The “gun shoots better than I do” nonsense!

[rpenmanparker]

actually my 5.5” ruger single six using 22wmr ammo does shoot better than me: offhand, centered, sub 2” groups at 50’. well for me that’s good.

And from a rest? How can you talk about better with only one result? You have to compare two things to talk about better. But you knew that, right?

 

[rpenmanparker]

From guys that pay thousands for 1911 but can't shoot worth a ....?

There is no need to be snarky. There is no rule that says only good shooters are allowed to have nice guns. Retailers wouldn’t like that at all.

 

[rpenmanparker]

Every gun I own is more accurate than I am. I'm the biggest detriment to my accuracy.

But does that mean the gun could not and should not be improved? Would the overall precision not be better if the gun were better?

 

[P5 Guy]

Mechanical accuracy of the gun versus biological accuracy of the shooter, Ayoob did an article a while back comparing his shooting to mechanical rest and claimed he was as good as the rest at 30 feet.
Actually every firearm is mechanically more accurate than biologically, when the ammunition is consistent.

 

[jstert]

And from a rest? How can you talk about better with only one result? You have to compare two things to talk about better. But you knew that, right?

i don’t shoot from a rest at a target range because i don’t carry a rest with me when im out and about armed. as i inferred, im no expert but i know my limited abilities and my ruger exceeds them on more than one occasion. cheers.

 

[BWS]

Uhhh,we regularly outshoot the machine rests in archery. Both compounds and trad bows. Heck,I think myth busters tried to Robin Hood an arrow out of a machine and never could get one. It would take me maybe 15 minutes...... and I am not as good as some. I thought it was common knowledge that guys could outshoot Ransom rests with bullseye .45's?

 

[rpenmanparker]

But one more thing. Even though I understand your point, I believe you should probably just shrug it off the next time someone says it.

Come on, admit it. You love this stuff. What would you guys do for a laugh if I didn’t post these silly threads?

 

[rpenmanparker]

Uhhh,we regularly outshoot the machine rests in archery. Both compounds and trad bows. Heck,I think myth busters tried to Robin Hood an arrow out of a machine and never could get one. It would take me maybe 15 minutes...... and I am not as good as some. I thought it was common knowledge that guys could outshoot Ransom rests with bullseye .45's?

How would that work exactly? And don’t mix up accuracy and precision. We are not talking about hitting anything or Robin Hooding anything. Heck we are not even taking about Ulyssesing anything. We are talking about the size of 5 shot groups. It is not possible to shoot smaller groups on average freehand then off a competent rest. Key word is competent. If it were, then the whole meaning of rest would have to be corrected. The human shooter would be more at rest than the rest.

Let’s put it another way. If you could shoot better offhand then off a rest, wouldn’t you test the precision of guns by shooting them offhand?

 

[rpenmanparker]

Sophomoric humor? Reminds me of the I bet you can't eat oysters faster than I can shuck them bravado I used to hear in the Navy.

I now see where this is going and the intent of the post. It was never serious to begin with. Don't waste your time with this guy.

I'm outa here.

Right, you would not want to learn something.

 

[mjsdwash]

its a qualifier for people who don't shoot all that well. Obviously its a mechanical certainty that a gun will always shoot better than in the hands of any person. But I can say, my rifle shoots 5" at 100 with iron sights, but the rifle shoots better than me, or I can say "I shoot 5 imperial inches measured center to center at 100 imperial yards using rear aperture, and from sights of the following dimensions:.... however the rifle is limited by my ability, and I have not had a chance to fire it in a rigid vice" But then you would sound like a pedantic jackass. I can put a scope on it, and shoot 2" from the bench, but when I do a review on the bullets/barrel/load, whatever, Its dishonest to say what it could do in a rest you haven't tried, and its dishonest to imply thats the best you can do. The simple answer is to give your rough circumstances, and include the disclaimer that the rifle shoots better than you do.

