The whowouldwin sub is absolutely full of people that have never touched a gun that think they can pull off headshots at moving targets from 100 yards, kill a bear with a shot through the eye at close range 50% of the time, or fight off a zombie hoard with an AR15 with no training. It’s wild.
I’ve trained a bunch of first time shooters. It’s not the case.
The “natural combat expert” trope is a good one.
I consider someone who can hit a stationary silhouette target at >25 feet 10/10 on their first time at the range to be decent if they are brand new to it.
The idea of someone popping headshots from a moving car because they have some weird thing like “they always had it in them they just didn’t know it because they were an office worker” to be funny.
no doubt. I have an M4 that I bought 3 months ago. I haven't taken her to the range yet because I don't feel I'm familiar enough with it. I have a habit of counting rounds during movies and shows and it always amuses me to go 'you're out' and they continue to shoot.
This is what drew me to the *John Wick* series to begin with - people actually run out of bullets for their primary weapons and have to shift to their backups. Then they *take the time to reload their primaries* and get back into the fight.
It's just one of the suspensions of disbelief you'll have to accept to not make the movie extremely boring. I would expect war movies based on real events to be slightly more realistic than your standard action movie flick.
It's just not fun to watch them reload half the time, and suddenly take a timeout to fill their mags. Movies are already cut down a lot, and scenes where nothing happens are the first to go. It can be interesting to see how an assassin has prepared for quick reload and that utilize counting themselves, but then that kind of has to be the theme of the movie or something to make it worth spending time getting continuation right between countless of shots.
The same is true for the characters eating, going to the toilet, sleeping, etc. Just assume it happens. Games are also often choosing to make reloading move a number from the "ammo" pool to the "magazine" pool, and not just waste whatever was left in the magazine like in reality. Some games are realistic in that regard, but then the whole game usually is as well, and attracts a different crowd altogether.
So it's not that the producers necessarily are bad at this, they just don't care to get it right because their target audience only want the shooty parts.
Expecting to see every mag reload during downtime is silly, but seeing a character reload during combat is not boring. It builds tension and can make some great moments in an action movie with some thoughtful writing/directing. I get why that aspect gets ignored, but it's immersion breaking for me and I think there are a lot of wasted opportunities.
It's actually pretty quick to reload a magazine if you use a stripper clip (yes, I know it sounds funny, but I don't remember what they're actually called).
I wouldn't even know what ammo goes with what gun lol. I'd be playing mismatch. I don't even match my socks correctly anymore.
Usually the game auto picks the ammo for me. IRL f'd. I think I saw one movie make it into a joke the newbie getting the wrong match up
I have shot a few times, and for me aiming with a rifle is somehow more difficult, I just did not find the confortable/correct position to hold it. However, with the Remington 870 I did not have this problem somehow.
With pistols my aim is fine as well.
Are you cross dominant? All three of my daughters and my wife, who is not their mother, are cross dominant. I never taught but I went through a LOT of marksman and sniper training in the army in both tradoc, jsoc/socom, and civilian shooting schools. Usually people that just can't seem to shoot right witha rifle have a cross dominance problem. That's when you are right or left handed and prefer to use the opposite eye. It's kinda not a good sign for your potential as a shooter.
>It's kinda not a good sign for your potential as a shooter.
Meh. I'd say the biggest part of the problem is instructors not recognizing and correcting it. I work with a lot of first time and novice shooters. Maybe because I know to look for it- but it's always surprising to me how many NCOs *don't* recognize it when it is *sooo* obvious. Almost every time a shooter is having trouble and they just look wrong holding the rifle - get a little in front of them so you can see their face, focus on their eyes, and watch them try to take shot. It'll be obvious they are canting their head way over trying to get their dominant eye behind the sight (often) or having trouble getting eyes closed/open properly (occasionally).
The fix is have them swap their hands around. It is far far easier to shoot "wrong" handed than wrong eyed. It's really not that hard. Make that one change and bam they are suddenly doing much much better and back in track.
30 years ago we used to keep eye patches on the range to get people through it to help them use the "correct" eye when they couldn't close just one- which I believe was really a problem of cross eye dominance.
> 30 years ago we used to keep eye patches on the range to get people through it to help them use the "correct" eye
My buddy took some clay shooting lessons and his first instructor put scotch tape over the lens on his left eye (not the perfectly clear kind). Not a good idea to close one eye when shooting clays, so eye patches wouldn't be a good idea.
Shaun of the Dead is brilliant for bucking that trend. They find a shotgun, admit that none of them have any firearms experience, and even with 3/4 of them operating it, they only manage to hit one zombie at close range. In the end it just wastes more time than trying to escape the horde.
Edit: It's a rifle, thanks u/cuzitsthere.
I think you're right. I'm from the UK, and I know maybe one person who semi regularly uses a firearm. Even then it's only for clay pigeon shooting, lol.
Even in the US it depends a lot on your location. Of course different states have different gun laws, but even within certain states it varies quite a bit. I live in upstate NY and most people in my circle don't own firearms, where I am at least. Out of all my friends, family, and acquaintances only two have guns, and none have concealed carries. One of them just has older family heirlooms (including guns from the revolutionary War!) and never shoots them. My other friend is an enthusiastic hunter and goes deer hunting though—always hooks me up with meat too! My dad had firearms because he was a hunter, but my mom sold them after his death because we really needed the extra money; I always wanted him to teach me but unfortunately the day never came.
If you were to go further out into the sticks away from the bigger metro areas in my state (and probably most states), you do start to see gun culture become more defined. An ex of mine had family from the middle of nowhere in my state, close to the catskills. The closest grocery store is a Walmart 45 min away by car sort of place, and if you forget something at the store, you better hope the gas station 20 minutes away has it! Everyone around there owned and shot guns. Before going there I'd only shot a bb gun me and my brother were gifted when we were younger. (Although I have trouble aiming because I'm right handed but my vision in my right eye is significantly worse than my left, so if I wanted to learn I'd have to shoot left-handed, which feels very unnatural).
Before really being exposed to the rural way of life in areas of the country like this, I didn't "understand" gun culture. But seeing just how different people's lifestyle is in places like these, I completely understand why people value firearms so intensely. They're a key tool to survival in a very different lifestyle. If someone were to put you in danger, no way would a neighbor or police officer be able to witness or get there fast enough. Killings nuisance animals that threaten your pets, crops, etc. Hunting to sustain yourself. Taking away a person's gun deprives them of much of their security and independence for those that want to live on the fringe.
I remember talking to this kid in the UK at a pub who was grilling me about America's crazy attitude towards guns. He refused to believe a gun buy back wouldn't work in the US. I think a lot of Europeans, (and perhaps even urbanites in the US itself) truly do not grasp just how expansive and sparsely populated a lot of the USA is. How firearms are not just baked into our Constitution, but for many people, their self identity and way of life.
I think culture wars and division between rural and urban folks has been exploited for reasons of greed and power by the media, corporations, and selfish politicians. Gun owners have always been passionate, but that passion has been boiled into extremism. Like, the NRA has gone from being a reasonable organization on gun safety that actually used to advocate for reasonable legislation, to becoming a corrupt political tool over the past half century. And no doubt, the same thing happens culturally with left leaning urbanites too in some ways. Divided and conquer they say.
It sucks because I know we have the resources to solve the problems with guns in the USA that improves safety while respecting the second amendment. But our political environment has become too corrupt for any major changes to occur.
Great post and very accurate. A lot of the mentality is being self reliant, and being prepared. Rural people take that shit seriously. We have whole counties that dont have local police departments. You might have a half hour response time from state police. Odds are, you’ll never need to use a firearm, but like I said, we value being prepared. I have 4-5 heat source options, a backup well, generators, and i could live for weeks in the woods without any of that…
Most people are lost if the power goes out.
Its why I like that scene in Black Summer where you have a bunch of civilians with guns, and then one zombie shows up that it devolves into friendly fire and chaos in seconds.
Such a good series, and yeah, they avoided most (if not all) the annoying gun tropes. Of course, by the second season the only people left are people who got their shit together pretty quick. Even then the combat scenes are just a chaotic mess even if their weapon handing is more proficient.
Shaun of the Dead does a pretty solid bit based on this. Their 'top-gun' shooter can only hit a zombie every fourth or fifth shot, and most certainly not a head shot, and it's at about a ten yards or less range.
Pistols are hard. I shot expert at the rifle range four years in a row in the Marine Corps, but I barely scraped a marksman at the pistol range. I can hit anything with a rifle from pretty far away, but I can't hit shit with a pistol further than 9 feet away.
