Eh, even if firing conditions are perfect bullets sometimes do funny things and end up being less lethal than expected. I've heard of a point blank head shot where the bullet skidded along the skull underneath the scalp without penetrating, and skipped loose by making an exit wound at the back of the guy's head. Looked like it had done the trick (especially considering how superficial head wounds bleed) but the victim got away with cosmetic damage (and, I assume, a concussion).

Admittedly, feeding the marshall the gun barrell would have made things certain short of supernatural intervention, but I can see why Sawyer wouldn't have been up to that task.

bullets sometimes do funny things

This is true. However, Sawyer's failure wasn't a freak accident; he shot the guy in the torso, hit him, and failed to hit anything vital enough to kill him quickly, which was the whole point of shooting him in the first place. For this, House Slytherin gets minus eleventy million points.

Sawyer's patently not a killer¹, though. Armchair assassins and overthinkers may know where to aim, but most other people who haven't killed or been trained to do so stand a good chance of not hitting the right bits.

I think I'd know where to shoot, but my knowledge of how long it takes a person to die from this or from that is sorely tainted by whether it's a good guy or a bad guy that's been hit, and how high their name is in the credits.

¹: He's obviously killed, so no need to get semantic. He's neither a pro nor an enthusiastic amateur.

With my luck, if I were ever in that situation I'd go for a no contest shot like into an eye socket and end up getting pegged myself by a riccochet.

Sawyer probably missed because he aimed, squeezed his eyes tight shut and then pulled the trigger.

I think Theo's on it. I hadn't thought about it before, but Saywer's fucking up the Marshall thing makes a bit more sense in light of what we saw later, too. He may have wanted to/thought he needed to do it, but I can see him shying away at the instant and pulling his shot just enough to make the whole situation worse.

Kate, I think, is cold enough to have pulled it off (the think is because I'm still unresolved on what she's meant to be). Sawyer is less cold than her, by miles.

I don't know... she had the opportunity herself, but turned it over to Sawyer instead. Though whether out of softheartedness or to avoid suspicion is anyone's guess. But I think if she had made the decision to do the deed, she could have made a bank shot using a mirror and been more accurate than Sawyer.

I fear I give Kate too much credit.

We'll see.

I hope.

To avoid suspicion, probably, but maybe also not to have that particular death on her conscience. I mean, any more than it probably was. I think it would be harder for kate to be cold about it than Sawyer or someone else, just because she had personal involvement with him and knew it, and it was a secret.

I mean, people would look back on it and her differently if they found out later who he was and who she was if she'd been the one to pull that trigger.

However, had she done it, she prolly would have done just fine.