 

[rpenmanparker]

its a qualifier for people who don't shoot all that well. Obviously its a mechanical certainty that a gun will always shoot better than in the hands of any person. But I can say, my rifle shoots 5" at 100 with iron sights, but the rifle shoots better than me, or I can say "I shoot 5 imperial inches measured center to center at 100 imperial yards using rear aperture, and from sights of the following dimensions:.... however the rifle is limited by my ability, and I have not had a chance to fire it in a rigid vice" But then you would sound like a pedantic jackass. I can put a scope on it, and shoot 2" from the bench, but when I do a review on the bullets/barrel/load, whatever, Its dishonest to say what it could do in a rest you haven't tried, and its dishonest to imply thats the best you can do. The simple answer is to give your rough circumstances, and include the disclaimer that the rifle shoots better than you do.

Say it all you want, but not as a reason to not make the gun even better. If the precision of the gun will always show up in your offhand results, then why decline to improve it on the grounds it is already better than you are. The extent to which the gun improves will show up in your results too.

 

[alfsauve]

It's comparing apples and oranges even though they can use same units of measure.

It just grates to hear it.

 

[cheygriz]

Robert, I have a problem with your basic premise.

the inherent accuracy of the gun is not going to have significant influence on the group size, the shooter is.

If you put a low performance driver in a high performance car, the inherent performance of the car is wasted. Rebuilding the car to super high performance is not going to help the low performance driver.

An average pistol shooter, shooting unsupported offhand will not shoot a tighter group with Hammerli free pistol than he will with a Browning Buckmark. The operator is the limiting factor.

 

[Ironicaintit]

I dont see why the irritation over a statement. it's simply an acknowledgement that the shooter himself is the detriment to superior marksmanship.
It comes from arguments about certain platforms that may be inferior for precision (mini-14) but some people like them because they admit they arent a marksman to the degree that would necessitate a "better" one. My mini is more accurate than I am! at 300 yards with iron sights? damn right, Im the one who's lacking there. I like the platform and it serves me fine.

on the other hand, I have a remington model 12 made in 1909 that used to have rifling, and it shoots loose shotgun patterns at 50 yards. I am far more accurate than it is, I dont care what kind of rest you put it on.

 

[Olon]

I think you (the OP) are misinterpreting the phrase entirely. It has more to do with where whoever is using it places the emphasis.

For example, take a musician. I play guitar, and I'm fairly decent but by no means an expert. My guitar is an Alvarez of lester quality. Would buying a fancy Martin guitar make me sound better? Absolutely! Would practicing more make me sound better? Of course. Where I'm at in expertise, practice will yield far better results than buying nice equipment. There is, however a law of diminishing returns. Eventually, with lots of practice, I would be at a point where a lot of input leads to a very small output, at which point it would make sense for me to fork out the cash for a nicer setup.

Same with shooting. I'm a decent shot, but I know I can improve significantly with practice. So much so that with little practice I know I can make more improvements than I can just buying a more expensive/better gun. I'm not in the 99th percentile where I need nicer stuff to get an edge. When I say that a gun shoots better than I can essentially I'm saying there is more potential for me to unlock from a gun. I'm not doing my part as well as I know I can with practice.

This whole deal about summing biological and mechanical error to get the offhand total is not what is being debated. What is in dispute is whether it's reasonable for folks to write off mechanical error in a situation where they know they aren't doing their part, and I think that's totally reasonable.

There's nobody more obnoxious than one who always blames their equipment.

 

[mjsdwash]

Say it all you want, but not as a reason to not make the gun even better. If the precision of the gun will always show up in your offhand results, then why decline to improve it on the grounds it is already better than you are. The extent to which the gun improves will show up in your results too.

for the same reason that if someone asks how fast your corvette, or hyabusa can go the answer isn't "depends on the speedlimit". Most people don't think of the physical limitation and mechanical limitation of a tools action. A context may be "this mill with cut to 1/10.000" but the vice will only cut to 1/1000". Of course the weakest link will be the limiting factor in anything. In English speaking cultures we include information that may not be strictly necessary in order to smooth the information being present. For a typical shooter who does 10" at 7 yards (translates to 1" at 25 yards on the internet), its important when asked how the firearm performed to include that the shooter can't maximize the performance of the arm. My accuraized Sprinfield that can shoot 3" at 50 yards in a vice is very accurate (by non internet standards) but in the hands of some people, that same pistol shoots 8" at 7 yards. So if you inquire "how accurate is that pistol" depending on who you ask, its horrible, or exceptional. Now if the bad shooter qualified with "but the gun shoots better than me", you know they are not the best review to count. While the actual phrasing is reasonably annoying, and I agree it is, it is the simplest way to convey, "the pistol is far more intrinsically precise than my abilities demonstrate". Its just an easier way, if not the most exact way to convey a common idea, in such a way that virtually every person can understand. It can be looked at as a localized expression.

