Quote Originally Posted by Jaimecbr900
Actually all LEO's have to take a course on the applicable gun statues, so they should ALL have atleast some idea. The laws have not changed in quite some time, just different provisions (much like the reason for this thread) have been added to it over the years.
I can guarantee you that hardly any of them know what the laws are. Local level law enforcement officers are not required to know anything beyond their own version of basic training, which is laughable at best. As one of the undergrad research projects for my CJ degree, I got involved with a study that was surveying local law enforcement awareness on a slew of community policing-oriented topics (which was, in some respects, in response to the botched police no-knock raid). More frightening than the lack of consistent knowledge about applicable gun statutes (most of that knowledge being from whatever pocket size statute guide the particular officer happened to have invested in) was the often completely erroneous understanding of probable cause searches and other matters of pre-arrest due process protocols.

These are the reasons there needs to be a bigger push for the "careerification," as it were, of policing... so that higher education and a more accurate understanding of the law becomes the norm, rather than the exception.