In the Star Wars universe, imperial stormtroopers have notoriously bad aim, yet in Episode 4, Obiwan Kenobi explicitly states that they have great aim. I know there are a lot of good explanations out there regarding why this might be, but let me explain why it isn’t surprising at all based on the real life example of US police.
As any liberal will tell you, the police are highly trained in the use of their weapons, and they and only they are qualified to carry a gun around in public — just like imperial stormtroopers. That completely explains why they routinely empty two Glock magazines without stopping the suspect or accidentally fire their weapon (that’s sarcasm). The parallel with stormtroopers’ bad aim is hard to… miss (wink). Recently, two police officers got into a gunfight at a traffic stop with a crazed man wielding a machine gun; despite the fact that this man emptied his gun in 2 seconds without hitting anyone, he still managed to seriously injure one of the officers by beating him in the face with that weapon before the other officer was able to stop him.
The truth of the matter is that most police officers are not well-trained in terms of firearms. Ask any firearms trainer — virtually all of them being pro-cop conservatives — and they will tell you the same thing. The average police officer qualifies with their weapon once a year, and that’s it. Any training they’re receiving has to do with trying to get them to be less racist or — more often — inspiring them to develop a “warrior mindset” (which is more likely to get a normal citizen killed than to save them from a homicidal person).
The reason they’re not getting this training is because it is incredibly expensive and, though policing is dangerous, police would benefit more from safety training, especially in terms of driving and disease. In 2021 so far, COVID-19 has been the greatest cause of death among police because they are conservatives. Those are just the on-duty deaths; the biggest killer of police is suicide; so maybe some training or something regarding suicide would be a good idea.
According to the National Law Enforcement Officers Memorial and Museum’s 2021 midyear report, 28 officers have been killed by gunfire so far this year — most of them while making an arrest. An additional 38 were killed in traffic accidents. Eighteen were killed in other ways, such as drowning while trying to save someone, or being beaten by prisoners. Covid-19 took 71 officers. So far this year, 89 law enforcement officers in the United States have died by suicide, according to Blue H.E.L.P., a nonprofit that keeps these statistics.
Death by suicide among police is a quiet epidemic. It needs to be acknowledged. by Petula Dvorak, Washington Post, August 9, 2021
There’s certainly a small subset of police who are very well-trained when it comes to firearms. Those would be your SWAT team or the few individual officers who thought it was important enough that they paid for this training themselves. That’s not to say that the average gun owner is just as safe with their guns; on the contrary, the average American gun owner has no training and only fired their gun on one occasion if at all before they stashed it a location that was easily accessible to both children and burglars. Still, the most important training both police and civilian firearm owners need is in de-escalation.
There are a million videos of police accidentally firing their weapons on YouTube. Keep in mind that what you find there is only what was caught on video. For example:
DEA Agents Shoots Himself with a Glock 40 (actually a Glock model 22 chambered in .40 S&W) A police officer accidentally shoots himself in the leg during an elementary school presentation.
Officer accidentally shoots himself (Las Vegas, 2019) A Las Vegas police officer accidentally shot himself in the lower body on Saturday night.
‘A wall in our apartment exploded:’ Holly Hill officer’s rifle accidentally discharges into neighboring home (Orlando, 2020) A bullet struck an apartment of a Holly Hill family getting ready for the day on Wednesday.
Darryl Jouett, Erlanger police officer, discharges handgun in elevator (Ohio, 2015) Darryl Jouett, a 25-year veteran of the Erlanger, Ohio Police Department, injured himself with a handgun after a dinner date.
To get back to the point, there’s absolutely nothing surprising about imperial stormtroopers in the Star Wars universe being both the best and worst shots in the galaxy. What they’re not telling you is that they also crash their TIE fighters all the time, refuse to use PPE during pandemics, complain about vaccine requirements, and shoot themselves and each other with frightening regularity. What is surprising is that what we pretend is a civilian police force bears a striking similarity to an authoritarian military force, and that this authoritarian military force has proven that it is no longer under the control of democratically elected government by (ironically) demonstrating that police cannot be required to get vaccinated for COVID-19 (unlike other government employees).