A long time ago...
I was at the range with an FAL.
One of the target shooters there saw me blasting away and, jokingly, said that in combat I'd need to hit more often.
I, in jest, replied, "it's surpressing [sic] fire!"
This led to a little challenge.
His scoped bolt gun, vs my FAL. We set up some milk jugs full of water at the 100 yard line. We start with rifles down, unloaded, and first one to hit a jug wins.
Fine.
"GO!" and we lunge for our rifles.
The target shooter sits down at the bench and starts thumbing rounds into his magazine. I grab the FAL and shove the loaded magazine into the well.
We actually start aiming at the same time.
I start banging out rounds, missing around the gallon container and getting a little frustrated. Finally after about ten shots my jug explodes.
HA!
About a second later I'm surprised to hear him fire his first round.
He's very surprised to find that I'm finished and have hit the jug already.
It was illustrative of a couple things.
We were both so focused we'd lost track of that the other guy was doing. He thought the lull in my shooting was me running out of ammo and pausing to reload. He admitted that the sound of my shooting was affecting his aim and adding pressure.
We chatted a bit about the lesson we should learn from this and never really came to a conclusion.
"You can't miss fast enough to win" vs. "Quantity has a quality all it's own"; Round 1 of X goes to Accuracy By Volume.
ReplyDeleteIt's certainly not great for sustained fighting ability, but it can be mighty effective in a race to score the first hit. If the sound of shooting was making it hard to aim standing next to you, just imagine how much harder being on the business end would make it!