 

[rpenmanparker]

Robert, I have a problem with your basic premise.

the inherent accuracy of the gun is not going to have significant influence on the group size, the shooter is.

If you put a low performance driver in a high performance car, the inherent performance of the car is wasted. Rebuilding the car to super high performance is not going to help the low performance driver.

An average pistol shooter, shooting unsupported offhand will not shoot a tighter group with Hammerli free pistol than he will with a Browning Buckmark. The operator is the limiting factor.

I have a hard time seeing how that could be true. All my training says that errors are additive. The precision error inherent in the gun is added to the precision error inherent in the operator (shooter). I think that because the precision error in the gun itself is a constant for each gun, we are used to seeing just the variation in performance due to different shooters. But that doesn't mean that the gun error isn't underlying all the other results. Just as a better shooter will achieve a tighter group with the same gun than a worse shooter will, so too will the same shooter obtain a better result with a better gun than with a worse one (with better and worse referring to inherent precision of the device). To find otherwise would turn all our understanding about precision of a process on its head. As I said, if a gun turns in a 3" group off a rest and a shooter turns in a 5 inch group offhand with that same gun, tuning the gun to give a 2" group off the rest should lower the offhand group by the same 1" or something very similar. Why we as shooters don't seem to value that improvement is beyond me.

What you are suggesting with the race car analogy is valid but would correspond to more like a 2" group off the rest and a 20" freehand group where any improvement in the gun would be trivial compared to how bad the shooter is. Sure that kind of thing happens all the time, but I'm trying keep the discussion limited to reasonably competent guns and shooters.

 

[mjsdwash]

I once saw a woman return a pistol to a gunshop with a range attached, complaining that it was so inaccurate as to be worthless (a S/W shield in .40, the really small one). A person there offered to check its accuracy for her, this person was an actual sponsored semi professional shooter, so I payed attention. He put the target out to 15 yards, yards, not feet, and shot a mag into one hole, about 2" from bullseye. You could certainly say "the gun shot better than her". The expression only really adds up when the mechanical accuracy and user accuracy are very far apart. Now if someone with a bench rest rifle shoots a 1000 yards 4" group, and says "the gun shoots better than me", but he means it can shoot a 3.8" group, thats just silly

 

[mjsdwash]

I have a hard time seeing how that could be true. All my training says that errors are additive. The precision error inherent in the gun is added to the precision error inherent in the operator (shooter). I think that because the precision error in the gun itself is a constant for each gun, we are used to seeing just the variation in performance due to different shooters. But that doesn't mean that the gun error isn't underlying all the other results. Just as a better shooter will achieve a tighter group with the same gun than a worse shooter will, so too will the same shooter obtain a better result with a better gun than with a worse one (with better and worse referring to inherent precision of the device). To find otherwise would turn all our understanding about precision of a process on its head. As I said, if a gun turns in a 3" group off a rest and a shooter turns in a 5 inch group offhand with that same gun, tuning the gun to give a 2" group off the rest should lower the offhand group by the same 1" or something very similar. Why we as shooters don't seem to value that improvement is beyond me.

What you are suggesting with the race car analogy is valid but would correspond to more like a 2" group off the rest and a 20" freehand group where any improvement in the gun would be trivial compared to how bad the shooter is. Sure that kind of thing happens all the time, but I'm trying keep the discussion limited to reasonably competent guns and shooters.

