Achievable handgun accuracy

[brickeyee]

I thought I had typed 1 inch grouping at 15 yards. I was trying to ask if this was possible, with a handgun, hand held.

At 15 yards?

Yes.

If you want to see high accuracy handgun shooting (an done handed to boot) visit a higher level Bullseye match.

25 and 50 yards are the ranges (though reduced size targets can be used if a 50 yard handgun range is not available for some non-record competition).

The accuracy at the higher levels of competition will scare you.

Even withe medical problems (MS) I can still easily hit a 6 inch gong at 50 yards every time.

So far only my left eye and some 'sense of self' sensory nerves are f'ed up.

 

[Steve C]

Here is a picture of a target that was posted at Phoenix Rod and Gun from one of the Bullseye matches. Because of the 11 rounds there was obviously an "alibi" but when they're all in the "X" the extra round isn't changing the score.

 

[mikemyers]

I think it would be helpful with target photos to know both the distance to target, and the group size in inches.


.........Bullseye match? Is there a website somewhere that provides the dates when these will be held in different cities? If not, anyone know where one might be held in South Florida?

 

[[email protected]]

You keep showing targets like that with a modern pistol, I just got to show
a muzzleloading 10 shot pistol target shot last year at the Nationals by a
friend of mine. This is at 25 yds, one hand unsurpported. The guy who shot
this was 61 and yes, he does it regular. I was shooting right beside him when
he shot this. The 10 ring is just a little over 3 inches in dia. This is a standard
NRA pistol target.

 

[Peter M. Eick]

I consider myself a poor pistol shot but I try a lot. With that said, this is about average for me at 15 yrds and 50 shots per target.




I would figure a good shooter shoot do a lot better than this with 50 shots. My goal is to cut my group size in half and then move my targets back to 25 yrds and try again.

 

[bukijin]

I was in the firing lane next to a guy who shot a perfect 50 in a standard centrefire match once - thats 5 shots one handed in the 10 ring (5cm at 25m) .. happens occasionally but not often, The guy is a 747 pilot - when i fly wish i wasa passenger in his aircraft - amazing concentration, control and precision.

 

[Justin]

For the purpose of this thread, all I was after was a simple one-sentence definition, such as what we've come up with up above. I'm also interested in what the world championship levels are..... I've got a lot more reading to do.

World-class scores in Free Pistol are generally in the 570 out of 600 range.

In the Free Pistol events you shot at, what kind of results were people getting (in terms of distance to target, and group size - or was it only one or two shots, scored by how close to the bullseye they were?

Well, Free Pistol is shot at 50 meters. Targets are scored in five round strings. Depending on how the targets are set up, you either shoot five and hit the button to bring the target back, post up another one, and send it down, or you mount multiple targets on one board, and shoot five at each one.

I'm guessing that it was assumed you already had the gun sighted in, meaning group size wasn't the key factor - instead, it was simply how many points you scored

Basically, in order to score well, you have to shoot well. The ten ring is just under two inches and the nine ring is about four inches. So the sport is all about shooting as tight of a group as possible, from an offhand position at 50 meters. The gun is already sighted in, but you do get a number of sighters before you begin the actual match. IIRC, I think you get five of those.

(Did any of those competitive guns fire 45 ammo, or do they use something else, perhaps because the ammo is more accurate?)

Nope. Free Pistol is only shot with single-shot .22 handguns. When I took part in matches in college, I used a Russian-built TOZ Free Pistol.

After that, when I did compete in these matches, I used a S&W M46. That's not really an ideal gun for Free Pistol, but I wasn't shooting at a high enough level that it would have made much of a difference.

A couple of years ago, CDNN blew out a whole mess of TOZ Free Pistols and some people picked them up. Gun blogger Xavier bought one and did a pretty good writeup on the accuracy of the pistol from a plinking standpoint, which can be read here.

For a brief overview of what the sport itself looks like, Pilkington Guns has a good writeup about Free Pistol.

When it comes to competing in the ISSF shooting sports in the US, generally you'll find that they'll hold two or three matches at the same event, so it's not unheard of to compete in a 25 Meter Pistol match, 10 Meter Air Pistol match, and a 50 Meter Free Pistol match over the course of a weekend.

 

[brickeyee]

Is there a website somewhere that provides the dates when these will be held in different cities?

NRA publishes the list every month in each of the magazines.

 

[Pete D.]

Target

This is a target fired by a contributor to these fora. It was shot some years ago. Ten shots, one hand unsupported at 25 yards.


Free Pistol - one of two Olympic pistol events (the other is Rapid fire pistol). It is as described - though all competitions that I have shot were scored after 10 shots on each target.
My Pardini:

In most cases, Masters & High Masters are those who respectively shoot scores of 90 & 95 or better out of 100. IIRC, the NRA B-16 25 yard slow fire target has 3" and 1.5" 9- and 10-rings, respectively. A score of 95 puts an equal number of rounds in the 9-ring and the 10-ring. Do the math, and it requires a 2.1" 25 yard 10-shot group. No easy task. Keep in mind, 2.1" is the upper limit...and that 2.1" group has to be perfectly centered, and it would have to be delivered, perfectly centered, every time. I suspect High Masters actually deliver sub-2" 25 yard groups.

I wasn't there but was told by a friend that Dave Lang just shot a 296/300 at the NJ State Championships with an iron sighted 9mm service pistol (Leg match?). The 50 yard precision target was a 99.
Pete