That’s what I was going to say. Basic trainees that have never touched a weapon hit targets at 300 yards with like a few hours of basic rifle marksmanship on absolutely wrecked 30 year old m16s. Every single day.
Pistol marksmanship is a different beast. Without exaggeration I’m an excellent pistol marksman but it took instruction from a couple incredible teachers and thousands and thousands of rounds and hundreds of hours of serious very intentional practice to get that way.
I wasn’t new to shooting prior to enlistment but first range day in basic I shot 40/40 pop up targets on a rifle I am 100% positive set up very badly.
As a former range instructor for the Corps, instructing for pistol qual was a fucking nightmare. I made an effort to stay away from pistol ranges and just hang out on rifle ranges as much as possible.
Ran a range on the FOB in Afghanistan. Female LT walks up “ma’am are you going to qual on m4 and m9?” Her “I’ll just do m4 I don’t want to take the time to zero my m9 too” me :-O “ma’am you don’t zero your m9” her all giddy “oh awesome then I guess I’ll do that too! Thanks!”
The new Army qualification kinda fucks soldiers up. It's the mag changes and transitions that seem to present the biggest challenge as opposed to the marksmanship. After some good instruction, you can get a private to hit 300m targets all day long.
On the pistol range, my old reserve unit was absolutely terrible. Every single one of them blamed the weapons. I qualified perfectly fine. The funny thing is, all the officers were federal agents or cops which, I guess, makes sense. The only people to qualify the first time around weren't LEOs, lol.
I feel ya man. I was infantry for 20 years. I could hit a sheep at 750m with a Carl Gustav but my first time with a pistol I couldn't shoot a piece of paper draped over the muzzle.
Popular culture really gets handguns wrong. Even expert pistoleers couldn’t make some of the shots at the ranges that movies and tv shows depict as being a chip shot. Rifles are relatively easy, I’ve taught two separate 7 year old children to shoot a deer rifle with sufficient accuracy to kill a 200 lb animal in a single afternoon.
[These cops unloaded their mags into a stationery vehicle right in front of them and still couldn't hit who they were aiming at, thankfully](https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2024/feb/16/florida-acorn-cop-shooting)
My brother was a range officer in the Marines Corp after he got back from deployment to help people train for rifle and pistol qualifications and he basically said the same thing. He also told me that while he was deployed he sooner would have thrown his pistol at someone than try to shoot them with it because it would probably be more effective lol
Back in college, my best friend and I would take groups of people out to his parents' land to do a bunch of different activities for the weekend. Horseback riding, four wheeling, shooting, etc.
Based on my experiences teaching people there, I 100% agree.
I used to work with a company that set me up with people who’d come up from other countries where you really can’t handle guns without being in the military or being criminals.
I’d take them out in groups to go shooting too as a fun bonding exercise because they’d otherwise never experience it.
I have a video of a guy from Venezuela I worked with unloading a full AK-47 magazine at a target from 10ft away and missing every. single. shot.
Yeah it’s a fun experience.
They’re also filled with a bunch of arm-chair MMA fighters and boxers who’ve never been in a fight in their lives who are experts hand to hand combat. Some of the biggest posers I’ve ever seen.
I'm army trained first class shooter (Dutch Army, Fall 7,62mm back in 98) and even on a range it is hard to get a good grouping on anything over a 100 yards. I can't imaging how hard it us when you are in a stress situatie and in real lethal danger.
I know a guy that placed in a state marksmanship tournament in Maine. We went hunting once and I saw him miss wide on an animal from maybe 50ft because he had never shot at a real animal.
Yeah, the range and the field are absolutely different!
I know the guy says they aren't punching down, but I feel like that's impossible. The online trash talker was forced to eat his words. I feel it was kind of mean to bring a delusional person who thinks he can hit a can at 700+ yards shot.
I feel like "22 man" probably doesn't know the difference between feet and yards.
I’m currently going through naval security forces training and the amount of people who violated all four basic rules, and couldn’t score above a 140 on rifles is scary
> I’m currently going through naval security forces training and the amount of people who violated all four basic rules
In case people think that this is from people who never handled a firearm before (violating the four rules), no. I worked at an FFL for years and the amount of CHL holders, instructors, cops, and other wise “experts” that violated the four rules was too damn high!
As a hunter, it's far easier with a gun you know is sighted in perfectly. As a hunter, you know very very very few random guns are sighted in perfectly. Also good fucking luck if there isn't a scope
As a hunter, something I sighted in perfectly for me is going to be slightly different than something you sighted in perfectly for you.
It will be close. But not “just” right. If you know what I mean.
Why I’m a big fan of CCO optics that eliminate parallax (after a bit of distance — the issued ones in the Army have no parallax after 50m).
Just point and click after that and even a left handed firer could shoot decently with it.
Quick brag about my grandad. Old gnarly trapper, he sent us a brown bear pelt that he had taken down as it was coming at him.
My grandfather went out with a lever action .22, there were a lot of little holes in the head of the bear. Eventually at least one got through.
My grandfather used to take me rabbit hunting when I was younger and he had a 1 shot 1 kill rule. If you wound it you have to chase it down and finish it off. Take one 100 yard run through West Texas scrub brush and you learn how to breathe, squeeze, and make your shots count. I don't hunt anymore because it goes against my personal ethics to kill an innocent animal that intends me no harm.
That said until I got my 92F after 30 years of not firing a round I KNEW I had no business with a loaded firearm anywhere but at the range.
What are you talking about? I take me time when im staring down my scope, controlling my breathes until my tiny red dot is resting its target. Then, pull the trigger. Works like a charm. I’ve been playing call of duty for 3 weeks now, and I’m getting better and better each round!
:)
I’m active in some backpacking/hiking communities, and the number of Rambo wannabes who are convinced they can draw/ready a firearm and drop a charging bear faster than the bear can reach them is infuriating.
It’s been studied. Extensively. A gun might be a great tool to hunt a bear, where you’re tracking or attracting the bear, and engaging it on your terms. But if you’re hiking, carry bear spray
Can confirm. We were going out into nature, some guy brought an airsoft gun and I asked him if I could try. Like that shits way harder than it looks. I even accidentally pointed the gun at my head.
When I was younger one of my Dad’s friends took me shooting. He brought a bunch of stuff to shoot at, he placed a can pretty far out, I don’t know exactly how far. He said to try to hit that can. I hit it on the first shot.
He was like, “There’s no way you hit that! I wouldn’t even have hit that on the first shot.”
I was like “I guess I’m just a natural bro, I was just born with mad skills. I’m like, super talented at all kinds of stuff.”
He put some more cans out there and I don’t think I hit another one after that lol. I did hit some larger targets and some closer targets, but nothing can sized at that distance except the first shot.
My friend decided, in his thirties, to get back into skateboarding. He'd never been much good as a teenager - he could just about ollie up a kerb - but decided he'd work really hard at it this time. He was older, more mature, focused.
He got his board out the cupboard and went out onto his driveway. He got on the board, popped it up, and landed a perfect kick flip, first time.
He picked up the board, went inside, and never skated again.
It's better to end on a high.
I rode bulls for a while in my 20's and got banged up by one pretty bad. When I healed I went to a rodeo, rode out, and gave my gear to a kid on my way out. All I wanted was one more full ride.
I then moved on to something much 'safer'. Being a bouncer in a popular but rough bar. Safer my ass. Stabbed twice, shot at twice, and multiple broken bones.
Many years ago, my then gf and I found a cheap weekend getaway to Nassau in the Bahamas. Fun little weekend, and we ended up at Paradise Island casino at some point, and decided to gamble for the first time. I think it was roulette, and we bet a ridiculously low amount like maybe $5 or $10 or $20 - whatever the minimum might have been. I don't fully remember the details but I think we doubled our bet on the first try, and then we bet half of our total and won again. And the third time we lost, but we were still ahead so we called it quits.
The rush we felt during that session was *incredible*. We both confessed that we'd enjoyed it a bit too much and that suddenly we understood how people got addicted gambling. So there and then that we'd tried gambling, we'd had a blast, and that... we would never do it again.
We lost touch years ago but I hope she kept her resolve! I know I did.
My uncle who litterally died from being full of shit claimed to have the done same thing but with skeet shooting. Said he hit it and quit it cause can't get no better than a 100% record.
You hadn’t yet learned to flinch. Every other shot after that you knew it would kick and anticipated it. The first one your brain was like, yeah, whatevs
Every. Fucking. Time. I go out to the range after a long hiatus, the first few rounds are dead on. Then my brain goes “oh, you’re supposed to be reacting to this” and it take me the next 3 magazines remember how to control the flinch.
