Andrea Nash - Firing Range

[masterofgunfu]

 Andrea is making the best of what she sees as a bad situation. Bar had refused to give her either real guns or live ammunition but had instead given her two pistols armed with paintballs. Now Andrea is alternating between single targets and multiple, all the while growing more and more frustrated as stray breezes are messing with her aim. Of course, her idea of bad aim–5-10 mm off–might not be the same as anyone else's.

Damn but she misses her P226s.

[OOC: And just to avoid confusion, Millitimed to the day before Ellen's return EP.]

Comments

[battle_butler]

"Paintball pistols have a limit on their accuracy regardless of how good the shooter is. It's a function of them firing paintballs, rather than rifled rounds. Same was true of muskets. Personally, I'd say you've found it. Especially given the wind. Of course, you probably know all that already."

[masterofgunfu]

"Well, kind of not really," Andrea admits, though the compliment pleases her. "I mean, I assumed that was going to happen but we don't have things like these back home. Still, I feel like I'm playing with a kid's toy.

"I'd have thought the muskets would be too heavy or would need a stronger wind than this?"

[battle_butler]

Alfred half chuckles at her comments about them being kid's toys.

"Heavens, no. Musket balls just don't come out the barrel straight in the first place. Elementary fact due to the ball being slightly smaller than the barrel, for ease of manufacture and use, so it bobbles around slightly inside."

[masterofgunfu]

...

"How did they ver hit anything?!?" Andrea asks incredulously. Warning Alfred, you may have walked into a lecture on ballistics.

[battle_butler]

More to the point, a lecture on how war was waged 'back in the day' (Long, long before Alfred's day).

"Short range, firing at large blocks of men," Alfred says calmly. "More by luck than judgement for any individual shot, and you needed to be able to deal with the remnant in melee, but it worked well enough, chuck enough mud and all that. And of course, the noise and smoke terrified horses."

[masterofgunfu]

"But Davy Crockett was an excellent marksmen," Andrea counters. Don't mess with her culture icons there Alfred. "And he used a musket rifle."

[battle_butler]

"Yes. A rifle, not a smooth-bore. And it was the original smooth-bores that had the accuracy issues. Same as with those, really," he says gesturing to the pistols Andrea's holding. "It's exactly what rifling was invented to solve."

[masterofgunfu]

"Longer barrel give the ball time to get a good spin while you can still have a chance of control its path?" she guesses.

[battle_butler]

"Rifling makes the round spin in a controlled manner. So, it deviates far less from it's intended trajectory," Alfred replies. Then, he continues, clarifying, "The original rifles were the same length and design as a standard smooth-bore musket of the time, but had a, I'm not quite sure, but I'd guess about 50% increase in accuracy, relative to the smooth-bore."

[masterofgunfu]

"Was this when they started the spiral bore to guide the path as well or was that later?"

[battle_butler]

"That is rifling," Alfred says, smiling.