By Candice Bernd
In previous years the National Rifle Association's (NRA) National Police Shooting Competition (NPSC) included events with names like "Head Shots Only," in which the event's course description contends that police officers need to practice shooting directly at people's heads.
Courses like this are only one of the many reasons why, in Albuquerque, New Mexico, activists and family members of police shootings victims call the annual NPSC the "killer cop contest."
The competition is set to begin September 15 at Shooting Range Park in Albuquerque, New Mexico. The contest brings together more than 500 officers from various law enforcement agencies across the country to judge who's best at using lethal weapons. A similar regional shooting competition has already begun.
The NRA's law enforcement division has organized the NPSC annually since its first competition in Iowa in 1962, actively reaching out to officers and inviting them to the contest. This year law enforcement officers from as far away as Germany and Venezuela are expected to attend, according to NRA spokesman Lars Dalseide.
Long-time organizers against police violence in Albuquerque who have attended previous tournaments describe the competition as a celebration of the heavily militarized policing tactics and practices that have been at the center of a national firestorm in the aftermath of the militant police response to protests in Ferguson, Missouri, over the killing of unarmed black teenager Michael Brown.
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