Yeah, cops are notoriously horrible shots, and hardly the "marksman" people think they are. I guess they don't do range qualification often enough, or their training is too soft. Lack of experience is a huge factor, too. This is an atypical case, though, because most encounters where a person will need to defend themselves isn't in a heavily crowded area in the middle of the day, and I don't know anyone who would even consider carrying a service pistol as a conceal carry weapon. It's just too ****ing hot to conceal one properly here. I don't even know anyone who would open carry, because that's just stupid in this area, and asking for trouble.
A typical conceal carry gun is small, light, has a low capacity and a low muzzle velocity. I carry a 38 snub because it's reliable, and if someone attacks me, it's going to be in the dead of night when I'm most active, but the town isn't. I don't really have to worry about over-penetration, or missing on the first shot, because A) I'm not going to hit an innocent bystander here at 3 in the morning at the places I go when I go out, and B) I have my pistol loaded with low power soft-points that drastically reduce any possibility of over-penetration. The guy would have to have the body mass of a jellyfish for these to go through him. They won't even penetrate a pig carcass. Other peoples situations might be different, but the point is, these cops reaction to an atypical event isn't really evidence of anything, other than that particular event.