I can only imagine he's talking about typical production guns that all shoot 3" at 25 yards or thereabout. Doesn't make a meaningful difference if the gun is "accurate" and can shoot 2.5" mounted, or "inaccurate" and can shoot 4" mounted. While its certain contributing factors are cumulative, some factors are less meaningful than others. I had a 1911 that shot 5" at 10 yards on my best day. That pistol absolutely could shoot better than me because as you said, contributing factors are cumulative. That said, the pistol in a vice wouldn't likely shoot much better. Maybe 4.9" at 10 yards. I could pick up another 1911 and shoot 2" at 10 yards that same session. While the pistol could obviously shoot better without human error, the mechanical accuracy was a much greater factor than my shooting, a rare occurrence with modern arms. So in this case I would not reply to inquire with "the pistol shoots better than me". The phrase implies the user recognizes their own limitation. I would say: "this pistol is the most inaccurate thing I have shot seen since a baby browning with sever corrosive ammo damage".

 

[rpenmanparker]

for the same reason that if someone asks how fast your corvette, or hyabusa can go the answer isn't "depends on the speedlimit". Most people don't think of the physical limitation and mechanical limitation of a tools action. A context may be "this mill with cut to 1/10.000" but the vice will only cut to 1/1000". Of course the weakest link will be the limiting factor in anything. In English speaking cultures we include information that may not be strictly necessary in order to smooth the information being present. For a typical shooter who does 10" at 7 yards (translates to 1" at 25 yards on the internet), its important when asked how the firearm performed to include that the shooter can't maximize the performance of the arm. My accuraized Sprinfield that can shoot 3" at 50 yards in a vice is very accurate (by non internet standards) but in the hands of some people, that same pistol shoots 8" at 7 yards. So if you inquire "how accurate is that pistol" depending on who you ask, its horrible, or exceptional. Now if the bad shooter qualified with "but the gun shoots better than me", you know they are not the best review to count. While the actual phrasing is reasonably annoying, and I agree it is, it is the simplest way to convey, "the pistol is far more intrinsically precise than my abilities demonstrate". Its just an easier way, if not the most exact way to convey a common idea, in such a way that virtually every person can understand. It can be looked at as a localized expression.

Okay, this is a well reasoned reply and much appreciated. Let me just counter with my intent was to work in a bit closer discussion space with the subject base being reasonably competent shooters.

What underlies all this is the ATI .45 ACP 1911Commander I have ordered and expect to receive soon. Say my Ruger SR1911 9mm Commander could shoot 2.5" groups off a Ransom rest with the most suitable ammo. Say I could routinely shoot 6" groups with the same gun offhand. Say the ATI is crap and can only do 4.5" groups off the rest with its optimum ammo. Assuming a similar trigger and sights to the Ruger (just for this discussion) I should expect to see that extra 2" added to my offhand groups. Well I can tell you that isn't going to make me very happy. And saying I need to learn to shoot better isn't really getting to the heart of the matter. So while the new gun will still "shoot better than me" in the common parlance of the forum, there is an extra 2" in those rest groups that I would want to tune up and out.

What started all this was seeing questions on another forum like how to accomplish that gun improvement being met with answers like "learn to shoot better" and "the gun already shoots better than you do". Well IMO that just doesn't cut it. I hope this makes sense to you.

 

[rpenmanparker]

I think you (the OP) are misinterpreting the phrase entirely. It has more to do with where whoever is using it places the emphasis.

For example, take a musician. I play guitar, and I'm fairly decent but by no means an expert. My guitar is an Alvarez of lester quality. Would buying a fancy Martin guitar make me sound better? Absolutely! Would practicing more make me sound better? Of course. Where I'm at in expertise, practice will yield far better results than buying nice equipment. There is, however a law of diminishing returns. Eventually, with lots of practice, I would be at a point where a lot of input leads to a very small output, at which point it would make sense for me to fork out the cash for a nicer setup.

Same with shooting. I'm a decent shot, but I know I can improve significantly with practice. So much so that with little practice I know I can make more improvements than I can just buying a more expensive/better gun. I'm not in the 99th percentile where I need nicer stuff to get an edge. When I say that a gun shoots better than I can essentially I'm saying there is more potential for me to unlock from a gun. I'm not doing my part as well as I know I can with practice.

