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Comment by FetusP | Hacker News Reader

I can't imagine so. Even if it was somehow accurate, it wouldn't be very mobile or quick..

I'd imagine one person with a pistol could take out a good sized group of people shooting marble trebuchets

That heavily depends on range, pistols are not known for accuracy at range.

Still pistols have some barrel so they should be vastly more accurate at range. I forget the ranges they are good for, but I think within 100 meters you can still hit your target most of the time.

Though if this is a real war I'll take a real rifle. The ar15 (m16) and ak47 are the staples of modern armies for good reason, and they have much better sniper rifles that in the right hands are amazing.

> Still pistols have some barrel so they should be vastly more accurate at range.

Way misguided here.

Pistol accuracy has almost nothing to do with the barrel. Not in the sense that you think.

Accuracy is repeatability. That means tolerances. The bore, rifling, the chamber dimension, the jump distance from the bullet to the rifling in the chamber, the natural resonances… but then just or more importantly is your ammo.

You have you ogive (“oh-jive”) of the bullet, the sectional density, the tail shape, it’s ballistic coefficient (actual, not G1 or G7 artillery guesses), your powder burn rate, consistency of the powder, amount obviously, the case neck tension and length, primer hole and primer consistency…

Then you get into dwell time of the action and all the user variables you can’t account for without bolting the gun to a frame.

… so as to pistol accuracy, you can have the world’s most accurate pistol and barrel ever made, and still have shit long distance accuracy. A barrel isn’t going to help you.

Pistol bullets are bricks compared to rifle bullets. A ballistic coefficient of .1 is just never going to be very consistent because at distance it’s dumped so much of it’s speed via air resistance that it’s supersonic time is limited and will enter transonic and subsonic quickly. This isn’t what pistol rounds are designed for. You want bricks with high sectional density for shooting things up close.

Somewhat accurate. A 9mm Luger fired out of a 16 inch barrel will have better terminal ballistics then when fired out of a 4 inch barrel. Yes, actual bullet design matters a lot too, but rifles are much more ergonomic for distance shooting, and I'd argue that makes a lot more difference.

Also depends on your definition of "at range". 300m? 1000m?

I have 15 years of reloading competition rifle ammo. But, ok, your opinion that longer barrels are better and rifles are more ergonomic is something I’ll really have to consider.

I’m glad we can agree that the actual differences between rifle and pistol ammunition matter “too”.

EDIT: Also your example is… not good. Almost all 9x19mm handgun ammo is going to have max potential in a 8-12” barrel. A 16” is doing next to nothing. All a longer barrel is doing at that point is introducing worse harmonics for a negligible difference in muzzle velocity, probably not even noticeable outside of the standard deviation. It was a good example for giving me insight to your background on this topic.

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