More and more people are legally carrying more and more guns in our society. Whether they are law enforcement officers or holders of state permits they generally receive training prior to setting forth. This training varies from a few hours of classroom and a few rounds fired on a range to dozens of hours of relevant classes and practice at a police academy. But is even the most extensive current training enough? The risks from defensive use of firearms are much more complex and serious those for sporting use.

A casual examination of the news stories collected at websites such as Joe Nocera’s “Gun Report” or Slate’s List or Wikipedia's list of police shootings shows that crisis use of guns occurs in an immense diversity of circumstances with many bystanders and innocent people in danger. Decisions must be made in seconds or sometimes milliseconds. The stories report plenty of carnage and mistakes and innocent loss of life, but they don’t report the possibilities for defusing the situations without gunfire. The training must not only cover shooting and decisions, but how to avoid a need to shoot.

The only role or job in our society with a remotely comparable need for similar training is that of an airline pilot. Pilots receive thousands of hours of training and required experience on carefully designed and expensive simulators. The training process has been studied and restudied. Many of the most important innovations by the Federal Aviation Administration, which carefully investigates every single crash, have involved adjustments to training requirements. Yet, the variety of situations and the speed required for most decisions are an order of magnitude more difficult with guns than with airplanes.

No one has ever designed training sufficient to make a person safe to carry a gun. I don’t know what it would look like; but it would require years to develop, years for each student to complete, have a high washout rate and cost billions for the required support technology. Or, we could just have a lot less people carrying guns.

