Their training

I have watched the TV series "Top Shot" for quite some time now, I felt I needed to comment on something that happened back in Episode 3.    Jermaine, a homeland security agent  and tactical pistol trainer with 20+ years of training went against an annoying cocky little Asian named Jay, a golf instructor who just picked up target pistol shooting a year ago.  

The elimination challenge was to shoot through a door that opens and closes, then hit plates of only a certain color.   Hitting a plate that was the wrong color had a penalty, no penalty for complete misses.  Tie breaker was the win going to the shooter who hit the fewest friendly plates.  The weapon, a Glock 17. 

When Jay shot, he looked unprofessional holding the gun, but he hit only the right color plates, and didn't hit any of the "innocent bystander" plates.  Jay hit 6 plates, and 0 bystander plates.

Jermaine looked like a complete professional, but was apparently choking under the pressure.   Fired very slow, very focused shots, and ended up hitting one of the bystander plates.   Jermaine hit 7 plates, and 1 bystander.

This means they tied, and the tie breaker rule was to go to the player who broke the least friendly plates.  

So what this means that Jay, who doesn't take instruction well, taught himself how to shoot quantitatively "better" than a 20+ year trained government employee.  

Our government puts a lot of stock in this "training" and there are very few chances to compare them.   This is the only recorded example I found where you get this pure of an example of training being not as good as a newbie that just likes to plink.

That episode of top shot was Season 2, Episode 3 on the history channel... there's no online vids available that I could find.