Comments on: The Stormtroopers’ normal human precision only seems inferior by comparison

By: Kirk

Kirk — Mon, 18 Dec 2017 04:41:01 +0000

Practice and dedication can accomplish some amazing things with regards to marksmanship skills. There’s this plumber I know, who shoots long-range sniper obsessively. The DOE security teams that came up to shoot against him and his fellow civilians at a tactical match were talking much shit about how they were going to walk away with the match prizes. They were eliminated from the competition in the first round.

Likewise, the guy I shot with on a small, home-town IPSC shooting league. He did it for recreation, being a dentist. That guy was phenomenal, and I’d have backed him in a practical shooting match up against a couple of guys who I know were Delta operators, in previous lives. Having seen all three shoot, I’d give the dentist the nod for being most likely to win a match. Real world? Dude shot three idiots who tried robbing his practice in suburban Chicago for narcotics, and did it so fast that his dental assistant was still on the phone with 911, asking for them to send cops: “…no, wait a minute… Send an ambulance, they’re all on the floor…”. The three idiots had all had their guns in hand, and none of them even got a shot off before he put center-of-mass shots into them so quickly that the guy in the next office suite was reporting machine-gun fire in the building.

Skill-at-arms resides in some surprising places, and it’s actually not that unusual to find out that the military/police complex does not possess what you think they would or should, in this regard. I can tell you this much–Where I was, in the Army, your marksmanship skills were pretty much a non-issue: If you didn’t have them, no big deal. The guys that were proficient? Mostly did it on their own time, and with their own weapons. Same with all too many cops I know.

By: David Whitewolf

David Whitewolf — Mon, 18 Dec 2017 01:59:05 +0000

Bomag is closer than Bruce with respect to the key characters. Force-sensitivity aside, Luke (and Biggs) were most likely akin to rural farmboys with tens of thousands of rounds fired at small varmint-sized targets (womp rats are presumably the equoivalent of Earth prairie dogs or Belding’s ground squirrels) and such folks routinely outshoot military and cops by dint of sheer practice time alone. I have shot specialty pistols at human-head-sized targets out past 600 yards at the annual Boomershoot for more than a decade. That said, I spent a day of WY-SHOT in Wyoming this past year shooting ground squirrels and the folks I shot with were making what seemed to me unreal offhand shots at all sorts of distances. Seeing that sort of thing firsthand can make one believe in the Force.

By: Bomag

Bomag — Sun, 17 Dec 2017 23:24:08 +0000

Unless you are using some sort of optical aid too hard to see the target at 1000 m.

You are not familiar with the power of the force!

It was a white 3′x5′ metal plate; markedly visible.

On one of the message boards, a guy related that at 600 yards he would register one handgun hit every 15 rounds.

By: Lu An Li

Lu An Li — Sun, 17 Dec 2017 21:37:13 +0000

“Jerry Miculek, who made a 1000m shot offhand with a 9mm revolver in 2014″

Unless you are using some sort of optical aid too hard to see the target at 1000 m.

By: Bomag

Bomag — Sun, 17 Dec 2017 14:17:55 +0000

Jerry Miculek, who made a 1000m shot offhand with a 9mm revolver in 2014

A bit gimmicky: multiple shots; elevation calculated ahead of time.

He is a far outlier in shooting ability.

By: Kirk

Kirk — Sun, 17 Dec 2017 07:43:13 +0000

Long-range pistol shots have been a “thing” since the days of the Old West. I can’t remember where I read of a verified incident of a legitimate kill made with a handgun out to nearly 200 yards, but I think it was with the Texas Rangers, back when they had the original Colt Dragoon pistols.

Elmer Keith did some remarkable things, as well–And, then there is Jerry Miculek, who made a 1000m shot offhand with a 9mm revolver in 2014. Long range with pistol is doable, easily–Even off-hand. It just takes a bunch of practice, and a good eye.

By: Bruce

Bruce — Sun, 17 Dec 2017 04:40:09 +0000

Star Wars was a Civil War Western in space. The Rebels were army, accustomed to small arms, and the whitejacket Yankees were sailors who maybe got trained briefly in between all the stuff they had to do to keep their ship from sinking.

By: Bomag

Bomag — Sun, 17 Dec 2017 03:43:58 +0000

It's a trope of literature and movies that the pistol can make a long distance shot. I think often of Gus in the Larry McMurtry book Lonesome Dove who exhibits prodigious pistol shots. McMurtry hewed to historical accuracy, so I'm wondering if people were ever capable of such shooting. I'm in a rural area where varmint control is crucial, and some people are just naturally good shots. The "force" is really with them.