I copied and merged the earlier one - if anyone objects, I will change it back...

this is a great thread, thank you - I made it a sticky

Danke Klaus

Ed

Yes, from a police training standpoint the single shot nature of these inserts are not realistic. They are fine for indoor target shooting to teach marksmanship but since they must be loaded and then unloaded after each shot they do not mirror the tactics taught for officer survival.

The goal of police training (when I was such a trainer) was to do repetition drills to intill muscle memory without having to think through the process. Police training is set up nowadays to have polilcemen draw, fire, and recover from a snapped in holster in order to simulate what might happen during an armed encounter. Having to stop and futz with your pistol between shots is counterproductive to such training.

Back in the 1960s dead policemen were found with empty shell casings in their hand after shooting scenarios. This was because rangemasters had allowed policemen to carry their brass bucket with them from one yardline to another. The rangemasters were inadvertantly allowing the officers to instill muscle memory from repeatedly emptying the spent cartridges from their revolvers into their hand in order to throw it into the brass bucket. It got people killed and when instructors realized what was going on the training was changed.

So, from this standpoint these single shot sub caliber units are not conducive to keeping you alive in a shooting. The multi-shot .22 caliber conversion kits do not have this drawback.

George

George, I taught military police firing and did many ranges, nothing like you I am sure. But we did lots of dry fire exercises and it was designed to encourage finger control and accuracy. I think a single shot is designed for that, rather than later police tactics.

Police tactics were designed in the USA - i.e. Street Survival series, learning not to pick up your ammo upon firing (a tactic that was learned at the range in the 50's, 60's 70's by cops), etc.

Just my 2 cents

Quite right Ed, 1930s German Police firearms training was more in line with military training at the time and was marksmanship based. Sight picture, trigger control, breath control, etc. all designed to accurately put rounds on paper targets. Tactics were taught seperately then but they have changed significantly over the years.

None the less, these small caliber units are fun to shoot. I have a .22 caliber conversion kit for my US M1911a .45 pistol as well as having a pre-war Colt Ace in .22 caliber. I love to shoot these since they have the floating chamber and are easy to switch out and clean. I don't know how the German Police firearm instructors felt about the little 4mm single shot conversion kits but they do seem to be a lot of trouble to me.