Caleb had some observations about point shooting. Since we have already done the caliber debate, I guess it is time for aimed fire vs. point shooting.

Point shooting is awesome if you can index the muzzle of the gun almost against the target, but performance with this technique tends to degrade as you increase the distance, or reduce the size of the target.

Go to a public range and observe a new shooter shooting a B27 silhouette and observe the “you would have got him in the kidney, that one would have hit is spleen” school of target scoring. Apparently the expectation is that the husky assailant will stand flat-footed and squared up to the shooter at a given distance, while the shooter punctures non-vital parts of anatomy.

If we fold the B27 in half (lengthwise), we simulate a husky bad guy that has partial cover. Is point shooting still getting enough hits on the target to stop the fight? What if we start ignoring the parts of the B27 that are non-vital? How much time is there between the buzzer and the first hit to the vitals and what would the bad guy be doing with that time?

Targets and scoring systems have a lot of bearing on this equation as well. If we count everything in the black on a B27 as a “hit” then there is no benefit to being able to shoot a 1″ group in eye-socket that our scoring system can measure (assuming the same times and distances.)

The objective is to get a “good enough” sight picture to make the shot in question. If you make your targets big and close enough then you don’t need much of a sight picture to hit them. As your targets get smaller or farther away then your sight picture becomes more important.