is more accurate a weapon? Revolver or semi-auto? Both really need to be discharged from point-blank to have any chance of scoring a hit.

#16

They don’t use it against the police. Or anyone else.

Notwithstanding the missing RPG’s etc that the army bloke was just sentenced on for selling to gangs etc.

Yep.

A .38.

A .357 magnum goes right through them and damages car engines behind them.

My view is that if something requires a firearm to be fired, it should be fired to kill. If it’s not desirable to kill the target, then it shouldn’t be fired at. Nor should a firearm be drawn if its owner isn’t prepared to use it.

Maybe where you are in Oz, but down here we’ve carefully avoided issuing all cops with tasers as it will probably just be about as useful as capsicum spray. Since capsicum spray was introduced I’ve seen a lot of police statements about events which include statement like "I then deployed OCS’ which later are followed up by "while I was assisting Constable Smith to wash the OCS out of his / her eyes’. Not infrequently, the offender wasn’t subdued by OCS but probably by pissing himself / herself laughing at the cops blinding each other. :smiley:

Either should be equally accurate on the first shot aimed at the centre of the body mass within range. After that, if the trigger is just pulled wildly it doesn’t matter.

#17

A good example of shooting under stress, 15 shots not hits:

http://es.youtube.com/watch?v=fPMzGMsXDVA

#18

Well, I know I’ve seen countless dash cam videos of Cops and Robbers duking it out from 10 feet away with their 22s and Glocks and still managing to miss somebody.

#19

The Glock series is a very good choice for the Police,or Sig Sauer Pro.(caliber 357 Sig)(more than better big and heavy Beretta’s)


In revolver Taurus Magnum the best choice is TRACKER MODEL 425 cal. 44 (titanium)with a quick loader of course :wink:

But when must to vote: pistol Sig Sauer Pro

#20

If those they fight upgrade, so to must the police,but remember the handgun is only as good as its operator, practice is required.
Jamming is usually caused by bad magazines, low velocity ammo (the recoil pulse), or improper lock of the wrist and or elbow.