Pistol training, be it military or law enforcement, has traditionally occurred in live-fire environments. However, many agencies are being challenged to find new and innovative ways in which to deliver not only existing pistol training programs, but are being tasked to add more to their training programs without increasing training time. One approach that is beginning to attract attention is how technology can be used to enhance and augment current training practices, while creating efficiencies that address those critical training gaps (Krätzig & Hudy, in press). While the use of heavy artillery and rifle simulation technology within a military setting is well established, the existing body of literature does not adequately address how this technology can be used in a pistol-training program, or whether these skills can be acquired without live-fire exposure. The purpose of this research is to provide empirical evidence that pistol training in a laser-based synthetic environment is as effective as traditional live-fire training, and that an entire pistol course-of-fire training program can be delivered without live-fire instructional time. An experiment was conducted using 124 Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) trainees (cadets) designed to compared live-fire pistol training performance with those cadets who were trained exclusively in a laser-based dry-fire environment. Our results indicate that cadets who were trained in a simulated environment had higher scores than a typical live-fire trained cadet. This paper will systematically discuss methods, measures, and results along with the future research directions.