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This week I’m going to be writing a “bonus” follow up to my two-part series on pistols (so I hope you enjoyed the first and second, because you’re getting more!). This one was somewhat unplanned, but arose after I had a chat with a gunsmith friend of mine who lives in the US. Being American, he obviously owns and fires many weapons, including pistols; being a gunsmith, he can set me straight on some of the more technical questions; and being a gentleman, he was willing to contribute to this article in a big way.

More broadly, today’s post will bring a more civilian focus to balance out the rest of this series, which came very much from the military cultural/historical point of view.

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Some people are actually spectacular shots

Firstly, can we take a moment to appreciate the measured coolness of Turkish Olympic silver medallist Yusuf Dikeç? In case you missed it, he competed in the 10 m Air Pistol in Paris and caused a sensation with his nonchalant style and general casualness compared to most competitors in this event. He eschewed the bulky ear defenders, the eyepieces, and even the fancy jerseys:

The 10 m air pistol event is a precision event, as opposed to a rapid fire event (which we spoke about last time, e.g. the 25 m rapid fire). Still, it’s worth reflecting on the level of precision which we see with these Olympic shooters (Dikeç and all the competitors): they consistently score in or around a bullseye of 12 mm, which, at 10 m distance, is 4.1 minutes of angle (MOA). Recall from our last post:

“The Hunting Gear Guy has done the analysis and reckons that 4 MOA (1″ at 25 yards) is the “mechanical accuracy” for a custom bullseye pistol.”

So these estimates tally up nicely. But it’s worth noting how we get to this level of precision. Dikeç and his peers shoot very differently than Hollywood heroes. They are slow, measured, with a very precise weapon, but still achieving comparable levels of precision.

Now, for some contrast, it might be worth turning away from Olympic shooting, which I’ve been focusing on in my previous posts, and look at practical shooting. This type of shooting is based on precision, power, and speed. It uses “real” firearms in competition stages with various types of target.

I didn’t mention it before because it’s harder to draw precision inferences from practical shooting, which in turn is because the target sizes and distances vary with each stage and competition. Nevertheless, it was an oversight and I’d like to spend a bit of time looking at it now. Here’s the USPSA channel to give you an idea:

The king of practical shooting is Jerry Miculek (here’s a link to his YouTube channel, which is worth checking out).

As you can see, he holds some very impressive records, such as firing twelve rounds from a six-shooter in under three seconds¹ and hitting a target at 1000 yards with a 9 mm pistol². So he clearly can shoot across the whole gamut from precision to rapid fire.

In the face of such godlike prowess, do we need to revisit our previous conclusions? I don’t think so. As I’ll explain below, just because something can be done, does not mean it should be assumed the norm.

Firstly, though, and just for fun, here’s a few more clips of James Bond shooting improbably small and/or distant non-human targets:

Technical limitations give a base level of uncertainty

Before getting into the realism of human performance, I wanted to spend a bit more time on the technical limitations of pistol precision, since I used some very hand-wavy engineering assumptions to get there last time. You’ll recall that we settled on a range of 4-6 MOA³ for a good pistol. I was a bit nervous when I submitted this bit of guesstimation to my gunsmith friend for consideration, but he reckoned it was valid, albeit with some natural variability built into these assumptions. We could, in other words, expect to see pistols which are far more precise, but these are not indicative of the type:

“Handguns tend to be like everything else made with modern manufacturing. You get some that are wildly inaccurate and some that have no business being as accurate as they are, and they come off the assembly line just a few serial numbers apart.”

The only hard limits on pistol precision are technological. Once you take the human element out of it, handgun precision is affected by two main factors:

With all that in mind, can a pistol improve upon the 4-6 MOA which we assumed earlier? Sure. But, again quoting my gunsmith companion:

“It’s like those car engines you hear guys talk about having 500,000 or even 1 million miles on them. Sure, it happens, sure, you taking care of it helped… but it’s not the norm.”

We can represent factors going into pistol precision like so:

As you can see, the human factor is the one that dominates. The variability due to technical reasons is significant for professionals, e.g. in the Olympics or practical shooting competitions, but only because the firer is so good already that their own natural error bar has shrunk enough to make the technical variability matter. So a better pistol (and better ammo) along with a very skilled firer can result in some very impressive feats of accuracy. But just what does it take to achieve this level of ability?

Conclusion: What it takes to be this good

“You get to the next level by being the first one on the range, and the last one to leave.” —Jerry Miculek

Skill with a pistol (as with any firearm) is limited only by the technology of the weapon itself. We’ve seen from the examples above that humans are capable of reaching extraordinary levels of ability. In fact, some (but definitely not all) of the Hollywood feats which I pooh-poohed in my last post might be plausible for the likes of Miculek or top Olympic athletes.

