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Comment by danielvf | Hacker News Reader

> Pulling the trigger of a firearm does not require any skill or practice.

Learning and practicing how to correctly pull the trigger is probably the single biggest improvement to accuracy a new shooter can make. The difference between the right way, and the way everyone is born doing it, particularly with pistols, is HUGE. And it does take practice.

> Because bullets travel much faster than arrows, a gunner can aim in a straight line, which is easy.

Outside of being right next to your target, knowing your bullet drop and compensating for it is absolutely a part of shooting.

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"Learning and practicing how to correctly pull the trigger is probably the single biggest improvement to accuracy a new shooter can make."

Thanks, I will change that sentence.

I enjoy your magazine! Thanks for writing.

Also good practiced weapons handling is essential when hunting. Firstly so you can actually hit things and equally and more importantly IMO is that you don't want to wound the animals you're hunting with stray body shots or badly placed arrows.

Not only that, but you can definitely apply modern style zeroing equipment to bows so you "just have to aim in a straight line".

The article lost me pretty early with these glaring oversights.

Nearly half of all shootings are within 5 feet, you’re reaching.

Not military combat, which is the subject of the article.

I think the point was that training riflemen en masse is easy and cheap, whereas bowmen need far more intensive training - I would find it hard to contest this assessment.

When I did my conscript service, we were encouraged to hit target 300m away, and generally people learn to do this quite fast (with a high quality AK-47 copy in this instance). Learning to hit a target with this engagement distance is infinitely easier with rifle than bow, especially if you need to train riflemen en masse.

Descriptive is that english longbowmen had to practice continusously. I would probably hit a target with a rifle two decades after my service without much firing range practice.

Automated rifle has enabled industrialized utilization of civil population as easily trained effective combatants like nothing else.

> Descriptive is that english longbowmen had to practice continusously.

I was under the impression the draw weight[1] was a large part of that[2].

[1]: https://youtu.be/1w8yHeF4KRk?t=152

[2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/English_longbow#Training

This is true. But over the past century, the relative efficacy of conscript vs professional militaries has swung hard to the side of professional militaries. A mass of riflemen can’t compete on even terms with a combined arms force with tanks, artillery, aircraft, radars, satellites, and so on.

Yes, modern kit is more important than rifles, agree. That said I would not hold it as a general rule that conscripts and professional armies necessarily would have quality difference if the equipment is the same.

Finland has a pretty good conscript army even according to the professional Nato troops who train with them, so I would not discount effectiveness of conscript armies out of hand. Of course, it's the quality of training that matters, and that may be harder to institute on a national scale unless there is a long continous tradition of doing that.

Also to my understanding current Ukrainian army is holding it's own with a mostly conscript force (unless I'm mistaken) against a professional army (yes, on paper...).

Ukraine has a strong professional core and lots of NATO support. But yes, you’re right; if the population and the army are motivated and serious about maintaining a high quality conscript army, they can do so.

Happy to see that someone actually read the whole article before making a comment.

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