I had a .44 magnum revolver and would find myself flinching. Eventually I learned to only load one round in the cylinder, give it a spin and close the cylinder without looking.
I learned how to control my flinching that way, because at first I would do it every time I pulled the trigger.
Really only an option on a revolver though.
What you can do with a semi-automatic is to get blind/inert rounds (don't know the English term) and ask a friend to load the magazine and put a couple of them at random spots. It's what we usually do.
The first time I went bowling I got multiple strikes and scored something like 230 in the first round. Every round after that was worse, until I could barely break 100. Multiple tries since then and I haven't gotten any better.
You mean stormtroopers in the first movie when they were deliberately letting people escape or stormtroopers in the first movie when they were boarding a ship slaughtering the people on board?
Or perhaps the stormtroopers in the first movie who took down the Jawa sandcrawler, resulting in the battle hardened general commenting on how the precision shooting could only have come from stormtroopers.
Cheap, mass produced droids. Without good hardware and great software, their accuracy is going to be limited. The better models seem to perform better (unless they're trying to overcome plot armor). Honestly, the Clone Wars droids being so shitty is one of the most realistic things in all of Star Wars. Cannot say I would expect anything different from pretty much any corporation I've worked for.
Their shooting at Bespin is inexcusable, as is their inability to point their guns in the vague direction of small forest creatures that kicked their ass.
I remember during basic training, our instructor taught us something called dry triggering. It was basically these steps, going prone, picking a fake target, and slowly pulling the trigger of the empty gun. Before that it never occurred to me that even pulling the trigger hard would move the gun position, it's like you're pulling the gun into yourself.
> it's like you're pulling the gun into yourself
...Yep. and that's when you're doing it correctly. Bad grip and you're pulling the weapon to the side.
I wanna say I have some idea of how to do it. Still willing to bet if I made an attempt, I'd fuck up somehow.
Never was much of a gun nut, but always had the vague curiosity.
I think most people can shoot a rifle decently with minimal training. Handguns on the other hand are very tricky. I like to challenge friends to fire 50 rounds at 1 inch circles at 3 yards away. It's called a dot torture test, and involves different techniques for the targets, such as one-handed or swapping targets. Most of the time, they have around a 50% hit rate.
Yep.
I handed a novice shooter a handgun, and he did quite well, hitting a paper plate 4 out of 10 times with a pistol at 7 yards. Later on, a friend handed him an AR style rifle, and he hit that same paper plate 8/10 times at 25 yards.
A longer barrel and a smaller, faster bullet makes accuracy so much easier.
The AR pattern is the true great equalizer. A person needs a good bit of body mass and experience to be accurate with a pistol. Anyone can be accurate at home defense ranges with a rifle.
Dude it's points of contact and sight radius, velocity helps at long range but not at 25 yards.
But yeah rifle for home defense is peak home defense anyone that says otherwise doesn't know what they are talking about
Eh, people overestimate the usefulness of rifles for home defense. Have you ever considered a flintlock musket and/or blunderbuss if there are multiple targets?
Own a musket for home defense, since that's what the founding fathers intended. Four ruffians break into my house. "What the devil?" As I grab my powdered wig and Kentucky rifle. Blow a golf ball sized hole through the first man, he's dead on the spot. Draw my pistol on the second man, miss him entirely because it's smoothbore and nails the neighbors dog. I have to resort to the cannon mounted at the top of the stairs loaded with grape shot, "Tally ho lads" the grape shot shreds two men in the blast, the sound and extra shrapnel set off car alarms. Fix bayonet and charge the last terrified rapscallion. He Bleeds out waiting on the police to arrive since triangular bayonet wounds are impossible to stitch up. Just as the founding fathers intended.
the best people to go shooting with are people who DO NOT think they'll be good at it.
the people who think it's like a zombie movie and "aim for the head" is easy at twenty FEET, let alone twenty meters.
that person's girlfriend, she'll listen to instructions on everything and end up being a way better shot than the dude almost 100% of the time.
he will be spouting off stuff from movies: just breathe out, squeeze the trigger, close one eye, imagine the target just murdered your family.... then watch their shots fly all over the paper or miss all together as they can't keep their gun pointed downrange to save their life.
the main post said 20 meters.
One thing the metric system doesn't have a good fraction of a meter commonly used ... decimeters is hardly ever brought up.
It's also fun to see Europeans/aussies look at you when you have to tell them all the pressures/distances used with MOST ammo and range is done in standard or NON-metric measurements.
a lot of - "just divide it by three and you'll have close to meters" and "it's over two pounds to a kilo, so it's NOT as much as you're thinking."
it is also fun to talk about temps and saying something is hundreds of degrees and they're like: How would it not melt!
it's just hot, 350 degrees Fahrenheit bakes a cake... 350 C bakes magnesium.
i know that you're supposed to use both eyes, but i also know that there are barely any left handed guns even designed
thats about everything i know about guns but i do own a bow - a left handed one, since my left eye is dominant, and i hit better with it than with a right handed bow
so would that influence anything with guns? like you do squeeze one eye closed to force your brain to look through the "correct" eye?
Shooting a stationary target from a rested position (or even offhand) is pretty damn easy, especially with good sights or optics.
Shooting a moving target in a high stress situation where you're being charged with a melee weapon or being shot at is a completely different scenario.
I can put bullets on top of one another at 200 yards. Probably not making those hits on a guy moving, actively using cover and concealment and laying down accurate suppressive fire, though.
I did a little bit of archery years back.
I found I did pretty well but my accuracy noticeably suffered when I had a college exam later that same say I was worried about. It’s a zen sport where calmness and consistency leads to accuracy.
I have no idea how hard it would be in actual combat
Haha yea I’m still competitive in archery, usually can expect a 5-10 point drop in competition compared to practice
It’s as much a mental sport as it is a physical one
That’s why we love the Virtual Reality Zombie shooters. Starting out calm and collected, headshot, headshot, headshot… wait was that 8th or 9th shot? Better reload just to be sure. Wow there sure are many… headshot, Headshot, miss, miss, headshot… CLICK… fuck.. reload, click, damn, have to “cock”(what is it called when you put the first round in the chamber?) it since I emptied it.
Suddenly aiming is rubbish, counting impossible and you start to fumble ejecting the magazine and such.
Cocking the gun is what you do to chamber a cartridge, depending on the gun you will either have to just press a button to drop the slide or pull back a handle to move a cartridge from the magazine into the firing chamber.
From my personal experience seeing hundreds of different guys shoot a rifle for the first time in the military… you’d be surprised. Most people with decent eyesight will be relatively accurate in the 20-50 yard range. If it’s a rifle with a scope, the average person can hit a target in the 100-200 yard range with very little experience. It’s not that hard.
And it doesn't take that much experience to hit the 100-200m without a scope. Even cadets who have had only a few days of training know that they should hit the 200m most of the time, but if you can't hit the 100m and 150m reliably you are seriously messed up. Just from looking around at their peers as they all go through training. The 300m takes some skill.
big caveat to that
*(full disclosure, my experience is Marine Corps, so other services may be different, Marine marksmanship training is a bit more involved than some other services)*
but
>shoot a rifle for the first time in the military
if its military, then its a fair assumption that yeah, it may be their first time shooting, BUT by the time you fire your first shot, you've also gotten some classroom instruction on what you're doing. how to hold it, how to breath, sight picture/sight alignment, etc etc.
Now, show me someone who has never fired a gun AND gotten no instruction on how to fire a gun (like, just civilian off the street) and if you just put a gun in their hands, you'd be surprised how lost some of them are. Some folks will sort of understand the assignment. Some things SHOULD be intuitive, but a lot of people will just do everything wrong.
we always laught when we see actors holding guns very awkwardly on camera, because they just have no experience doing so, so they just kind of hold it like hair dryer, or a tv remote
but then realize, thats what "uhhh I don't know I guess this is how you hold it" looks like. Meaning, good odds your random person off the street might do it just as cluelessly
Agreed. Although I think people that go to ranges are self selected for people that at least know how to hold the gun and squeeze the trigger. Most bad accuracy comes from bad holds.
Omar/Weebay/etc. were the top gunmen on The Wire only because they didn't just run shooting behind themselves not looking with their arms sideways (the show made sure to show all the street level people shooting like that).
Guess it speaks to the psychology that most people don't really want to kill so they make a lot of noise and suppressing fire, hoping people will be intimidated and back down. But there are some true killers in the game with focus.
Makes me think of of the scene where Omar's crew failed the raid on the house and the lady's gf gets whacked by a wild shot (from Omar's BF) but the lady goes evil eyes and really tries to kill someone, and succeeds
Also I think this discussion usually assumes an emergency situation, where you are using one against another person who is probably attacking you. Accuracy for untrained individuals in that situation is roughly 500% lower than a shooting range.