This whole deal about summing biological and mechanical error to get the offhand total is not what is being debated. What is in dispute is whether it's reasonable for folks to write off mechanical error in a situation where they know they aren't doing their part, and I think that's totally reasonable.

There's nobody more obnoxious than one who always blames their equipment.

There are two parts. Both the gun and the shooter have to each do theirs.

 

[mjsdwash]

Okay, this is a well reasoned reply and much appreciated. Let me just counter with my intent was to work in a bit closer discussion space with the subject base being reasonably competent shooters.

What underlies all this is the ATI .45 ACP 1911Commander I have ordered and expect to receive soon. Say my Ruger SR1911 9mm Commander could shoot 2.5" groups off a Ransom rest with the most suitable ammo. Say I could routinely shoot 6" groups with the same gun offhand. Say the ATI is for s**t and can only do 4.5" groups off the rest with its optimum ammo. Assuming a similar trigger and sights to the Ruger (just for this discussion) I should expect to see that extra 2" added to my offhand groups. Well I can tell you that isn't going to make me very happy. And saying I need to learn to shoot better isn't really getting to the heart of the matter. So while the new gun will still "shoot better than me" in the common parlance of the forum, there is an extra 2" in those rest groups that I would want to tune up and out.

What started all this was seeing questions on another forum like how to accomplish that gun improvement being met with answers like "learn to shoot better" and "the gun already shoots better than you do". Well IMO that just doesn't cut it. I hope this makes sense to you.

Oh yea, makes sense. I mentioned earlier a 1911 that shot awful (I fixed it and its now superbly accurate), additionally I had an AKM that shoots 18" at 25 yards. Yup, cant reliably hit a paint bucket across the street accurate. I Sweet 7.62'd the barrel, got some good ammo, took it out to a bench at the 25 yard range, and shot 18". Immediately took out the M16a2 Clone and shot a 3/8" group. Ask around.... "learn to shoot better" "your doing it wrong"... "AK's aren't all that accurate". Lots of nonsense. Never did figure that AK out. I tell people the oversimplified: group size is the capability of the gun times the capability of the shooter. Seems to make sense to most people who blame the gun, or loose interest due to not being good the first time. EDIT: I talked to the guy, turns out its not an ATI, so I deleted that last sentence.

 

[JohnKSa]

...the OP’s gun probably shot better the he did. ...

I have guns that can shoot better than I can. I have some guns that won't shoot as well as I can. I can demonstrate this fact by shooting smaller groups with a more accurate gun than the other gun can shoot when shooter error is eliminated.

For example, I have one autopistol (let's call it pistol A) that won't group better than 5-6 inches at 15 yards, even with shooter error eliminated/minimized. But I can demonstrate that with another pistol (pistol B) , I can shoot offhand groups of 3" at 25 yards (admittedly with some warmup and a maybe given a few attempts at it). So in that case, pistol A certainly doesn't shoot better than I do. Pistol B probably does shoot better than I do since there is some shooter error in the offhand groups.

The accuracy of any gun is the sum of multiple factors; let’s call them errors. Two of the most important are the inherent mechanical accuracy of the gun as determined from a fixed rest and the errors by the shooter.

The accuracy of the gun has nothing to do with errors by the shooter. Errors by the shooter are the accuracy of the shooter.

2" off the rest. 5" offhand. That means (I think) 2" mechanical error and 3" shooter error.

It's a little more complicated than that. Both shooter error and firearm error are random in magnitude and direction, therefore it's not possible to simply sum the average group sizes and get the correct answer.

A reasonable approximation/estimate for the combined error can be obtained by summing the squares and taking the square root.

So with a shooter capable of shooting 3" groups and a gun capable of shooting 2" groups, the combined accuracy should produce groups that are about 3.6" in size.

However, that's mostly moot as combining shooter error and gun error to try to assess the accuracy of the gun is problematic. The accuracy of the gun needs to be assessed with shooter error eliminated, or at least minimized to the extent possible.

The main reason the gun is more accurate than you can shoot is that your shooting INCLUDES the error inherent in the gun.