But even if a feat is achievable by humans, it does not follow that we should automatically accept it in Hollywood canon. It takes lots of practice to get as good as Miculek or Dikeç. As the quote above shows, it doesn’t come easily. Miculek estimates that he has fired half a million rounds on the range. Just think of the expense involved in purchasing the ammunition along, let alone the weapons, range time, and opportunity cost of his time. This is not a pursuit that most of us can aspire to. I hate to break it to you, but you won’t be able to drop everything, saunter off into the sunset and become a professional shooter.

To be clear, I’m including police and the military in the above. There’s frequently a movie shorthand of “oh, this person is an ex-cop / ex-soldier, therefore they are an amazing shot.” I know many, many soldiers, and I can count on one hand those that are amazing shots with a pistol. For the vast majority of military folk, you fire your pistol once or twice a year at range practices, pass the not-too-stringent test, and leave it at that. Sure, proficiency with a pistol is considered a good thing, but it’s not a make-or-break. It’s like being good at pool, or having a great singing voice. It will impress people, but that’s it. That, and you might get a little badge to sew onto your uniform⁴.

As for police, I’ll admit that I have less direct experience, and cultural standards viz. arming police are different here than in places like the US, as I mentioned before. But a quick search shows that this is a topic of some contention. Dave Grossi, a retired cop and firearms expert, tells us in this article (albeit from 2011) that police officers in the US train only once or twice a year with their firearms, in contrast to the criminals they are facing, who average two practices per month.

This is shocking: the cops (and the soldiers) use their weapons far less than criminals. Yes… but also no. After all, the job of a police officer is far more diverse than shooting at people. They don’t have the time to go on the range every day. On the other hand, a criminal intent on doing harm with a firearm may have ample opportunity to train, and will do it in their spare time as well. Similarly, for a soldier, marksmanship is important, but what’s more important is fieldcraft, giving and following orders, physical resilience, and situational awareness, to give a few examples.

This availability of firearms works both ways, though, as it’s not only the criminals who get the practice every other week. In the US, any civilian can practice their marksmanship as much as time and money allow. The popularity of the practical shooting competitions mentioned above is a testament to this.

So, in conclusion, Hollywood’s depictions of heroes with great pistol proficiency is just another example of their trend for giving great skills in all areas to their stars. A typical action hero shows world-class prowess at many disciplines at the same time, including, but not limited to:

• Pistol shooting
• Street fighting
• Helicopter flying
• Defensive driving
• Witty put-downs
• Seduction of the opposite sex
• Mechanical repair
• Bomb-making
• Surfing

For a change, and for some balance, let’s see some action heroes excel in some lesser-spotted skillsets:

• Interpretative dance
• Poetry (like the Irish mythological figures of old)
• Table tennis
• Microsoft Excel
• Cooking
• Philosophy
• Painting

I’m not sure I’d watch that film, come to think of it. But I do appreciate every on-screen depiction of terrible pistol shooting, however rare these are. If nothing else, it makes me feel marginally less bad for my own years of mediocrity in this field.

Thanks, as always, for reading, and please like, share, and subscribe! I’ll give the last word to our guest expert gunsmith and practical shooter, with a real-life example illustrating the fact that pistol proficiency is a skill that takes practice (emphasis in bold is mine):

The devil’s advocate has to say before closing that in the attempted mall shooting in Indiana, Eli Dicken pulled his sub compact (very short barrel) pistol on the asshole starting to open up on the food court at 40 yards (36 meters) and dumped ten rounds in 15 seconds with 8/10 hitting the shooter and killing him. This was a normal Joe that trained regularly but not incessantly. Though I’m sure in Europe his amount of practice with a handgun would probably seem obsessive.

Featured image: Casino Royale, Sony (2006)

1. Yes, you read that right, there was a reload in there. Not only did he fire all twelve rounds, but he hit the target, which you can see is about ten metres away, with each round. ↩︎
2. This is such an impressive shot, I really recommend watching the video. He takes two tries and doesn’t realise it’s hit until his assistant tells him. He had to aim about 60 feet above the target to account for the bullet drop over such an arcing trajectory. Awesome. See how, in comparison to most movie depictions, even the best shooters must remain absolutely still in order to hit a target at great distances. ↩︎
3. And of course you remember that a minute of angle is 1/60th of a degree, which works out at about one inch at 100 yards. Don’t like my freedom units? Go back to your socialist European dystopia! ↩︎
4. I’m being a bit disingenuous here, because badges and buttons and ribbons and things are catnip to any military person. We judge each other based on how colourful and blingy our uniforms are. ↩︎