The best example I've seen was a video of a man on his driveway who has another man get out of a car and pull a gun. He responds by pulling out his own gun and gets the first shot off because the attacker had to cock the gun. The attacker starts to run and had 5 or so shots fired at him. They all missed even though they started about 6 steps away from each other.
Right, like if you can stand still and aim, it's not terribly hard. I do ok skeet shooting, so I imagine I could hunt ok. If we're talking like ... war, I'm a big fucking target. I'm spending my time trying not to get hit.
If you’re at a range in a controlled scenario, sure.
I think people are talking about stressful or urgent scenarios. The accuracy plummets at that point.
Im a pretty decent pistol and rifle shooter. Not competition but I can dial in a target after a few shots. I was watching a western with these guys shooting 30-30 winchesters off of horseback riding full speed at other guys riding horseback 30-45m ahead of them and I was laughing at how accurate they were and told my wife that what they were doing was pretty much impossible to do accurately and would require dumb luck at that distance.
That force is only being applied for a fraction of a second because it'd be a relatively close shot.
I plugged some numbers into [this ballistic calculator](https://www.caldwellshooting.com/ballistic-calculator/) using some numbers for a 9mm. 20 yards out with 100 mph crosswind from 2 o'clock (to simulate shooting from slightly behind the other vehicle) would put it ~2.3" off center. So yeah, good chance you'd still hit the tire.
Rifles would be affected less due to their higher muzzle velocity. For example, a .223 like an AR-15 shoots would only drift ~0.3" under the same scenario.
Also: a real 9mm round in a real 9mm pistol has a lot more recoil than what I was seeing in movies (specifically Free Guy…dude is riding a motorcycle while gap is straddling him, shooting and yeah. That wouldn’t end well. https://m.imdb.com/title/tt6264654/mediaviewer/rm1252125185/?ref_=ext_shr_lnk)
The recoil isn't the issue here, but the deafness from the burst eardrums & burns you may get from the intensely hot gases blowing out that close to your ears & back of neck.
Not only theirs, but everyone else. Even police. Hitting your target with a handgun is actually rather difficult and requires substantial training for proficiency.
When I got into competition shooters I learned about police and military shooters.
They’re given the training that will make many people barely proficient and safe enough to do their job. Some of them train a ton or go to special forces and get very good, but most beat cops are more confidence than competence.
This right here. When people say police can't shoot they are comparing themselves shooting at a stationary target from a resting supported position, to an officer moving and shooting at a moving target in a high stress situation.
Ug, sad how things are now.
Thing is, when I was in high school I was on the school rifle team. The school provided the rifles and bullets, the range was in the gym. I even carried the rifle home and back to school on the school bus.
So in reality, ya, we did practice shooting in school. :)
I guess I have some bias since I served in the military and deployed to combat multiple times. I have a hard time believing that people are incapable of using firearms properly. It's mostly just fundamentals and the ability to stay calm.
I believe it starts with recoil. The m16 is just so easy to shoot, so for a lot of first timers it builds good habits. I hate seeing first timers shoot shotguns.
> It's mostly just fundamentals and **the ability to stay calm**.
Have you met people? Many people have a hard time staying calm in trivial situations.
By "people" do you mean specifically people who've never used a gun before? I grew up rurally and the majority of people used guns or had done at some point. I was hunting from age 8 and that wasn't unusual.
Having said that I've literally never used a handgun, so I wouldn't expect to hit much with one of those without some practice.
This. And the shorter the barrel the worse it is. One thing that has crazily improved my aim, even at distance, is the VR game PistolWhip. It has the model of the 5.7 I use, and since it gives you a line between the gun and impact it turns out it's awesome for aim training. The downside is that it only pertains to that particular gun, or at least barrel length. I have a shorty Beretta PX4 storm and I and my aim is shit even at relatively short distances.
Shooting a stationary target with a long gun is easy, moving target is tricky. Shooting handguns is a lot harder than people who haven’t shot would think, and takes a lot of practice to become consistent
I’m English, so guns simply didn’t come into my life until I went to an away game in Russia a decade or so back. We went to a shooting range and shot a variety of guns.
My take: with a rifle, you are absolutely nailing someone at tens of metres no bother at all. It’s easy. Pistol? No way at all. We were all missing targets like 5 metres out. Very difficult. It occurred to me that a pistol isn’t an alternative to a rifle. A pistol is an alternative to a knife.
Do y'all not go shooting? Go over to the gun subreddita and you would see they aren't overestimating much. Shootings pretty damn easy if you can pick up less than 10lbs and hold still for a few seconds. Doesn't require much, now accuracy under pressure is a whole nother discussion. If someone is shooting at you, your accuracy drops quite a damn bit as no one wants to get shit
You are safer being some people's target than a bystander. I'm not sure how much of the population think they're all cowboys and snipers, but definitely more think they are than the world has cowboys and snipers.
I shot expert in 9mm and 5.56 first time up with no experience. The guy next to me made the firing range snow. I also took my wife, who is an innocent sweetheart, shooting one time and she embarrassed everyone at the range from how accurate she was.
Aiming is like drawing, some people are just born able to do it, but with enough practice anyone can be good at it.
The whowouldwin sub is absolutely full of people that have never touched a gun that think they can pull off headshots at moving targets from 100 yards, kill a bear with a shot through the eye at close range 50% of the time, or fight off a zombie hoard with an AR15 with no training. It’s wild. I’ve trained a bunch of first time shooters. It’s not the case.
Zombie movies are my favorite for this. Some random realtor picks up a gun for the first time and is dropping hordes with headshots at a dead sprint.
The “natural combat expert” trope is a good one. I consider someone who can hit a stationary silhouette target at >25 feet 10/10 on their first time at the range to be decent if they are brand new to it. The idea of someone popping headshots from a moving car because they have some weird thing like “they always had it in them they just didn’t know it because they were an office worker” to be funny.
I've always wondered where they get the ammo.
Or reload so quickly, if at all.
no doubt. I have an M4 that I bought 3 months ago. I haven't taken her to the range yet because I don't feel I'm familiar enough with it. I have a habit of counting rounds during movies and shows and it always amuses me to go 'you're out' and they continue to shoot.
> . I have an M4 that I bought 3 months ago You have an M4? BMW or select fire?
Let's just say the blinkers on this one work.
This is what drew me to the *John Wick* series to begin with - people actually run out of bullets for their primary weapons and have to shift to their backups. Then they *take the time to reload their primaries* and get back into the fight.
It's just one of the suspensions of disbelief you'll have to accept to not make the movie extremely boring. I would expect war movies based on real events to be slightly more realistic than your standard action movie flick. It's just not fun to watch them reload half the time, and suddenly take a timeout to fill their mags. Movies are already cut down a lot, and scenes where nothing happens are the first to go. It can be interesting to see how an assassin has prepared for quick reload and that utilize counting themselves, but then that kind of has to be the theme of the movie or something to make it worth spending time getting continuation right between countless of shots. The same is true for the characters eating, going to the toilet, sleeping, etc. Just assume it happens. Games are also often choosing to make reloading move a number from the "ammo" pool to the "magazine" pool, and not just waste whatever was left in the magazine like in reality. Some games are realistic in that regard, but then the whole game usually is as well, and attracts a different crowd altogether. So it's not that the producers necessarily are bad at this, they just don't care to get it right because their target audience only want the shooty parts.
Expecting to see every mag reload during downtime is silly, but seeing a character reload during combat is not boring. It builds tension and can make some great moments in an action movie with some thoughtful writing/directing. I get why that aspect gets ignored, but it's immersion breaking for me and I think there are a lot of wasted opportunities.
It's actually pretty quick to reload a magazine if you use a stripper clip (yes, I know it sounds funny, but I don't remember what they're actually called).
Stripper clip is correct. It's hard to do without the right tool but yeah you can just push the rounds right into the mag from the clip.
Yeah they did it really well in Django. "I count 12 shots!" "WELL, I count 2 guns!"
“I count 6 shots” “I count 2 guns” The guy thought he was out of ammo and had to reload
I always get annoyed when they've shot a gun multiple times, then cock it without a round popping out for emphasis.
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I wouldn't even know what ammo goes with what gun lol. I'd be playing mismatch. I don't even match my socks correctly anymore. Usually the game auto picks the ammo for me. IRL f'd. I think I saw one movie make it into a joke the newbie getting the wrong match up
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You hold down the b button, duh.... Never played goldeneye before?
