The NRA is well-known for its efforts in protecting the individual Right to Keep and Bear Arms, but its achievements in helping to train and prepare those to whom we’ve granted the power to enforce the law are relatively unknown to the public at large. This is puzzling because, even though the NRA Law Enforcement Division (LED) has now trained firearm instructors for 50 years, NRA as a whole has ties with the law enforcement community that go back to 1916, and perhaps even further. The NRA has long recognized the importance of bolstering the strength of our common self-defense through training programs and lobbying, and for decades has been one of the primary forces in helping those who help protect us.

Police and other common forces have but one purpose in a free and just society, as expressed by Frédérich Bastiat, political economist and member of the French assembly, in his 1850 work The Law: “to do only what the individual forces have a natural and lawful right to do: to protect persons, liberties, and properties; to maintain the right of each, and to cause justice to reign over all.” The Founding Fathers knew this, and as the times changed with advanced technology and its use by today’s vilest criminals and terrorists, Americans recognized a need to create additional lines of defense to further protect themselves from society’s worst.

Troops in all branches take oaths reflecting this purpose, and police officers often adopt a code of ethics that further resonates with Bastiat’s words on our “common force”:

“As a Law Enforcement Officer, my fundamental duty is to serve mankind; to safeguard lives and property; to protect the innocent against deception, the weak against oppression or intimidation, and the peaceful against violence or disorder; and to respect the Constitutional rights of all persons to liberty, equality and justice.”

No simple task by any means.

With this year marking the 50th anniversary of the NRA’s LED, it’s time to take a look at the division’s history and honor its contributions to the military, the law-enforcement community, and everyday citizens who’ve benefited from its tireless efforts to strengthen public safety.

The Early Years
Staff writer Frank J. Kahrs outlined a basic firearm training program for law enforcement officers in an article published in the November 1916 issue of Arms and the Man, the predecessor to The American Rifleman. Less than a decade later the NRA established a police qualification program, and teams from around the country were going to Camp Perry, Ohio, to test their skills against some of the best marksmen of the day.

Police departments were invited to send officers to Camp Perry for training as early as 1920, and the NRA first invited police chiefs from around the country to send teams to compete in the National Matches in 1924. The NRA, in close conjunction with the National Board for the Promotion of Rifle Practice (NBPRP), overseer of the Civilian Marksmanship Program (CMP), established at Camp Perry the Special Police School in 1926 under the Small Arms Firing School, which included a tactical course called “Hogan’s Alley.” It consisted of makeshift buildings with reappearing silhouettes to simulate urban shoot-outs. Although elementary compared to today’s advanced tactical courses, Hogan’s Alley and other programs were leaps forward in the quickly evolving world of police firearm training—and not without good reason. The Roaring ’20s brought with it the bootleggers and, soon after, the likes of John Dillinger and Bonnie and Clyde, who demonstrated a shift in tools and tactics hardened criminals were using in pursuit of the dishonest dollar: use more guns, use bigger guns, and shoot anyone who gets in the way.

A Police Section was created at the NRA’s Washington, D.C., headquarters in 1930 in response to law enforcement’s growing presence at the National Matches. In 1927, 2,000 policemen from around the country enrolled in a new qualification program; the NRA mailed targets to competitors who, with three witnesses, returned their targets to the headquarters for rankings as marksmen, sharpshooters or experts.

Despite lack of funding in the early years of the Depression, NRA-sponsored police training and qualification helped the Los Angeles Police Dept. pistol team become the first law enforcement squad to win the National Pistol Trophy Team Match in 1936, seizing the title from the once-dominant National Guard pistol teams. Funding returned, and although it appeared that NRA police qualification, training and competition might be on the rise in the United States, confronting the war machines of Imperialist Japan and Nazi Germany required a diversion of firearm materials and training directly into the war effort. The Police School folded. Police and civilian competition came to a grinding halt after Japan’s bombing of Pearl Harbor, and during World War II the NRA focused primarily on helping to train the military and on training civilians through the Office of Civilian Defense.

The Rise Of NRA LED
The National Rifle and Pistol Matches returned to Camp Perry in 1953, but it wasn’t until 1956 that the Police School was resurrected to strengthen the training of a new generation of law enforcement. The NRA went a step further in 1960 by creating an entirely new program for NRA Police Firearms Instructor certifications. This was the birth of the NRA’s modern Law Enforcement Division, and the objective was simple: Train law enforcement instructors to NRA standards, and then return them to their respective departments to train individual officers; sanction at-home training and qualification courses that meet NRA standards; and encourage LE teams to compete in the National Matches.

Since 1960, the predominate focus of the NRA’s law enforcement activities has been training instructors. As an extension of its Firearm Instructor training program, the NRA organized the first National Police Pistol Championships in 1962, today known as the National Police Shooting Championships (NPSC). The championships have been held in Indiana, Mississippi, Iowa, and are today held in Albuquerque, N.M.

Organized primarily as an individual and team accuracy-based competition, the Police Pistol Championships soon came to include the Police Pistol Combat (PPC) competition, still in existence today. Competitors shot at targets from 7 to 50 yards away with .38 Spl. or .357 Mag. revolvers in a variety of shooting positions. The first year saw 140 officers and 20 teams competing, and by 1969 there was a shotgun match consisting of skeet, trap and B-27 silhouette paper targets. By 1978 some 900 officers were competing—and that was just in the National Championships. The year 1981 saw 310 registered, approved, and Regional Championship tournaments with 11,425 total competitors.

By 1968 there were 3,138 active Police Firearms Instructors who trained 56,767 officers. These included officers from small-town departments, from the Border Patrol and even White House Security. An article published in American Rifleman in the mid-1960s outlined three basic police training objectives of the times: to identify targets and engage quickly in a variety of positions; to gain positive identification of one’s target before engagement and ensure civilian safety; and to develop a desire in policemen to shoot properly and accurately to encourage recreational practice. Teaching those objectives 40 years ago was as valuable then as it is today. But as law enforcement evolved from Smith & Wesson Model 10 revolvers and over-starched duty shirts to the Wonder Nine semi-automatics and Kevlar ballistic vests, so too did the nature of police instructor training at the NRA.

Recognize, Adapt, Overcome
In 1965 the first modern so-called “urban riot” shook the law-enforcement community to its roots. California Highway Patrolman Lee Minikus pulled over and arrested a belligerent and intoxicated driver in the South Central Los Angeles Watts neighborhood, sparking a six-day riot of burning, looting, beatings and general mayhem. Mobs targeted liquor stores and pawn shops, throwing Molotov cocktails and shooting at firemen and police. Law-enforcement personnel were overwhelmed, and only by calling in some 14,000 National Guardsmen was the situation brought under control. Other social upheaval during the 1960s and 1970s, in addition to the influx of inner-city gangs, drugs and violence, pushed law enforcement’s call for more advanced tactics and training up through the 1980s.