We can assess shooter error and firearm error independently of each other (well nearly so anyway) by shooting the firearm from a rest or fixture, and by assessing shooter error with a very accurate second firearm. Then we can compare the two to see which is smaller. In the example I gave, I can show that even with shooter error nearly eliminated, pistol A can't make groups at 15 yards that are as good as the groups I can shoot at 25 yards with a more accurate gun. Therefore my accuracy is better than pistol A. Pistol A does not shoot better than I can.

Now, if we assume that I can only assess my accuracy using pistol A, then that's a problem. HOWEVER, even then we can get a rough feel for things. Let's say I shoot pistol A from a fixture that totally eliminates shooter error. Then I shoot pistol A offhand at the same distance and with the same ammunition. If my offhand groups are very nearly the same size as the groups shot from the fixture, that pretty much says that the error due to the gun is dominating the results, even with my error combined into the equation and that suggests that I could outshoot that pistol A with a much more accurate pistol.

If we were both contributing about the same amount to the error, the groups shot from the fixture should be noticeably smaller.

But does that mean the gun could not and should not be improved? Would the overall precision not be better if the gun were better?

It depends on the shooter. If the shooter is not capable of shooting better than 8" groups at 7 yards, then spending the money to buy a gun with a 1.5" accuracy guarantee at 50 yards is probably not warranted. If the shooter WANTS a really accurate gun, then that's one thing. If they buy it thinking that it's going to cut their group sizes at 7 yards, they're going to be very disappointed unless their previous firearm was very inaccurate.

Here's an example. Let's say that the shooter has a gun that will shoot 4" groups at 25 yards from a Ransom Rest. That works out to groups of about 1.12" at 7 yards. If the shooter is getting 8" groups at 7 yards with that gun, then we can calculate that the shooter's contribution to the overall group size is about 7.9212"

Square Root (7.9212^2 + 1.12^2) = 8.0000"

The shooter is unhappy with 7 yard accuracy and buys a gun that has an accuracy guarantee of 1.5" at 50 yards. The new gun can shoot groups of about 0.21" at 7 yards with shooter error eliminated.

Square Root (7.9212^2 + 0.21^2) = 7.9240"

The improvement in groups at 7 yards due to the more accurate gun will be less than 0.08". Groups will still be about 8" at 7 yards even with the much more accurate (and much more expensive) gun.

I agree that there's a tendency for people to rush to judgement when someone complains about accuracy and automatically assume it's shooter error. You really need to have some idea of how both the gun and the shooter perform independently before it's possible to make an accurate assessment.

 

[Jim Watson]

Ayoob did an article a while back comparing his shooting to mechanical rest and claimed he was as good as the rest at 30 feet.

I though M. Ayoob was the guy who concluded that one could shoot five shots and disregard the first because it was shot (in an automatic) after hand cycling, the rest from recoil. Then he concluded that if he disregarded the worst shot of the four, he approximated the Ransom Rest. I don't know if it is him - I no longer read many gunzines - but somebody is just shooting five and counting the closest three.

"The gun is more accurate than I am." is one of those tiring Internet Cliches, like the frequent explications of the difference between a "clip" and a "magazine."
I am content with Jeff Cooper's comment on gun accuracy: "Since the dispersion of the weapon is added to the dispersion of the shooter, it can only be desired that the weapon have no dispersion at all."

On the other hand, I have been told by high end smallbore shooters that their Model 52s and Anschutzes are more accurate from prone than from benchrest. But then one of those guys is a believer in the "sleepy bullet theory" in which bullets converge towards the center of the target as range gets longer.

 

[WrongHanded]

When considering the additive factor of mechanical precision, how do most people determine this before deciding to "improve" their gun? I seriously doubt most put the gun in a vice and remove their own body from the equation.

The phrase "The gun is more accurate than the shooter" is to remind those that know (and educate those that don't), that the greatest limitation of accuracy in a firearm is the human body between it and the ground.

So can the mechanical precision of a gun be increased over and above the inherent level from the factory? Probably. But how would the average shooter know the gun's true capabilities to begin with?

And there's always ammunition to consider as a factor.