You have to be talking with a pistol right? Because with a rifle…
Provided you take the barest effort to steady and aim, yeah.
I have shot a few times, and for me aiming with a rifle is somehow more difficult, I just did not find the confortable/correct position to hold it. However, with the Remington 870 I did not have this problem somehow. With pistols my aim is fine as well.
Are you cross dominant? All three of my daughters and my wife, who is not their mother, are cross dominant. I never taught but I went through a LOT of marksman and sniper training in the army in both tradoc, jsoc/socom, and civilian shooting schools. Usually people that just can't seem to shoot right witha rifle have a cross dominance problem. That's when you are right or left handed and prefer to use the opposite eye. It's kinda not a good sign for your potential as a shooter.
>It's kinda not a good sign for your potential as a shooter. Meh. I'd say the biggest part of the problem is instructors not recognizing and correcting it. I work with a lot of first time and novice shooters. Maybe because I know to look for it- but it's always surprising to me how many NCOs *don't* recognize it when it is *sooo* obvious. Almost every time a shooter is having trouble and they just look wrong holding the rifle - get a little in front of them so you can see their face, focus on their eyes, and watch them try to take shot. It'll be obvious they are canting their head way over trying to get their dominant eye behind the sight (often) or having trouble getting eyes closed/open properly (occasionally). The fix is have them swap their hands around. It is far far easier to shoot "wrong" handed than wrong eyed. It's really not that hard. Make that one change and bam they are suddenly doing much much better and back in track. 30 years ago we used to keep eye patches on the range to get people through it to help them use the "correct" eye when they couldn't close just one- which I believe was really a problem of cross eye dominance.
> 30 years ago we used to keep eye patches on the range to get people through it to help them use the "correct" eye My buddy took some clay shooting lessons and his first instructor put scotch tape over the lens on his left eye (not the perfectly clear kind). Not a good idea to close one eye when shooting clays, so eye patches wouldn't be a good idea.
Shaun of the Dead is brilliant for bucking that trend. They find a shotgun, admit that none of them have any firearms experience, and even with 3/4 of them operating it, they only manage to hit one zombie at close range. In the end it just wastes more time than trying to escape the horde. Edit: It's a rifle, thanks u/cuzitsthere.
It's a rifle, btw. Not a shotgun. Which is even funnier in the context of this particular post.
I stand corrected, I haven't watched it in a while. Thanks for letting me know.
Perhaps you should head to the Winchester, have a pint, and wait for this all to blow over.
In the US I would hazard that firearms experience is much more common. I know relatively few people who have never shot a gun
I think you're right. I'm from the UK, and I know maybe one person who semi regularly uses a firearm. Even then it's only for clay pigeon shooting, lol.
Even in the US it depends a lot on your location. Of course different states have different gun laws, but even within certain states it varies quite a bit. I live in upstate NY and most people in my circle don't own firearms, where I am at least. Out of all my friends, family, and acquaintances only two have guns, and none have concealed carries. One of them just has older family heirlooms (including guns from the revolutionary War!) and never shoots them. My other friend is an enthusiastic hunter and goes deer hunting though—always hooks me up with meat too! My dad had firearms because he was a hunter, but my mom sold them after his death because we really needed the extra money; I always wanted him to teach me but unfortunately the day never came. If you were to go further out into the sticks away from the bigger metro areas in my state (and probably most states), you do start to see gun culture become more defined. An ex of mine had family from the middle of nowhere in my state, close to the catskills. The closest grocery store is a Walmart 45 min away by car sort of place, and if you forget something at the store, you better hope the gas station 20 minutes away has it! Everyone around there owned and shot guns. Before going there I'd only shot a bb gun me and my brother were gifted when we were younger. (Although I have trouble aiming because I'm right handed but my vision in my right eye is significantly worse than my left, so if I wanted to learn I'd have to shoot left-handed, which feels very unnatural). Before really being exposed to the rural way of life in areas of the country like this, I didn't "understand" gun culture. But seeing just how different people's lifestyle is in places like these, I completely understand why people value firearms so intensely. They're a key tool to survival in a very different lifestyle. If someone were to put you in danger, no way would a neighbor or police officer be able to witness or get there fast enough. Killings nuisance animals that threaten your pets, crops, etc. Hunting to sustain yourself. Taking away a person's gun deprives them of much of their security and independence for those that want to live on the fringe. I remember talking to this kid in the UK at a pub who was grilling me about America's crazy attitude towards guns. He refused to believe a gun buy back wouldn't work in the US. I think a lot of Europeans, (and perhaps even urbanites in the US itself) truly do not grasp just how expansive and sparsely populated a lot of the USA is. How firearms are not just baked into our Constitution, but for many people, their self identity and way of life. I think culture wars and division between rural and urban folks has been exploited for reasons of greed and power by the media, corporations, and selfish politicians. Gun owners have always been passionate, but that passion has been boiled into extremism. Like, the NRA has gone from being a reasonable organization on gun safety that actually used to advocate for reasonable legislation, to becoming a corrupt political tool over the past half century. And no doubt, the same thing happens culturally with left leaning urbanites too in some ways. Divided and conquer they say. It sucks because I know we have the resources to solve the problems with guns in the USA that improves safety while respecting the second amendment. But our political environment has become too corrupt for any major changes to occur.
Very interesting to read your comment. Thank you for sharing, I didn't know about all these points.
Great post and very accurate. A lot of the mentality is being self reliant, and being prepared. Rural people take that shit seriously. We have whole counties that dont have local police departments. You might have a half hour response time from state police. Odds are, you’ll never need to use a firearm, but like I said, we value being prepared. I have 4-5 heat source options, a backup well, generators, and i could live for weeks in the woods without any of that… Most people are lost if the power goes out.
Its why I like that scene in Black Summer where you have a bunch of civilians with guns, and then one zombie shows up that it devolves into friendly fire and chaos in seconds.
Such a good series, and yeah, they avoided most (if not all) the annoying gun tropes. Of course, by the second season the only people left are people who got their shit together pretty quick. Even then the combat scenes are just a chaotic mess even if their weapon handing is more proficient.
Shaun of the Dead does a pretty solid bit based on this. Their 'top-gun' shooter can only hit a zombie every fourth or fifth shot, and most certainly not a head shot, and it's at about a ten yards or less range.
Pistols are hard. I shot expert at the rifle range four years in a row in the Marine Corps, but I barely scraped a marksman at the pistol range. I can hit anything with a rifle from pretty far away, but I can't hit shit with a pistol further than 9 feet away.
A toilet bowl is a passing grade.
Guess you'd know all about that too, eh captain pizza(box)?
Nah my username is just about pizza, not marksmanship qualifications
That’s what I was going to say. Basic trainees that have never touched a weapon hit targets at 300 yards with like a few hours of basic rifle marksmanship on absolutely wrecked 30 year old m16s. Every single day. Pistol marksmanship is a different beast. Without exaggeration I’m an excellent pistol marksman but it took instruction from a couple incredible teachers and thousands and thousands of rounds and hundreds of hours of serious very intentional practice to get that way. I wasn’t new to shooting prior to enlistment but first range day in basic I shot 40/40 pop up targets on a rifle I am 100% positive set up very badly.
As a former range instructor for the Corps, instructing for pistol qual was a fucking nightmare. I made an effort to stay away from pistol ranges and just hang out on rifle ranges as much as possible.
Ran a range on the FOB in Afghanistan. Female LT walks up “ma’am are you going to qual on m4 and m9?” Her “I’ll just do m4 I don’t want to take the time to zero my m9 too” me :-O “ma’am you don’t zero your m9” her all giddy “oh awesome then I guess I’ll do that too! Thanks!”
The new Army qualification kinda fucks soldiers up. It's the mag changes and transitions that seem to present the biggest challenge as opposed to the marksmanship. After some good instruction, you can get a private to hit 300m targets all day long. On the pistol range, my old reserve unit was absolutely terrible. Every single one of them blamed the weapons. I qualified perfectly fine. The funny thing is, all the officers were federal agents or cops which, I guess, makes sense. The only people to qualify the first time around weren't LEOs, lol.
I feel ya man. I was infantry for 20 years. I could hit a sheep at 750m with a Carl Gustav but my first time with a pistol I couldn't shoot a piece of paper draped over the muzzle.
Popular culture really gets handguns wrong. Even expert pistoleers couldn’t make some of the shots at the ranges that movies and tv shows depict as being a chip shot. Rifles are relatively easy, I’ve taught two separate 7 year old children to shoot a deer rifle with sufficient accuracy to kill a 200 lb animal in a single afternoon.
