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Queensland officers shoot for about an hour a year and to re­qualify as being competent must hit 12 of 15 rounds in a shaded area of a target. Picture: Mark Calleja Queensland officers shoot for about an hour a year and to re­qualify as being competent must hit 12 of 15 rounds in a shaded area of a target. Picture: Mark Calleja QLD News

Queensland police officers less experienced at firing weapons than civilians with gun licences Thomas Chamberlin, The Sunday Mail (Qld) September 11, 2016 12:00am Subscriber only

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QUEENSLAND police receive less training to use a gun than security guards and social shooters.

Officers are required to shoot just 60 bullets at the range once a year despite private gun licence holders being forced to practise six times annually to keep a licence.

Gun trainers have told The Sunday Mail some officers are scared to fire their police­issued Glock while others struggle to strip their weapons and name parts.

Officers shoot for about an hour a year and to re­qualify as being competent must hit 12 of 15 rounds in a shaded area of a target, or 80 per cent of the time, with the remaining 20 per cent hitting the target body profile.

Civilians must fire 200­300 rounds a year at a minimum over six competition shoots to maintain a gun licence.

Security licence firearms trainers told The Sunday Mail that people must hit 36 out of 36 shots to be re­certified in the industry.

When asked if shooting 60 rounds per year was enough, Sporting Shooters Association of Australia president Geoff Jones said: “To be competent, no, I’ll be quite blunt.

“Civilians are only allowed to have a handgun for the purpose of target shooting where there is technically no risk, no threat to life.

“But the police, considering the onus that is on them when they actually need to produce a handgun in an emergency situation I would believe they should have the highest level of competence.”

Queensland Police Union president Ian Leavers told The Sunday Mail police needed more regular training.

“We believe the firearms training content itself is sufficient but it is nowhere near as frequent as it should be,” he said.

“Firearms training should be far more frequent than it currently is (once per calendar year) which means some officers could go nearly two years without requalifying,” he said.

During annual police training officers must conduct a series of “dry fire” drills before a warm­up shoot of 30 rounds, one­ on­one with an instructor.

Gun trainers say some officers are scared to fire their police­issued Glock, while others struggle to strip their weapons and name parts.

Police then get two 15­round magazines and complete their assessment, with the first magazine a practice.

In the assessment 80 per cent of shots must hit within a shaded area of the target, while the other 20 per cent must be at least within the body profile of a target.

If officers hit outside of this area they fail the assessment and have to re­shoot.

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“We qualify people, we don’t train them,” a police officer told The Sunday Mail.

The Sunday Mail has been told the police service doesn’t have its own shooting range, with training taking place on leased premises, privately owned or military ranges.

Officers can also pay to go to police club to train further but are unable to perform police­ related drills on those ranges.

“You can’t go to a civilian range and bomb up with magazines and start blazing away at threat targets – because generally civilian ranges don’t do that sort of thing,” a source said.

A police spokesman said questions in relation to how many police fail annual training could not be answered because of the relevant police unit transitioning back to the police service after leaving the Public Safety Business Agency.

A senior firearms trainer told The Sunday Mail some police also attended a three­day course to use military­style Remington R4 carbine .223 guns.

“Weapons manipulation is a perishable skill and you can see how diminished their skills are on the re­qualification day,” the trainer said.

“There is no scenario based training in place for this use of force option (rifle) which is at odds with best practice policy.”

Internationally, most training days do not have shooting warm­ups, to emulate a real­world scenario of engaging a threat within seconds of a confrontation.