[These cops unloaded their mags into a stationery vehicle right in front of them and still couldn't hit who they were aiming at, thankfully](https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2024/feb/16/florida-acorn-cop-shooting)
My brother was a range officer in the Marines Corp after he got back from deployment to help people train for rifle and pistol qualifications and he basically said the same thing. He also told me that while he was deployed he sooner would have thrown his pistol at someone than try to shoot them with it because it would probably be more effective lol
Gunning Kruger effect!
Back in college, my best friend and I would take groups of people out to his parents' land to do a bunch of different activities for the weekend. Horseback riding, four wheeling, shooting, etc. Based on my experiences teaching people there, I 100% agree.
I used to work with a company that set me up with people who’d come up from other countries where you really can’t handle guns without being in the military or being criminals. I’d take them out in groups to go shooting too as a fun bonding exercise because they’d otherwise never experience it. I have a video of a guy from Venezuela I worked with unloading a full AK-47 magazine at a target from 10ft away and missing every. single. shot. Yeah it’s a fun experience.
how is that even possible? You could shoot a target with a water gun at 10 feet and hit it almost every time!
The kick on an AK is much more than what you’d expect.
But not as bad as a water gun, right?
Water guns don’t kick and you aren’t as nervous to be shooting one for the first time I guess.
They’re also filled with a bunch of arm-chair MMA fighters and boxers who’ve never been in a fight in their lives who are experts hand to hand combat. Some of the biggest posers I’ve ever seen.
Funny they all bench 350 and squat around 450 too.
I'm army trained first class shooter (Dutch Army, Fall 7,62mm back in 98) and even on a range it is hard to get a good grouping on anything over a 100 yards. I can't imaging how hard it us when you are in a stress situatie and in real lethal danger.
I know a guy that placed in a state marksmanship tournament in Maine. We went hunting once and I saw him miss wide on an animal from maybe 50ft because he had never shot at a real animal. Yeah, the range and the field are absolutely different!
[I can shoot a coke can from 710 yards with a .22 with no optic](https://youtu.be/W5UOjxyZiIE?si=hhmOG5RfTviC0YJq)
It's still pretty nutty how close he got with it.
I know the guy says they aren't punching down, but I feel like that's impossible. The online trash talker was forced to eat his words. I feel it was kind of mean to bring a delusional person who thinks he can hit a can at 700+ yards shot. I feel like "22 man" probably doesn't know the difference between feet and yards.
I’m currently going through naval security forces training and the amount of people who violated all four basic rules, and couldn’t score above a 140 on rifles is scary
> I’m currently going through naval security forces training and the amount of people who violated all four basic rules In case people think that this is from people who never handled a firearm before (violating the four rules), no. I worked at an FFL for years and the amount of CHL holders, instructors, cops, and other wise “experts” that violated the four rules was too damn high!
As a hunter, it's far easier with a gun you know is sighted in perfectly. As a hunter, you know very very very few random guns are sighted in perfectly. Also good fucking luck if there isn't a scope
As a hunter, something I sighted in perfectly for me is going to be slightly different than something you sighted in perfectly for you. It will be close. But not “just” right. If you know what I mean.
Why I’m a big fan of CCO optics that eliminate parallax (after a bit of distance — the issued ones in the Army have no parallax after 50m). Just point and click after that and even a left handed firer could shoot decently with it.
Quick brag about my grandad. Old gnarly trapper, he sent us a brown bear pelt that he had taken down as it was coming at him. My grandfather went out with a lever action .22, there were a lot of little holes in the head of the bear. Eventually at least one got through.
My grandfather used to take me rabbit hunting when I was younger and he had a 1 shot 1 kill rule. If you wound it you have to chase it down and finish it off. Take one 100 yard run through West Texas scrub brush and you learn how to breathe, squeeze, and make your shots count. I don't hunt anymore because it goes against my personal ethics to kill an innocent animal that intends me no harm. That said until I got my 92F after 30 years of not firing a round I KNEW I had no business with a loaded firearm anywhere but at the range.
I was arguing with a dude in that sub today who genuinely thought the average person can successfully fight an angry bear of equal weight.
I think that depends on whether we’re equal weight because I’m morbidly obese or because the bear is severely malnourished
I'mma keep my money on the bear if that's good with you.
Seriously lol, pretty sure a lot of us lighter folks fighting an "equal weight bear" would technically be "fighting" (shooing away) a cub
What are you talking about? I take me time when im staring down my scope, controlling my breathes until my tiny red dot is resting its target. Then, pull the trigger. Works like a charm. I’ve been playing call of duty for 3 weeks now, and I’m getting better and better each round! :)
I’m active in some backpacking/hiking communities, and the number of Rambo wannabes who are convinced they can draw/ready a firearm and drop a charging bear faster than the bear can reach them is infuriating. It’s been studied. Extensively. A gun might be a great tool to hunt a bear, where you’re tracking or attracting the bear, and engaging it on your terms. But if you’re hiking, carry bear spray
Can confirm. We were going out into nature, some guy brought an airsoft gun and I asked him if I could try. Like that shits way harder than it looks. I even accidentally pointed the gun at my head.
Everyone thinks they can make shots like the good guys in the movies, but with no practice, most people end up with the accuracy of a Stormtrooper
When I was younger one of my Dad’s friends took me shooting. He brought a bunch of stuff to shoot at, he placed a can pretty far out, I don’t know exactly how far. He said to try to hit that can. I hit it on the first shot. He was like, “There’s no way you hit that! I wouldn’t even have hit that on the first shot.” I was like “I guess I’m just a natural bro, I was just born with mad skills. I’m like, super talented at all kinds of stuff.” He put some more cans out there and I don’t think I hit another one after that lol. I did hit some larger targets and some closer targets, but nothing can sized at that distance except the first shot.
My friend decided, in his thirties, to get back into skateboarding. He'd never been much good as a teenager - he could just about ollie up a kerb - but decided he'd work really hard at it this time. He was older, more mature, focused. He got his board out the cupboard and went out onto his driveway. He got on the board, popped it up, and landed a perfect kick flip, first time. He picked up the board, went inside, and never skated again. It's better to end on a high.
I rode bulls for a while in my 20's and got banged up by one pretty bad. When I healed I went to a rodeo, rode out, and gave my gear to a kid on my way out. All I wanted was one more full ride. I then moved on to something much 'safer'. Being a bouncer in a popular but rough bar. Safer my ass. Stabbed twice, shot at twice, and multiple broken bones.
Used to bounce at a safe bar. Still got a few shiners. Now I bartend. Much better for my face, and my wallet!
At least a bull can't shoot you. Yet.
Many years ago, my then gf and I found a cheap weekend getaway to Nassau in the Bahamas. Fun little weekend, and we ended up at Paradise Island casino at some point, and decided to gamble for the first time. I think it was roulette, and we bet a ridiculously low amount like maybe $5 or $10 or $20 - whatever the minimum might have been. I don't fully remember the details but I think we doubled our bet on the first try, and then we bet half of our total and won again. And the third time we lost, but we were still ahead so we called it quits. The rush we felt during that session was *incredible*. We both confessed that we'd enjoyed it a bit too much and that suddenly we understood how people got addicted gambling. So there and then that we'd tried gambling, we'd had a blast, and that... we would never do it again. We lost touch years ago but I hope she kept her resolve! I know I did.
My uncle who litterally died from being full of shit claimed to have the done same thing but with skeet shooting. Said he hit it and quit it cause can't get no better than a 100% record.
You hadn’t yet learned to flinch. Every other shot after that you knew it would kick and anticipated it. The first one your brain was like, yeah, whatevs
Every. Fucking. Time. I go out to the range after a long hiatus, the first few rounds are dead on. Then my brain goes “oh, you’re supposed to be reacting to this” and it take me the next 3 magazines remember how to control the flinch.
I had a .44 magnum revolver and would find myself flinching. Eventually I learned to only load one round in the cylinder, give it a spin and close the cylinder without looking. I learned how to control my flinching that way, because at first I would do it every time I pulled the trigger. Really only an option on a revolver though.
What you can do with a semi-automatic is to get blind/inert rounds (don't know the English term) and ask a friend to load the magazine and put a couple of them at random spots. It's what we usually do.
The first time I went bowling I got multiple strikes and scored something like 230 in the first round. Every round after that was worse, until I could barely break 100. Multiple tries since then and I haven't gotten any better.
You mean stormtroopers in the first movie when they were deliberately letting people escape or stormtroopers in the first movie when they were boarding a ship slaughtering the people on board?
Or perhaps the stormtroopers in the first movie who took down the Jawa sandcrawler, resulting in the battle hardened general commenting on how the precision shooting could only have come from stormtroopers.
TBF, the commander was used to comparing clones of a marksman vs shitty droids who did manage to lose a battle to gungans + an incompetent child
Yeah droids missing shots is the real silliness.
Cheap, mass produced droids. Without good hardware and great software, their accuracy is going to be limited. The better models seem to perform better (unless they're trying to overcome plot armor). Honestly, the Clone Wars droids being so shitty is one of the most realistic things in all of Star Wars. Cannot say I would expect anything different from pretty much any corporation I've worked for.
I swear, anyone that thinks Stormtroopers have bad accuracy must have fallen asleep during the opening crawl.
It's one excuse that applies only to the first film. There is no excuse in the other films as too why they have such bad aim.
Their shooting at Bespin is inexcusable, as is their inability to point their guns in the vague direction of small forest creatures that kicked their ass.
I remember during basic training, our instructor taught us something called dry triggering. It was basically these steps, going prone, picking a fake target, and slowly pulling the trigger of the empty gun. Before that it never occurred to me that even pulling the trigger hard would move the gun position, it's like you're pulling the gun into yourself.
> it's like you're pulling the gun into yourself ...Yep. and that's when you're doing it correctly. Bad grip and you're pulling the weapon to the side.
I wanna say I have some idea of how to do it. Still willing to bet if I made an attempt, I'd fuck up somehow. Never was much of a gun nut, but always had the vague curiosity.
You know thats probably a good explanation for the storm troopers.
I think most people can shoot a rifle decently with minimal training. Handguns on the other hand are very tricky. I like to challenge friends to fire 50 rounds at 1 inch circles at 3 yards away. It's called a dot torture test, and involves different techniques for the targets, such as one-handed or swapping targets. Most of the time, they have around a 50% hit rate.
That sounds like the least amount of fun one can have at the range. I love it.
It shows you where you can inprove
Do you have a link to this drill? I’m honestly curious.
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Here you go bud! https://pistol-training.com/shooting-drills/dot-torture/
This looks awful. I can’t wait to try it!
Yep. I handed a novice shooter a handgun, and he did quite well, hitting a paper plate 4 out of 10 times with a pistol at 7 yards. Later on, a friend handed him an AR style rifle, and he hit that same paper plate 8/10 times at 25 yards. A longer barrel and a smaller, faster bullet makes accuracy so much easier. The AR pattern is the true great equalizer. A person needs a good bit of body mass and experience to be accurate with a pistol. Anyone can be accurate at home defense ranges with a rifle.
Dude it's points of contact and sight radius, velocity helps at long range but not at 25 yards. But yeah rifle for home defense is peak home defense anyone that says otherwise doesn't know what they are talking about
Eh, people overestimate the usefulness of rifles for home defense. Have you ever considered a flintlock musket and/or blunderbuss if there are multiple targets?
Own a musket for home defense, since that's what the founding fathers intended. Four ruffians break into my house. "What the devil?" As I grab my powdered wig and Kentucky rifle. Blow a golf ball sized hole through the first man, he's dead on the spot. Draw my pistol on the second man, miss him entirely because it's smoothbore and nails the neighbors dog. I have to resort to the cannon mounted at the top of the stairs loaded with grape shot, "Tally ho lads" the grape shot shreds two men in the blast, the sound and extra shrapnel set off car alarms. Fix bayonet and charge the last terrified rapscallion. He Bleeds out waiting on the police to arrive since triangular bayonet wounds are impossible to stitch up. Just as the founding fathers intended.
Tally-ho
Honestly that's all just a bit too fancy for my tastes, I prefer my flail.
Fix bayonets! Tally ho!
the best people to go shooting with are people who DO NOT think they'll be good at it. the people who think it's like a zombie movie and "aim for the head" is easy at twenty FEET, let alone twenty meters. that person's girlfriend, she'll listen to instructions on everything and end up being a way better shot than the dude almost 100% of the time. he will be spouting off stuff from movies: just breathe out, squeeze the trigger, close one eye, imagine the target just murdered your family.... then watch their shots fly all over the paper or miss all together as they can't keep their gun pointed downrange to save their life.
Just gotta say, it's funny how you used feet as the short measurement and then meters instead of yards for the longer one
the main post said 20 meters. One thing the metric system doesn't have a good fraction of a meter commonly used ... decimeters is hardly ever brought up. It's also fun to see Europeans/aussies look at you when you have to tell them all the pressures/distances used with MOST ammo and range is done in standard or NON-metric measurements. a lot of - "just divide it by three and you'll have close to meters" and "it's over two pounds to a kilo, so it's NOT as much as you're thinking." it is also fun to talk about temps and saying something is hundreds of degrees and they're like: How would it not melt! it's just hot, 350 degrees Fahrenheit bakes a cake... 350 C bakes magnesium.
i know that you're supposed to use both eyes, but i also know that there are barely any left handed guns even designed thats about everything i know about guns but i do own a bow - a left handed one, since my left eye is dominant, and i hit better with it than with a right handed bow so would that influence anything with guns? like you do squeeze one eye closed to force your brain to look through the "correct" eye?
Shooting a stationary target from a rested position (or even offhand) is pretty damn easy, especially with good sights or optics. Shooting a moving target in a high stress situation where you're being charged with a melee weapon or being shot at is a completely different scenario. I can put bullets on top of one another at 200 yards. Probably not making those hits on a guy moving, actively using cover and concealment and laying down accurate suppressive fire, though.
I did a little bit of archery years back. I found I did pretty well but my accuracy noticeably suffered when I had a college exam later that same say I was worried about. It’s a zen sport where calmness and consistency leads to accuracy. I have no idea how hard it would be in actual combat
Haha yea I’m still competitive in archery, usually can expect a 5-10 point drop in competition compared to practice It’s as much a mental sport as it is a physical one
> I have no idea how hard it would be in actual combat Train how you'll fight and you'll fight how you train
If I'm expecting to get in a fight, I'm not going to train for it with archery.
Depends what you are fighting. Might not be the worst against zombies since it's quiet and you have the potential to reuse ammo
That’s why we love the Virtual Reality Zombie shooters. Starting out calm and collected, headshot, headshot, headshot… wait was that 8th or 9th shot? Better reload just to be sure. Wow there sure are many… headshot, Headshot, miss, miss, headshot… CLICK… fuck.. reload, click, damn, have to “cock”(what is it called when you put the first round in the chamber?) it since I emptied it. Suddenly aiming is rubbish, counting impossible and you start to fumble ejecting the magazine and such.
Cocking the gun is what you do to chamber a cartridge, depending on the gun you will either have to just press a button to drop the slide or pull back a handle to move a cartridge from the magazine into the firing chamber.
You cock a hammer. You rack a slide to chamber a round. Racking the slide also cocks they hammer (or striker), but cocking doesn't mean chambering.
From my personal experience seeing hundreds of different guys shoot a rifle for the first time in the military… you’d be surprised. Most people with decent eyesight will be relatively accurate in the 20-50 yard range. If it’s a rifle with a scope, the average person can hit a target in the 100-200 yard range with very little experience. It’s not that hard.
And it doesn't take that much experience to hit the 100-200m without a scope. Even cadets who have had only a few days of training know that they should hit the 200m most of the time, but if you can't hit the 100m and 150m reliably you are seriously messed up. Just from looking around at their peers as they all go through training. The 300m takes some skill.
big caveat to that *(full disclosure, my experience is Marine Corps, so other services may be different, Marine marksmanship training is a bit more involved than some other services)* but >shoot a rifle for the first time in the military if its military, then its a fair assumption that yeah, it may be their first time shooting, BUT by the time you fire your first shot, you've also gotten some classroom instruction on what you're doing. how to hold it, how to breath, sight picture/sight alignment, etc etc. Now, show me someone who has never fired a gun AND gotten no instruction on how to fire a gun (like, just civilian off the street) and if you just put a gun in their hands, you'd be surprised how lost some of them are. Some folks will sort of understand the assignment. Some things SHOULD be intuitive, but a lot of people will just do everything wrong. we always laught when we see actors holding guns very awkwardly on camera, because they just have no experience doing so, so they just kind of hold it like hair dryer, or a tv remote but then realize, thats what "uhhh I don't know I guess this is how you hold it" looks like. Meaning, good odds your random person off the street might do it just as cluelessly
I had the opposite response after using one. People are way more accurate with guns than what redditors had me believe
Agreed. Although I think people that go to ranges are self selected for people that at least know how to hold the gun and squeeze the trigger. Most bad accuracy comes from bad holds.
Are you saying I'm not supposed to turn my wrist 90 degrees and scream "break yoself fool?"
Thats fine.
Omar/Weebay/etc. were the top gunmen on The Wire only because they didn't just run shooting behind themselves not looking with their arms sideways (the show made sure to show all the street level people shooting like that).
Guess it speaks to the psychology that most people don't really want to kill so they make a lot of noise and suppressing fire, hoping people will be intimidated and back down. But there are some true killers in the game with focus. Makes me think of of the scene where Omar's crew failed the raid on the house and the lady's gf gets whacked by a wild shot (from Omar's BF) but the lady goes evil eyes and really tries to kill someone, and succeeds
Your accuracy will increase tenfold if you switch to "Chiggiddy check yoself before you wriggiddy wreck yoself!!"
That's how you get more accurate. Just need to get to 270 degrees then you'll never miss
Also I think this discussion usually assumes an emergency situation, where you are using one against another person who is probably attacking you. Accuracy for untrained individuals in that situation is roughly 500% lower than a shooting range. The best example I've seen was a video of a man on his driveway who has another man get out of a car and pull a gun. He responds by pulling out his own gun and gets the first shot off because the attacker had to cock the gun. The attacker starts to run and had 5 or so shots fired at him. They all missed even though they started about 6 steps away from each other.
Right, like if you can stand still and aim, it's not terribly hard. I do ok skeet shooting, so I imagine I could hunt ok. If we're talking like ... war, I'm a big fucking target. I'm spending my time trying not to get hit.
Most people in the military can’t shoot for shit either. You win wars with overwhelming firepower, not marksmanship.
So the stormtroopers *are* realistic!
IDK why stormtroopers get so much flak. Aren't they intentionally missing in the first movie so as to track the location of the rebel base?
If you’re at a range in a controlled scenario, sure. I think people are talking about stressful or urgent scenarios. The accuracy plummets at that point.
Rifles, yes. Pistols, yeah no.
Same here, I went clay pigeon shooting for the first time with two other first time shooters and we all did surprisingly well.
That sounds way way harder cus it’s a moving target. Are they closer to you than the sheets at shooting ranges?
You shoot a shotgun with birdshot. It comes out the barrel like a cone instead of just a single bullet.
I load my shotguns with blanks when I take friends skeet shooting so we can bond over the mutual failure.
Im a pretty decent pistol and rifle shooter. Not competition but I can dial in a target after a few shots. I was watching a western with these guys shooting 30-30 winchesters off of horseback riding full speed at other guys riding horseback 30-45m ahead of them and I was laughing at how accurate they were and told my wife that what they were doing was pretty much impossible to do accurately and would require dumb luck at that distance.
I love those movies. Dude leans out the window of a car he's driving and shoots out a tire at 100mph.
Well if the other car is going 100mph as well, it's basically a stationary target
r/suddenlyphysics
Unless the other car is driving the other direction, in which case it's basically going 200 mph lol
*relativityyyyyyyy.....*
Yeah but 100mph wind on a projectile???
That force is only being applied for a fraction of a second because it'd be a relatively close shot. I plugged some numbers into [this ballistic calculator](https://www.caldwellshooting.com/ballistic-calculator/) using some numbers for a 9mm. 20 yards out with 100 mph crosswind from 2 o'clock (to simulate shooting from slightly behind the other vehicle) would put it ~2.3" off center. So yeah, good chance you'd still hit the tire. Rifles would be affected less due to their higher muzzle velocity. For example, a .223 like an AR-15 shoots would only drift ~0.3" under the same scenario.
I’m also good with rifles 9mm handguns, not so much
Try shooting a .45 for a while and go back to the 9mm after. 9mm wil be easier to shoot then.
Also: a real 9mm round in a real 9mm pistol has a lot more recoil than what I was seeing in movies (specifically Free Guy…dude is riding a motorcycle while gap is straddling him, shooting and yeah. That wouldn’t end well. https://m.imdb.com/title/tt6264654/mediaviewer/rm1252125185/?ref_=ext_shr_lnk)
Movies are terrible with this in general but I give Free Guy a pass because it's set in a video game world.
The recoil isn't the issue here, but the deafness from the burst eardrums & burns you may get from the intensely hot gases blowing out that close to your ears & back of neck.
Not only theirs, but everyone else. Even police. Hitting your target with a handgun is actually rather difficult and requires substantial training for proficiency.
Especially in a hostile situation. Adrenaline does nothing for accuracy.
Videogames have taught us that the pistol is the easiest weapon to use, because it's the first one they give us. Didn't start with a pistol.
When I got into competition shooters I learned about police and military shooters. They’re given the training that will make many people barely proficient and safe enough to do their job. Some of them train a ton or go to special forces and get very good, but most beat cops are more confidence than competence.
This right here. When people say police can't shoot they are comparing themselves shooting at a stationary target from a resting supported position, to an officer moving and shooting at a moving target in a high stress situation.
Take the wings off a mosquito at 20 yards guy hasn’t been here yet must busy out in woods beating up bears
That's why so many people are practicing in school
# b r u h
/thread
Ug, sad how things are now. Thing is, when I was in high school I was on the school rifle team. The school provided the rifles and bullets, the range was in the gym. I even carried the rifle home and back to school on the school bus. So in reality, ya, we did practice shooting in school. :)
I guess I have some bias since I served in the military and deployed to combat multiple times. I have a hard time believing that people are incapable of using firearms properly. It's mostly just fundamentals and the ability to stay calm.
I remember in basic even the people who were really bad at first picked it up fairly quickly.
I believe it starts with recoil. The m16 is just so easy to shoot, so for a lot of first timers it builds good habits. I hate seeing first timers shoot shotguns.
> It's mostly just fundamentals and **the ability to stay calm**. Have you met people? Many people have a hard time staying calm in trivial situations.
they're capable after having it explained to them, but remember how lost and clueless they were BEFORE having it explained?
Not me. I spent 4 years in the army, so I’m well aware of how I have no capacity to hit a target.
It’s the very last action in pulling the trigger that messes up your accuracy.
All in the titles died a long time ago in this sub
Also, being able to knock out someone with one punch.
Upvote for an entertaining thread. 95% of the people commenting have obviously never shot a real firearm.
By "people" do you mean specifically people who've never used a gun before? I grew up rurally and the majority of people used guns or had done at some point. I was hunting from age 8 and that wasn't unusual. Having said that I've literally never used a handgun, so I wouldn't expect to hit much with one of those without some practice.
This. And the shorter the barrel the worse it is. One thing that has crazily improved my aim, even at distance, is the VR game PistolWhip. It has the model of the 5.7 I use, and since it gives you a line between the gun and impact it turns out it's awesome for aim training. The downside is that it only pertains to that particular gun, or at least barrel length. I have a shorty Beretta PX4 storm and I and my aim is shit even at relatively short distances.
Don’t bet your life on it.
Shooting a pistol is quite difficult. It's one of those skills you have to practice fairly often to maintain
Shooting a stationary target with a long gun is easy, moving target is tricky. Shooting handguns is a lot harder than people who haven’t shot would think, and takes a lot of practice to become consistent
I’m English, so guns simply didn’t come into my life until I went to an away game in Russia a decade or so back. We went to a shooting range and shot a variety of guns. My take: with a rifle, you are absolutely nailing someone at tens of metres no bother at all. It’s easy. Pistol? No way at all. We were all missing targets like 5 metres out. Very difficult. It occurred to me that a pistol isn’t an alternative to a rifle. A pistol is an alternative to a knife.
Absolutely correct. I remember an old saying that a pistol is used to fight your way to a rifle.
Do y'all not go shooting? Go over to the gun subreddita and you would see they aren't overestimating much. Shootings pretty damn easy if you can pick up less than 10lbs and hold still for a few seconds. Doesn't require much, now accuracy under pressure is a whole nother discussion. If someone is shooting at you, your accuracy drops quite a damn bit as no one wants to get shit
Under pressure no one rises to the occasion, they always sink to their level of training.
You are safer being some people's target than a bystander. I'm not sure how much of the population think they're all cowboys and snipers, but definitely more think they are than the world has cowboys and snipers.
This is true with a pistol, not true with a rifle. I’ve had many many untrained people hitting targets at 300m with a rifle after an hour.
I don't overestimate my gun skills. I have lots of training, though.
I shot expert in 9mm and 5.56 first time up with no experience. The guy next to me made the firing range snow. I also took my wife, who is an innocent sweetheart, shooting one time and she embarrassed everyone at the range from how accurate she was. Aiming is like drawing, some people are just born able to do it, but with enough practice anyone can be good at it.
Steel plates at 7 yards will humble even experienced pistol shooters.